DIDS! New Year, New Me. New you? Woohoo!

Welcome to Damn, I Did Something! - the place where we all get to sound off about our many and varied accomplishments for the week.  Publish a book?  Win a trip for two?  Finally clean out your glovebox?  Manage to get through the morning on one cup of coffee?  Let us hear it!  We’ll cheer the large and the small.  We've even been known to nod respectfully in the direction of those who’ve managed to do nothing at all, so if this is the week that you chose to actively and effectively embrace your inner ennui, do tell.

Me?  I bought an exercise bike.  I had a small wad of Christmas money and decided it’s finally time.  I was hoping that I could get back to at least walking, but after a lifetime as a runner and racquetball player, I ended up with plantar fasciitis.  In the last two years, I’ve gotten it under control for the most part, but I still am unable to walk any distance at all without my heels feeling as though someone’s holding an acetylene torch to them.

I also had both carpal tunnel releases done this past fall and am ready to haul the free weights out of the basement.  That's pretty amazing.  After a decade of aching numbness, I don't even think about them anymore.  No more pain.  No more waking up with the electric "humming" in my hands and wrists.  Sometimes you don't realize how wierd and debilitating something was until it's gone.

But this decision to take my physical being back is oddly intimidating.  I’ve always punished myself severely when I work out.  I love to sweat.  It’s demoralizing to have to go easy on a body that has so many parts that are reaching the end of their warranty.  The effort is aided, however, by the fact that after 25 years of tobacco use I quit smoking last spring.  Yeah.  Talk about DIDS.

So I'll take my time and ease into this.  'Cuz I have my bike.  There it sits in all of its tasteful green and gray, multi-tension-level, multi-speed-workout, calorie- and mile-counting, fan-laden, pulse-measuring glory.  Any minute now, I’m going to make it suffer.  Maybe after I chat with y’all a bit.

I close with a wish for good fortune for the year.  Health and love, hope and happiness to all of you in this new, never-before-lived-in year.   Be sure to bring us your DIDS deeds each Tuesday.  It’s nice to help celebrate the "doers" and to encourage the "wish I hads".

May the wind be at your tail, may your candidate not fail, may the Dems prevail and may the 'Blazers stay out of jail.  Amen.

(Please note:  This does not involve any kind of New Years resolution.  I detest them, so NYRs are something I DWDD (damned well didn’t do!).  Nothing is worse than starting a new year by looking back at the old year’s hope-filled list and realizing you’ve been a fat-assed failure. ;-P)

So?  What have you been up to?  Did you DIDS?