Everyone meet my niece, Kate. This is what Christmas does to me too.

Ottawa Update 30

You yo, yo! Since I’ve banked enough holidays and because I loose them if I don’t use them, I thought I’d take a sweet two weeks vacation from blogging. Besides since I did so much writing in 2010, both in school and on my own, I found that was just totally burned out, so I walked away. But fear not, like that itchy, scabby rash you picked up on your last vacation to the red light district of Bangkok, I’m back again and nastier than ever.

Although I personally don’t celebrate the December 31st holiday I’ll be gracious and wish you all a Happy New Year. I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but lot of people don’t know that New Years is a completely fabricated event created in the early 1930s by the American greeting card industry. The thinking behind it was that they needed something to fill the long void between the more traditional holidays of Halloween and Valentines day. But it was also hoped to be a much needed celebration raising the spirits of those millions of impoverished Americans struggling through the Great Depression at the time.

A number of holiday concepts were conceived off, but in the end it was the ‘New Year’ concept. What they didn’t plan on was the outbreak of the war in 1939 that would bring millions of American soldiers along with their traditions, both old and new, over to Europe and by 1945 New Years Eve had become the global phenomena that it is today. Soon clocks, calendars and Champagne were invented to go along with the all night parties.

Speaking of all night parties, my New Year’s resolutions are a little different this year than the usual ones I toss out. This year they are, in no particular order, to become a bigger ass hole, burry myself under far greater personal debt and sweat way, way more of the small stuff...oh, yeah and go on a diet.

I gotta diet because this year my special gift from Santa was about 15 pounds of blubber hanging off my gut. As I write this my bloodstream is so polluted with fats, sugars and alcohol that the Ganges looks pure in comparison. In all seriousness I with the amount of crap I’ve jammed into my pie hole over the last few weeks I should probably be dead right now, and based on how I’m feeling I kinda want to be.

Like an ancient Greek tragedy fate has turned me into the very same ‘tub of lard’ that I used to call the fat kids back in elementary school. It’s all gotten so bad that I went for a bike ride the other day and a couple dozen pedal strokes in I was panting like some kind of a brachycephalic dog.

Being a Canadian, I have always understood that as a white, middle-class, first-world citizens it’s my God given right that I can eat whatever man-made, processed, unnatural foods that I want at the most irregular times possible, in enormous quantities and never gain an ounce of fat. I think that’s in the constitution. Should fatness somehow occur, I also expect that a government funded pill or surgical procedure should be immediately made available to me to ‘make it stop’.

Sadly, in just a few short years, mostly in during 2010 with unlimited access to a fridge full of unhealthy foods, I’ve gone from looking like Michelangelo’s David to the Pillsbury dough boy...except I giggle a lot less. However, my once hard, chiseled bod has gone from a once proud 18-year-old’s, that could take anything I put it through and bounce back after a 20 minute nap, to a 38-year-old embarrassment that is just looking for the smallest reason to break down and stop working for good.

School’s starts tomorrow and all I gotta say is hallelujah. I mean enough with the time off already. At more than three weeks my Christmas holidays were way, way too long. No doubt the other kids would probably argue with me, they likely hung with their friends, reunited with family, traveled to cool places and had many wonderful new experiences. I didn’t. I read a few books, tinkered with some photoshop stuff, cleaned the house, but mostly I just sat around staring at the calendar and waiting for school to come and save me from myself.

I guess over all it wasn’t that bad, but as always it just feels like there was nothing really accomplished. Then again I’d have to say that I’m a glass half empty kinda guy and I seem to constantly sit around looking at all the things I haven’t done rather than the things have. No doubt that an insecure, malcontent like me has got to be an advertiser’s dream--an unhappy dude ready to buy anything to just make the boredom stop for even five minutes.

Well folks, I’m gonna have to pack this one in, diabetes, cancer and heart disease are all standing on my front door right now and asking my mom if I’m allowed to come out and play. She gonna send me out so I gotta go. Take care and I’ll talk to you next week.

Dan.