New Year's resolutions ??? I wonder if it's a good idea. Not everyone thinks so.

1. "New Year's is just a holiday created by calendar companies who don't want you reusing last year's calendars."
2. "I can’t believe it’s been a year since I didn’t become a better person."
3. "May all your troubles last as long as your resolutions." — Joey Adams
4. "Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right." — Oprah Winfrey
5. "A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other."
6. "My New Year’s resolution is to stop feeling guilty about not keeping last year's resolution."
7. "I would quit drinking in the New Year, but nobody likes a quitter."
8. "I was going to resolve to think twice before saying something, but then I thought… why?"
9. "An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves." — Bill Vaughn
10. "I'm planning on remembering 2025 like it was yesterday."
11. "I resolve to work on my resolutions all year, no matter how hard they prove to be...failed already!"
12. "My New Year's resolution is 1080p."
13. "Dear New Year, please be nice to me this time. I haven’t been mean to you!"
14. "Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account." — Oscar Wilde
15. "May the New Year bring you more happiness than your husband’s resolutions bring him."
16. "This New Year's I resolve to be less awesome since that is really the only thing I do in excess."
17. "I can’t believe it’s been an entire year since I didn’t become a better person."
18. "New Year’s Day is every man’s birthday." — Charles Lamb
19. "I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning, and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me." — Anaïs Nin
20. "Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual." — Mark Twain
21. "Every New Year’s Eve, I look forward to a good show at Times Square...an over-the-top rejection of resolutions as the ball drops."
22. "Looking to set goals for the new year, but not expecting too much: I resolve, cough cough, to learn a new hobby. Or location of my other shoe."
23. "What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year… and possibly a lucky rabbit’s foot."
24. "Leaving 2024, entering 2025: cue the optimism that we will finally grasp how to sit on a couch less and exercise more."
25. "If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. If you can’t crawl, then just move inch by inch in another direction." — Martin Luther King Jr.
26. "For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice – hopefully with fewer typos this time." — T.S. Eliot
27. "Many people look forward to the new year for a new start on old habits."
28. "This year, my resolution is to remember what my resolutions are!"
29. "Every New Year I have the same question: 'How did I get home last year?'"
30. "New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time." — James Agate
31. "In the New Year, never forget to thank your past years because they enabled you to reach today! Without the stairs of the past, you cannot arrive at the future." — Mehmet Murat ildan
32. "New Year, new you. Just kidding. Here’s to another year of being fabulously the same you as last year."
33. "Resolution: To get a beach bod. This year: Butter-bodied."
34. "Time to stop the bad diets, stop the self-loathing, and stop being so hard on myself – tomorrow! Happy New Year!"
35. "My resolution was to read more, so I put the subtitles on my TV."
36. "May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue, so that I triumph even when I fall!" — Aleister Crowley
37. "This new year, be at peace with your appearances, you'll just end up confused with wishful thinking anyways."
38. "My goal for 2025 is to accomplish the goals of 2024, which I should have done in 2023, because I made a promise in 2022 and planned in 2021!"
39. "New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions." — Mark Twain
40. "We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives, not looking for flaws, but for potential." — Ellen Goodman
41. "Forget the sweet tea and lemonade. Opt for champagne and dance poorly into the new year."
42. "My resolution is to create a world where there are so many Mondays disguised as Fridays; no one will notice when I have ice cream for breakfast."
43. "The world gets a new year, you get a new phoenix, so don’t let your ashes control your rising."
44. "I usually make resolutions that are a little easier to keep, like getting enough rest, telling more jokes, or mastering the art of the freakishly big smile while eating cake."
45. "Drum rolls and fireworks are all that’s needed to know the New Year is here. Or is it just a successful way to distract us from forming actual resolutions?"
46. "You know you’re getting old when you celebrate New Year’s by keeping one eye on the ball drop and the other on your pajamas."
47. "I will quit procrastinating…at some point this year."
48. "I resolve to accomplish things I’ve wanted to do for years like waking up before noon on a weekend or high-fiving myself when no one’s looking."
49. "My resolution: something about avoiding bacon-wrapped quiches just this one time (but only because they taught me once again that eating well is possible only in theory)."
50. "It’s time to release your inner rebel and do a resolution that stands out from the rest: Plan to break the limits of your to-do list only to add more to it."
51. Just welcome the new year with more optimism and pay it forward.

