it's not really chicken

jan 1 marked the end of mrs. wintermute and my pledge to abstain from fried food for a year. well, we did. it wasn't that hard really, but it turns out we eat a lot more fried food than we thought i did. last january, i would have said i eat fried food once a month. once a week is more like it. maybe more. i found myself turning down food all the time because i had to think about whether it's fried or not. egg rolls. french fries that come with apparently every meal at every restaurant. chips and salsa. chips and guac. chips and chili. chips, and well, anything. calimari. there is just a ton of stuff.

so on new year's day, we went to a local tampa eatery to celebrate the end of the pledge. i had been savoring fries for a long time. i had been dreaming of crispy fried chicken. i would have settled for kfc, even it it's not really chicken (yeah yeah, i know that's an urban legend). instead, we ended up with the crappiest food on earth at po boy's. and then the waitress gipped us on our 2-for-1 coupon. major buzzkill.

so now it's time for something new. mrs. w and i couldn't come up with anything new. my favorite suggestion was going to church every sunday for 4 months, temple for 4 months, and then doing community service every sunday for 4 months. intellectually intriguing, but neither of us saw ourselves sticking with it.

so we've settled instead on each having a set of goals for the year. here's my 7 for '07:

1. be able to bench press my weight
2. spend more time with mrs w
3. unplug every week for 24 hours (basically friday night to sunday at noon). no blackberry, not email, no web surfing, no instant messaging, no blogging.
4. fully fund my 401(k), both of our roth-ira's, and meet our target for a down payment on a house. earn a 8% return on our portfolio.
5. give back to my fraternity, seo, and schools.
   
6. be in touch with my family more often. call my brother and parents bi-weekly. in-laws and brother-in-law every three weeks.
   
7. perform well enough at work to earn 100% of my performance bonus