A prisoner of the past says Happy New Year!

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You can tell just by peeking in my checkbook I’m really looking forward to 2016.

As is my custom, this is the week I designate our 9 year old to begin writing “16” after all the 20s on the dateline of each check.

I do this because I’m one of those boneheads who’d use the old year on checks clear up through May before I’d finally stopped living in the fiscal past.

But I am looking forward to 2016.

Saying that makes me seem like a rosy optimist and, yeah, I am.

But I’m enough of a dour realist to stipulate I do so because I have no choice.

I can’t stop time even if I wanted to.

Would I stop it right now if I could? This week?

It’s been a very good week. We had a fantastic Christmas. It’s a joy to have two loving daughters around this time of year. And Val does so much to make everything special.

But, of course, I’m broke and believe 2016 will be the year that changes all that for the better, I hope. So I’m itching for happy results the new calendar is sure to bring.

That almost never happens, but I’m convinced one day it will.

Maybe part of my problem is that according to my calendar it’s still 2013.

That was the last year I’ll ever buy another calendar.

I used to put a lot of thought into buying the current calendar. I’d wait a few weeks for the prices to drop — you can get a $13.95 calendar for just $5 in February if you’re not picky about your January dates.

I’d get snazzy golf ones, ones of lighthouses and once in a while one that was a tasteful homage to Moe, Larry and Curly.

That all stopped in 2012 when my daughters for Christmas gave me a “Girl’s Coloring Book 2013 Calendar!” The cover promises “A fun new picture to color every month!”

Why it was restricted to girls, I don’t know. It seems unnecessarily sexist, especially in these days when people are more sensitive about those sorts of things.

I’m sure a lot of boys like coloring pictures of rainbows, flowers and unicorns, too.

Anyway, the girls colored all over the thing and stood there while I gushed about the result.

What could be more precious?

So I’ll keep it forever. I just print out the new month and tape it over the lower half date part so I don’t get confused.

Now part of me will be forever stuck in 2013.

A lot of bad things happened that year.

It was the year of the Boston Marathon bombing, Edward Snowden, the death of Nelson Mandela and the year our Catholic friends had to adjust to life under not one, but two living popes.

North Korea was up to no good, George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin, partisans in Syria decided it was time to commence to killing, and in Washington there again was gridlock galore.

But the Pirates made the playoffs for the first time in 20 years, we took the kids to Disney, I scored an invite to golf at Oakmont and immensely enjoyed the final season of “Breaking Bad.” And it was in 2013 I got my picture taken with Playboy Playmate of the Year Clair Sinclair.

I wonder if she still has her copy.

Too numerous to note are all the times I laughed with friends, hugged my family, experienced contentment, enjoyed a good book, savored a fine meal, and felt grateful that so many of you read my blog.

I contend it’s not surprising bad things happen to us.

What is surprising is how much joy we can wring out of even the worst of times.

So bring on 2016. Let us revel in the possibilities the future may bring.

Sure, the news is full of dire prophets who contend it will be a terrible year.

So what?

If our happy history proves anything it is that we’re all are capable of having really great times even during bad years.

Bring it on.

Happy New Year!

Related . . .

Enjoying a good long jump with Playboy Playmate Claire Sinclair

Airborne over Disney

Oh, and one more thing 2011

I hope I don’t die while the Pirates are winning and I hope the Pirates never lose

What you need to do to earn blog name mention

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I’m observing a new phenomenon that leads me to believe the blog is either succeeding or that reader perspectives have lurched into realms of the absurd.

Lots of people want me to mention their names in the blog.

They tell me they think that would be cool.

By this, I must infer they mean it would make them cool.

They are mistaken.

I know this because my blog everyday mentions my name and after nearly 1,500 posts over 7 years there is zero evidence it has made me more cool.

Worse, there’s plenty of evidence it has earned me zero of the commodity that might make me more cool.

That’d be more money.

Of course, I’m flattered people think this and would therefore love to accommodate them.

But that would change the character of the blog. Most readers are savvy enough to know when they’re being bludgeoned with product placement.

So, say, if I wrote, “I happened to be getting shitfaced with Stephen Hawking the other day and he told me a brilliant theory about how to lower my cable bill and still get local sports.”

The gratuitous mention would interrupt the flow of the story. And, plus, everyone would recognize the lie. Most of you know by now I stopped drinking with Hawking in 2009 after we got into a bitter dispute over the irreconcilable conflict between religion and science.

And he spilled beer on my lap (I believe it was deliberate).

It would be a disservice to readers just to drop in a line like, “My friend Tammy is nice!”

Worse, I’m sure it would lead to a punishing round of questions from my wife who would be eager to know more about Tammy and what she did that made me feel she’s nice.

So it’s best just to avoid mentions altogether.

I reserve the right to make exceptions whenever it’s any of the boys at the bars or Arnold Palmer. Most people are interested in reading about our interactions and — unlike that pushy klutz Hawking — Palmer and my views about the irreconcilable conflict between religion and science are mostly simpatico.

I have decided I will make exceptions when I choose for any arbitrary reason.

One is the request has to come from an insane blog devotee. They have to do things like stop reading the blog cold turkey for three months straight.

