I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. Just don’t. In fact, I’m scribbling a bit right now for the blog instead of going to the gym because I know better than to go to the gym on the first lunch hour after New Year’s. What a nightmare. Hundreds of sweaty people emerge from nowhere for the next week to fulfill that “lose weight” resolution, take up my precious Stairmaster time, and then I have to punch someone. It’s never a good time.

About the closest I’ll come to making a resolution might be “stop being such an old fart at 29”. Which isn’t so much a resolution related to New Year’s as much as the day after New Year’s. See, The Girl came up for the holiday, and in grand out-of-control party mode, we spent the weekend largely neighborhood hunting and looking at furniture. That’s right. I know, scandalous huh? I caught myself in a state of excitement as I prepared to enter Jordan’s Furniture. That ain’t correct. No sir. About an incorrect as the fact that my iPod proved to me that I own a song by a group named “Throbble Gristle”.

Now, she’s an interior design maven, so I can understand why seeing a sleigh bed made her giddy. But I was more intrigued by my own “I’m not simply doing this to get more sex out of her” reasoning behind the trip. I wanted to go to Jordan’s. Which only proves I’ve been brainwashed by adulthood. Somewhere inside my psyche is my younger self screaming in agony, like Atreyu when Artax is sinking into the Swamps of Sadness: “Nooooo! Nooo! Fight the impinging desire to buy sectionals! Noooo!” And there, ladies and gents, is the first “Neverending Story” reference of the year. Live it. Love it. Move on from it.

Jordans’ Furniture is renowned for putting ridiculous amounts of furniture adjacent to things that have no logical connection to ridiculous amounts of furniture. This particular store featured a jelly-bean based kiddie land, multiple IMAX 3-D screens, “liquid fireworks”, and, oddest of all to me, a trapeze school. I can’t wait to see what they come up with for the next store. A spelunking course, perhaps. “Kloning for Kids”. “Beat a Goat with Something Relatively Soft Yet Can Do Some Damage If You Strike It Enough Times”. Considering the non-sequitur-based entertainment in place, anything’s possible.

I made sure that while we got to look at everything she wanted, we never quite stopped moving our feet, either, since the salesmen there were a touch like the seagulls in “Finding Nemo”: Mine…mine…mine…” Granted, very few actually approach us, but that’s only due to my salesmen sixth sense (“I see salespeople…”). It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just…OK, it’s that I don’t like them. If they ask me if they can help, I tend to panic, kick them in the groin, and run off. Not a good scene. And un-adult like, to be sure. And considering we spent a day that consisted of neighborhood hunting, furniture shopping, and a trip to Target, well, I was well on my way towards maturity’s utter brainwashing. Couldn’t let any of the immature me to stick out. Rather than tempt fate (and tempt the purchase of a $4,000 hutch), I kept the feet moving. It works for defending point guards in the NBA, it can work for avoiding salespeople as well. My tip to you.