Dwell on the past and you'll lose an eye; forget the past and you'll lose both eyes

We met our project deadline at work. I added my final two documents to the build at 11:15, 45 minutes ahead of schedule. Relieved and congratulatory emails richocheted around the group for the rest of the afternoon. We also learned that the sales group closed another large account, giving us additional work for the coming year. We made it. We can use the long weekend to breathe and then get going again.

My manager let us out early. So, Sandra and I went to visit with Adam, Jennie, and Lily. We had our first visit to their new house, a log cabin on eight acres in one of the hill towns just a bit further west. It's a nifty place, with both warmth and openess. Lily will start at her new school on Tuesday; the family will move a few weeks later. After the visit, we went to one of Lily's favorite restaurants, a Mongolian barbeque place in Hadley. Although there were no Mongolians to be seen, we dined well and had lots of good talk and laughter.

Today we hope to gather up some of Mike and Lynn's kids to go to the latest Harry Potter movie.

Snow is in the forecast for this evening, making travel even more treacherous. Tonight is amateur night, a time when lots of otherwise well-behaved people get drunk. The serious drunks are apt to take the night off, preferring to show their stuff when everyone least expects it, like some Tuesday morning in March. Anyway, the serious drunks have known for a long time that there's no cure for a hangover; here's the science. If you want to avoid a hangover, don't take that first drink.

In case you were wondering, Hiatchi claims that The Hard Drive is the New Bling.

It's nice of people to share their dreams with us. This guy, for example, wanted to set the record for the longest ear hair. And, this guy implanted an RFID chip in himself.

[The title for this entry comes from an Russian proverb, quoted by Solzhenitsyn at the start of The Gulag Archipelago.]

As I've mentioned in the past, I don't typically make New Year's resolutions. If a good habit is worth starting, any day is fine. It was 20 years ago yesterday, I just remembered, when I had my last cigarette. Here are, nevertheless, some tips for setting goals, whether those goals are set tomorrow on New Year's Day or some Thursday in November or some Tuesday in March.