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COLUMN:   From the Sidelines

Raise your hand if you like New Year’s resolutions.

That’s what I thought.

Seriously, who actually follows through with them?

Stop drinking pop.

Lose weight.

Stop fighting with brother/sister.

By Feb. 1 pop sales are back up, scales back to tipping, and brothers and sisters back to fighting like, well, brothers and sisters.

January has to be the top-selling month for treadmills and the worst for Coke and Pepsi.

CEOs of the large pop companies probably don’t get discouraged if sales drop because they know most consumers are weak and will give into their vices.

Mine are Mountain Dew and being lazy.

Not a great combination.

In college I worked out and drank water. Now, for whatever reason, that green, fizzy drink seems to be daring me to pop the cap.

“You know you want to,” it says. “What could be better than 289 calories, 184 percent of your daily carbs, and a bunch of ingredients that no one can pronounce let alone know what they mean in one, 20-ounce bottle?”

And me working out? Please. There’s a better chance the KU basketball team goes back-to-back this year. (And we know that ain’t happening.)

I don’t think I’ve ever actually stuck with a New Year’s resolution.

Maybe I’m the weird one, and everyone else does, but judging by my friends and family, I’m in the norm.

In fact, most of my friends and families’ resolutions fizzle out before January.

Yeah, getting up every day at 5 a.m. to run sounded good about 11 p.m. New Year’s Eve, but not so much six hours later.

Jan. 2 rolls around and it’s a Friday, so when the alarm goes off for the fourth time a rationalization sounds pretty good: Well, I’ll start Monday because it’s the beginning of the week.

By the time Monday hits, it’s amusing the thought of getting up at 5 a.m. every day even was considered.

Again, another resolution down the drain.

The not-fighting between brothers and sisters is actually impossible to master.

It’s kind of like the Final Destination movies, no matter how those characters escaped death, it was going to find them.

With siblings, it’s the same way. Just because they are nice to each other all of a sudden on Jan. 1, it doesn’t mean the way of the world is going to change.

It soon will balance itself out with younger brothers having black eyes and sisters pulling out each other’s hair.

Those three just seem to top the list, however there are many more: eating better (enter cheeseburger by Jan. 15); stopping smoking (nicotine gum in trash by Feb. 20); being nicer to Missouri fans (bad joke).

They say January is the worst financial month for businesses, but if you invested in brussel sprouts or treadmills I bet you love January.

Even as I am typing this, dropping 15-20 pounds and getting rid of those sugar-Dew highs sound pretty good.

But sounding good and actually doing it are two different things.

OK, tell you what — I’ll try it.

I’ll see if I can last longer than a month with no pop and more exercise, but I sure as heck am not eating brussel sprouts.

Last modified Dec. 30, 2008

 

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