Goodbye

This program no longer works, so it is with great regret that I must close for the last time. Stay safe, everyone, and good luck. Thank you for following us. Sincerely, Shadow

Passage

 

Time can be a gentle thief; you barely feel his passage,

As he trails his finger across your cheek to write the story of your journey

And offer wisdom as his message.

No science can remove his stamp, nor can your travels be erased.

He marches forward with resolve and writes the truth upon your face

And steals away your youthful grace.

Don't leave your destiny to providence; take it firmly in your hands

And mould it with honour and strength, to brave the whims of fate,

And so the test of time withstands.

Fill your days with generosity, make your smile a gift

And time will be a steadfast friend and make your hours of sadness swift

And bring you peaceful resolution and in all ways will  uplift.

Live each experience with joy and passion; make every moment count.

Don't spend them on contrition or regret.

Remember, there is little that love cannot surmount

And though the universe is timeless and your place in it so small,

He does not forget you; he awaits us all

And steals away our days, quietly discreet

Then comes to write that final line upon the balance sheet.

Isolation Activities

 

12 days of Covid Christmas

Message from Australia

Written by Henry R. Greenfield Nov 1st

 Resident of Australia

Australia just recorded zero cases of CV19 again after a big spike last month in Melbourne? What can the US and the rest of the world learn from this? 

 What a shocker. 

•Masks work, contact tracing works, all residents doing the right thing works and then you don’t you     lose lives, jobs, the economy and you are less miserable. 

•Selective lockdowns work. 

•Closing borders work. By state and not just international. 

•Making all international flights that come in go into 14 day (no exception) hotel monitored quarantine, WORKS! 

After Covid disasters where some people decided they didn’t like quarantine, left isolation and became ‘superspreaders', killing a few hundred people and forcing a complete lockdown for the entire state of Victoria, Australia learned the hard way. If you are going to do something, be serious about it and do it right with no exceptions.

 Is all this difficult? Absolutely. Is it terribly inconvenient? Of course it is. But look at the results. It works, just as it did in Perth, where I live. We talked a good game but we didn’t stick with it and we lost big time so we had to double down and do it right.

 Let’s be clear. Many of us have gone through the quarantine, it is not fun. No one wants to be isolated where you cannot step outside the door of your hotel room for 14 days and you pay $3,000 for the privilege. But it saves lives, it works.

 LIFE IS NOW ALMOST NORMAL IN AUSTRALIA. We can go to church, we have, in most of the country, large gatherings, all the restaurants are open, we play sports and go Christmas shopping. We made our mistakes and we are opening up carefully and slowly. We still are wearing masks where necessary. We test test test and contact trace and wash our hands. 

 HERE IS THE LESSON FOR THE WORLD. It is not just small countries like New Zealand that can beat this virus. As I have written before, it is not a woman thing or a man thing or a young thing or an old thing, it is an everybody thing. If absolutely everyone adheres to the rules and the government takes the pandemic seriously, like I mean really seriously, then CV19 can be stopped in it's tracks.

 It has not been cured, just controlled. Travel is still virtually cut off from the rest of the world. You have to apply to get in and out of Australia. But we have our lives back, we are not dying in hundreds of thousands, 10s’ of thousands or hundreds not even 1 or 2. We are not dying anymore. 

 The answer to the Covid spread in the UK and Europe and other parts of the world, but especially the USA, is that your leadership is taking you down down down. You do not have to be China, you do not have to ‘give up your freedom’. You just have to pay attention and care about protecting others. You cannot play games with other people's lives or say it is over or you are rounding the curve when you have 100,000+ plus cases in one day like yesterday in the USA. You cannot go into denial and say, well they had other symptoms or the people who died were old, or the deaths were not reported fairly or it is all exaggerated. Really, come on! Open your eyes and ears. This is not some weird conspiracy.

 Dear USA and its citizens, the President of the USA could have stopped this. We did it in Australia so any country, of any size, can do it. He is lying to you. You are losing to China. We need you to wake up and get rid of that guy and rejoin the rest of the world. You matter, please understand that. Come on, you can do it. And tell all the ding dongs with the guns that seem to threaten anyone they don't like or anyone they don't understand, to cut it and go home and grow up. Your schtick is getting old, we don’t even laugh about it anymore. 

 Sincerely, The Rest of the World