Which is better, the truth, or the story?

As you may know, my daughter's name is Allison Avery.  The truth is that her name was picked by my wife with just names she liked.  My story is that Allison came from the NASCAR family of the Allisons.  The Avery comes from a combination of James Avery (Uncle Phil, Shredder) and Avery Brooks (Hawk, Benjamin Sisko).  So I ask again, which is better, the truth or the story?

Of course, this post was prompted by the death of James Avery today.  Goodbye, Uncle Phil.

New Years Resolutions

First a little quiz, courtesy Andy Andrews:  3 birds are sitting on a branch.  One bird decides to fly away. How many birds are left?  The answer is 3.  The bird decided to fly away, but he took no action.

So you've made a New Years resolution.  Well, whoopity doo!  Now what?  My suggestion would be 

1. Make a plan with solid goals.
2. Make a check point.
3. Adjust as needed.
4. 2-3 as needed.

1.  Make a plan with solid goals. For example, you want to lose weight.  Decent goal, but poorly defined.  You should make a plan. "I'm going Weight Watchers" ,"I'm going low carb", "I'm going to treadmill 3 times a week", "I'm going to ..".  It's been my experience that the plan itself  is less important than sticking to the plan.  Then, your goal needs to be better define.  "I need to lose 50 pounds"  "I need to lose 2 pounds a week"  You'll need both short term goals and long term goals. One good way set goals is to use the SMART criteria.

2.  Make a check point.  After 2 weeks, how is your weight?  Then 2 more weeks, then another month, etc.

3.  Adjust as needed.  After 2 weeks, you've lost 4 pounds.  That's pretty good, so keep going.  But what if you've gained weight or were flat?  Then adjust.  Move to 4 times a week on the tread mill, or switch from Weight Watchers to low carb.  

4.  2-3 as needed.  Hit your marks?  Then great, keep it up.  If not, readjust until it works.

One of my goals is to blog again.  I'll save the reasons why for another post.  

As with any advice, adjust to your needs.  Good luck with your resolutions.

Maintenance

Hey, Lime green was awesome back in 2006. Going to a basic black and white, will try to figure out a good design when I have time. Feel free to make suggestions if you wish.

Bringing the funk back

I needed a place to put some thoughts that required more than 140 characters, so I decided to revive the defunked blog. (Note that is the correct spelling. Defunct means no longer functioning; defunked means having lost the funk.) My last post was almost exactly 4 years ago.

So here we go:

NASCAR: I hope Carl Edwards stays in the 99. (I'm Nuggie99, people, I have investment here!) My second choice would be for Mark Martin to come back to Roush, and all would be right in the world. After that would be Trevor Bayne, then Brian Vickers. Sounds like Clint Bowyer is staying back at Childress. Not much of a Stenhouse fan, but I suppose I could grow into it.

Comics:

Don't read Ultimate Spider-Man, so don't really care. I've only read one Bendis book (the first Powers trade), but he seems like a good writer. He should be able to pull a good story out of it. Whether the story is any good is really all that matters.

On the same line, Larry (he was Larry in Cadence and Deep Cover, he'll always be Larry to me) Fishburne is a great actor and should make a good Perry White.