I had a friend do this and at first I was hurt. Why quit reading?

“I like to store them up and just binge read for two weeks straight while I’m in an Illinois tree stand hunting deer,” he said.

That’s truly devoted readership.

Another exception will be without exception anyone involved in “Make-A-Wish.”

I’m a real softie when it comes to that cause.

So if an organizational rep calls me and says, “We have a little girl who’s in real trouble. We offered her a trip to Disney World, but she said all she wants is to be mentioned in www.EightDaysToAmish.com.”

I’d say yes almost right away — after first forcing the charity to in exchange send MY daughters to Disney.

Learned it from Trump!

But I want to mention a name today because I got an alarming text from a lunatic reader, the kind of guy who’d spend frigid days in a tree stand reading my blog.

Well, it is that guy.

Still young and vigorous, a father of two daughters, he was suddenly stricken by a mini-stroke that caused him to lose vision. A battery of emergency tests left doctors thinking he might have MS.

He does not and his vision with treatment may be restored in six months.

The doctors say it may be stress related.

He just loves my blog — says it relieves stress — and I’m hoping he doesn’t say the doctors prescribe I double my blog output.

You have, I’m sure, someone like that in your life, someone dealing with an unexpected and scary challenge.

Please be sure to say a prayer for them and their loved ones.

And please include a mention for Dave Angus.

Related . . .

Binge reading my blog in a tree stand

Happy Birthday to Bob Dylan & my blog

Shiny new home page for “Eight Days To Amish”

Arnold Palmer gave me boogies on Monday

Florida: Airborne over Disney

The good, the bad & the repaired TV

Gone 19 days, the TV is back home where it belongs and I am diminished by its return.

The welcome home lavished upon it dwarfed any reaction I’ve ever received, even the times when I come bearing gifts.

The children did euphoric little cartwheels across the carpet and Val’s relieved expression matched the look on Livvy’s face when John Walton came through the door after the harrowing winter evening that was the dramatic catalyst for the Walton’s Christmas special, “The Homecoming.”

It’s understood. My presents are trinkets compared to the evergreen gifts of a really good hi-def TV.

It has nearly 1,000 channels that bestow comfort, laughter, suspense and hours and hours of Disney wisdom.

The TV never scolds. It never corrects. It never tells the girls it’s time for bed. It never grosses them out with a really loud fart.

How can your average father expect to compete with that?

The TV plays so many leadership roles. It settles disputes. It unites us. It is our Speaker of the House.

Actually, with surround sound, it is our Five Speakers of the House.

No one would give a damn if the refrigerator or the washing machine went on the fritz. It wouldn’t tear at the social fabric of the family (but if the washing machine went down it would likely diminish some of the family’s other fabrics).

So when the TV goes down, we all feel it’s pain.

Worse, I knew the cure for the suddenly black screen could kill -- not the TV set.

Me.

That’s because once again I’d be dealing with Daryl, a man so mean he makes Dick Cheney seem cheerful.

I’d dealt with the old man before. He was rude, abrasive and tactless, a self-contained Axis of Evil so malevolent I felt like alerting the FBI.

I knew the broken TV meant he’d be poisoning my otherwise sunny days.

That’s just one sacrifice I make to support America’s Main Street businesses over the town-killing big box stores.

If your Best Buy TV breaks, you just drop it off at the store and two weeks later they tell you it’s fixed. It’s like sex with a hooker only without all the warranty issues.

But if you bought from a local reseller, you’re dealing with Daryl.

I wasn’t there five minutes when he insulted me.

“You’ve got a B.O. problem,” he said.

Impossible, I said. Old Spice has never failed me.

He explained he meant “back order.” He was messin’ with Sasquatch.

With atrocious bedside manners, he said, “This could take a long, long time.”

Still, it’s a hostage situation. I’m entirely at his misanthropic mercy.

I walk out of there dumbfounded how any man who spends his days healing sick TVs can be so unfeeling. Doesn’t he ever tune any of his myriad sets to the Lifetime Channel?

How can a man skilled at repairing 72-inch hi-def sets fail to see the big picture?

The situation was saved by one of life’s nifty little symmetries.

It was because of our dealings with the world’s most dyspeptic TV man we also got to better know one of the industry’s friendliest.

He’s Vince Zaccaria of Premiere Audio/Visual Services in Mt. Pleasant. It’s guys like him that are the reason I’ll always buy from local independents.

He’s so well regarded his home theater construction skills have been showcased with meathead ex-jock Tony Siragusa on the DIY Channel’s Man Cave shows. He’s done a bunch of them all over the East Coast.

So he’s a busy man. But when he heard we were without a TV he reacted like Ike Godsey did when one of The Walton kids got sick.

He brought medicine.

“I just felt so bad when I heard you were without a TV,” he said. “I couldn’t let you go all that time without one.”

He gave us a spiffy loaner and when Daryl finally said the TV was fixed, Vince was there within hours to hook it all up.

So an event that began with me confronting human nastiness ends with my family having the opportunity to bask in goodness, generosity and dazzling magnificence.

And I’m talking about the TV, not Vince.

Vince is nice and all.

But he’s no TV.