So last night I was glued to the TV (as I will be tonight) as Jack Bauer & co embarked on the first 2 hours of Day 5. This show pulls no punches, there are really no happy endings for anyone. Love it! From the initial rifle shot to the car bombs and spiral into intrigue, 24 just sucks you in until the last show of the season. Now if only i could get past the 5 minutes of show 5 minutes of commercials - life would be good. Hmmm...must look into TIVO.

One of the best things about January is the opportunity to take advantage of "clean-slateism" and take control of your email inbox. Over the year/s mine had become depressingly full so I selected everything except items with a 2006 date and moved them all over to another mailbox called 2005. I also setup a 2004 mailbox and archived them both. Next, I went through and pared down my various mail folders, eliminating some and emptying others. Ahhhh. That was nice! Now the challenge is to keep no more than 20 or so emails in my inbox at any one time.

Well week 1 of the New Year has pretty much drawn to a close and with it my Christmas holidays are also over. Christmas was good but like everyone I talked to, seemed to come upon us somewhat suddenly. Nobody I know seemed really prepared for it this year. But the break was nice as we had from the 26th to 30th off from work and then I took Jan 2nd, 3rd and 4th off, and worked from home on Thursday and Friday which was a really nice way to ease back into the grind. Work at the office and school for the kiddies start with an equal vigour on Monday and I can see from emails that I'll be hitting the ground running.

On the personal work front, being somewhat energized I've come up with an idea for a new website that I'm kind of excited about. It's on the hush hush for now because I haven't worked out all the details yet but it is starting to take shape in my mind.

And finally, while figuratively scraping off the residue of last year I approach the coming year fresh and with optimism so here are some resolutions for this year that I will bravely put down in writing:

1. Get more fit. I'm probably around the average in fitness level right now (maybe slightly below average after the December month of feasting) but I really want to improve on this. My secret (well not so secret now ;) ) desire is to one day run a marathon. We have a local one in August which my brother in law teases me about each and every year "So how about it this year?" he says with a grin and I respond wistfully with "Yeah, it would be fun..." One day I want to say "yup! gonna do it" but I need to get serious about training for it.

2. Get more organized. I read "Getting Things Done" by David Allen and it changed my life in that I now see all the things that need to get done that seemed almost overwhelming before but now I know at least how to get started on them. I've yet to put all the suggestions in place but it can take a bit of time to adopt any new systemic approach to things. Hrrmmm - maybe this might even leave more time for me to blog more...

3. Make more time for stuff that really matters in life. Family time, me time, play time...things that tend to get back burnered but at the end of the day are things that we all regret not doing enough of.

4. Simplify and declutter - maybe not to the point of an ascetic but really, I feel in our home at least we have too...much...stuff! Closets definitely need to be pared down, storage bins to be emptied (why are we keeping things we haven't used or looked at in years???), junk to be thrown out. I must have a tonne of magazines that have been kept for certain articles, but on the whole most of them can be thrown out. Exceptions might be design or art magazines but the rest - buh bye.

Well all right then, four is a manageable number for now. I see it's only -4C outside and the sun is shining after a fresh snowfall - I'm off for a run with the doggie.