I set myself a modest goal, three hundred sixty five days or so ago, of posting entries on at least 95% of the days of the calendar year and getting the overall site posting rate up into the upper 60 percent range (at the time it was at about 63%). It ended up a matter of posting many short and silly entries, but I accomplished my goal with percentage points to spare.

This year I’ve set a somewhat different goal. I want to maintain a 75% post rate for the year and I want most of what I write to be more entertaining, more detailed and (hopefully) more interesting. In short: Write less often, but write better.

If I can pull this off, visiting this site may end up being a form of entertainment even for people who don’t know me personally. Hey, it’s something to shoot for. What’s the point to surviving from year to year if we don’t set ourselves the occasional challenge?

All discussions about plans for New Year’s Eve have taken place through a bizarre filter in my mind. It took every reference to “Saturday” and turned it into “Sunday,” because obviously it’s Sunday that we’ll all be staying up the whole night to party, watch balls drop and that sort of silliness.

Right?

Yeah. I figured it out when I got about two blocks from home tonight. Apparently I need to walk around more, ‘cause I do most of my best thinking on my feet. I’m not kidding, there. To those of you I’ve conversed with on this topic recently: Just take all of my idiotic blather about “Sunday” and translate it to “Saturday” and we’ll all be good, mmkay? Thanks.

I gave myself a belated Christmas present today. I slept in ‘til about 10:30, I relaxed a lot, I rested, I goofed off, and I made a deliberate point of not leaving the house at any point. I figure if I get another good night’s sleep in, I may even be a tolerable human being tomorrow.

Anything’s possible, right?

Well, I had to do something stupid, didn’t I?

I started my laundry rather late, having filled my basket during daylight hours but spacing out on actually putting clothes into the wash until, oh, close to 10pm. I just hauled the clean, dry clothing out of the dryer and… noticed with considerable chagrin the number of fortune cookie slips in the lint trap.

Yep. I washed my wallet. My license is slightly warped, now. My bus pass is almost completely shot to hell. (And how glad am I now that I didn’t buy January’s pass while I was passing by Safeway this morning!) The money? Oh, it’s designed to take a bath or two, so no worries there. I can only hope that my bank card wasn’t adversely affected, let alone my Social Security card. The wallet itself is a goner, though. Dammit. I liked that wallet. I’ve never washed one before, so why did I start now?

Merry Christmas, everybody. May your holiday start out better than mine…

[ Ringtone plays on phone. It’s the MIDI version of the theme song to Manatsu no Eve, the so-called “second Tenchi Muyo movie.” This is the ringtone assigned to unknown incoming callers. ]

“Hello.”

“Hi, is Jennifer there?”

“Jennifer who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Uh, okay. Well, you’ve reached my cellphone.”

“Hmm. It does say ‘cellphone’ by this number. I just wanted to know if she’s working today.”

“Working… where?”

“Safeway.”

“Lady, you definitely have the wrong number. Sorry.”

“Oh, okay.”

[ Phone call ends. ]

The major activities of my day off centered on food. First I took my kids, the ex, and the tadpole out to brunch at The Original Hot Cake House. As a change of pace I even ordered hot cakes!

Later, I trekked out to Mari & Doug’s place for general hanging out and a nice bit o’ stir-fried goodness. Apparently zucchini is no match for teriyaki sauce. Is there anything that can’t be made tastier with teriyaki sauce? I think not!

Sure, I could’ve lazed around the house all day. I feel much better about how things turned out, however. I’m such a people person. Who knew?