Upcoming Plans and Ultimate Results for Summer 2005

Francesco Marciuliano

• Read a book a week. Complete 11 “Tintin Adventures” and one “Scrooge McDuck” collection.


• Open self to new experiences. Close season with great distrust of alligators, unlicensed physicians and ball gags.


• Keep diary to record every thought. Learn upon review that you suffer from multiple personalities, each with their own credit card debt.


• Take brisk constitutionals after dinner. End first walk 85 miles later by calling home to say you never really ever wanted to raise a family in the first place.


• Promise self to drink less alcohol this summer. Then promise self to at least make less alcohol this summer. Eventually promise self to simply end each night either at home or in a nearby park.


• Take vow of celibacy to avoid unhealthy relationships. Rescind vow after violating second pet cat.


• Teach self a foreign language, initially a recognized tongue but inevitably something you like to call “Monkeyish.”


• Commence diet consisting entirely of fruits and vegetables. Grow to hate green, red, yellow and every other color save “flank steak.”


• Work on abs. Then on delts. Then on glutes. Then solely on wang.


• Join team league. Discover one championship season later how much family was embarrassed by your absolute commitment to “Competitive Red Light Green Light.”


• Get in touch with spiritual side. Experience flashback to when you and Father Hanahan played “Strip Candyland.”


• Enroll in adult education class to meet single women. Realize what a sausagefest “Introduction to Sylvia Plath” truly is.


• Direct passion and energy to worthy cause. Over three months come to redefine “worthy cause” as “anything that can be accomplished with spare change or leftover Chinese food.”


• Swear to no longer waste precious moments on baseless fears or ill-defined concerns. Notice first few gray hairs. Blow 12 weeks wondering where all the time has gone.


• Pledge to always be there for your children this summer as a parent, a role model and a friend, no matter what the demands of work or life. Wind up giving each kid 20 bucks a week and a simple set of life instructions, like “Go north.”


• Tell self in August that this fall you’re really going to get things done. Curse own name come December.