My New Years resolution was simple: Drink more water.

By the end of 2009, I had already committed myself to running two marathons in 2010, the Trail Marathon and the Detroit Marathon. I also committed o being the best father I can and to being more organized and, in general, on top of things. (That last goal has been perennial, with mixed results.) Beyond those lofty ambitions, I reasoned that any other goals for this year should be simple with a relatively high yield, benefit-wise.

Water’s about as elemental as it gets. Hydration’s important, whether training for distance running or sitting on the couch of doom.

My friends know me for my love of coffee (hence the napkin-stained theme of this blog). I defend the habit with science that shows coffee doesn’t dehydrate and the fact that my go-to style is strong and black, so daily consumption amounts to almost no calories — not that I worry. It’s the at-least-it’s-not-a-Frappuccino argument. And it’s a valid one. Yet, I know deep down in my Buddha-mind that if coffee and water were both streams leading to enlightenment, water would carry me there quicker. Which brings me to beer, my other great liquid love. Drunken Master aside, beer isn’t carrying anyone to enlightenment. Still, beer, like any alcoholic beverage, dehydrates the drinker. Not good. Particularly during marathon training.

Regardless of my passion for both, drinking either effectively comes with the opportunity cost of not drinking water. That’s not to say I plan to give up either. I don’t. But, as I commit to drink more water, the others get crowded out a bit. That’s the plan.

Besides having other preferred beverages, water doesn’t do much for me taste-wise. When I drink water, it’s usually fizzy or flavored or both. I can’t exclude fizzy water from the resolution; really, I embrace any liquid that gets me there. But I also need to learn to love plain ol’ agua. That ain’t easy for me, but I try.

How have I set out to fulfill this resolution? I start the day with coffee, which isn’t water, but gets me conscious. I follow my morning joe with at least 16 oz of water. Later, when I get to work, I drink another 16 oz before I allow myself to drink more coffee. That 32 oz is probably 20-some more ounces than I would fit in before I made this goal. And Mrs. Blocletters, bless her, just got me a fancy stainless-steel water bottle. I think it holds 20 oz, so that’ll help.

So far, I give myself a B-. I’ve forgotten the second 16-oz glass a few times, but overall, I’m doing swimmingly. Here’s hoping I can keep it up.

This site will be going dark for a few days beginning sometime today. I’m changing domain registrars, and just couldn’t find the time to do so before it was too late to prevent a domain disruption. The site should be back up, Now with Go Daddy!, by early next week. See you then.

Update: Apparently, Go Daddy was wicked-quick in grabbing my domain from Network Solutions, so it doesn’t look like there’ll be any interruption. I’m sure my two readers will be thrilled.

I just finished this piece in the New York Times Magazine, and had a few thoughts. Essentially, it takes a sociological view of how sites like Facebook, Twitter and the like affect our lives. It focuses on the news feed aspects of these Web services, and what it means to have the lives of all our friends — close and tertiary — pushed out to us like ticker tape.

Mrs. Blocletters signed up for Facebook before I did, and I probably wouldn’t have joined nearly as soon if she hadn’t. But, like the iPhone (and, coincidentally, partly because of the iPhone), it’s taken a prominent role in my digital life. I get a big kick out of reading updates on others’ lives, which seem at the same time superficial and intimate. I enjoy writing status updates, and have even taken praise for the quality of my statuses (though I’m not sure what criteria one might use to judge).

Why?

What do I care that a former coworker is getting new glasses? Does knowing what friends think of the new “90210″ show — a show I’ll never watch — enrich my life? Not exactly. But Facebook has helped me keep connected with people from jobs past, and even reconnect with some I’d lost track of. That has value in lives like mine (and those of many other Gen X- and Gen Y-ers) where work is prominent in, if not the center of, social interaction.

Facebook also allows me to, in effect, swim in the conversations of people I see regularly. I see current coworkers and we’ve already cut through the initial few minutes of catch-up conversation. I don’t have to ask, “What did you do over the weekend?” I already know, so we go right to, “Did you enjoy that movie?”

Status updates are part reverse Hallmark card and part haiku. It’s interesting to me, a people watcher, that friends share their workaday experiences, and insightful to see the words they use and try to glean the subtext.

As far as my own updates, the article I linked to sums it up: “The act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act.” As a headline writer by trade, I find it oddly fulfilling. I’m trained to read a thousand words and boil them down to five. Status writing uses the same toolkit.

I re-read the last few weeks of my updates while writing this — an interesting exercise in itself. A life in small, easily digestible, cartoon balloons. My updates, like those of my “friends” (whether close or casual), are by no means a full account. Still, they convey a bit of me, and for most people, that’s more than enough.

Here are a few shots of the crowd assembled to see Sen. Barack Obama on Labor Day in Detroit.

The candidate takes the stage.

The speech begins.

There were thousands of people downtown — more than I’ve seen for any event. He spoke for only about 10 minutes, and included lots of talk about unions and solidarity, and a moment of silence for potential victims of Hurricane Gustav. It was hot, in the upper 80s. This was as close as we could get: Despite reports that it was a free and open event for the public, you actually needed a ticket to get into Hart Plaze were Obama spoke.

Oh, and the person aiming the camera on the podium had some issues during the introductions before the senator came on to speak. For several minutes, the video on the big screen for the crowds in the Jefferson Avenue cheap seats showed footage about 10 feet to the left of the podium, causing the crowd to chant, “Fix the camera!”

There’s a ton of great music that comes out of Motown. In Tbaby’s case, not so much.

For your reading pleasure, a try this item from the Freakonomics blog on the New York Times site. The kernel: Price and quality of wine do not necessarily go hand in hand.

I’m not a wine snob by any means. Nor am I particularly educated about wine. But, I know what I like. And I like Charles Shaw varieties from Trader Joe’s as much as many more expensive wines I’ve had. Plus, at $3 a bottle, I’m not going broke to support any kind of wine habit. I’ll drink to that.

Thursday I woke to my iPhone blipping with a text message from my brother. “Dude. iTunes update the app store is open. Updating now.” It’s 7 a.m., and he once again out-Macheads me.

After trying to sleep for another hour, I dragged myself to the computer to update iTunes and check out the software I’ve impatiently waited on for months. Hundreds of programs teased me from the store’s pages: I could download them, but couldn’t use them without the accompanying 2.0 firmware. So goes my love/hate relationship with Apple.

Then I got an email, again from my brother, telling me about a leak of the firmware. Zoinks! I downloaded, updated and got my app on in short order. My two word review: limitless potential. The handful of apps I grabbed stretch the device in whole new directions. Facebook has tight integration, and you can even upload photos to your profile directly from the iPhone. AIM rocks. VoiceNotes is OK; I may shop around for a different voice recorder. Remote is cool as hell. And PhoneSaber is just plain kooky fun. I could go on (and probably will once I find more cool software). Point being, all these were freeware. There’s even better programs with price tags.

I’m glad I updated Thursday, after reading about problems Apple and AT&T had during the official Friday rollout. I read tonight on Macrumors that the unofficial version I installed may have been meant for the 3G devices, but it’s running like a charm, so I’m in no hurry to get the proper version. I’ll wait until the hullabaloo dies down, and in the meantime enjoy twice the device I had earlier this week.

Today while running, I cased out a Japanese maple sitting on a curb a few streets from my house. Discarding such a potentially beautiful tree seemed alien to me: Is it diseased, or just gangly? You tell me. The picture, unfortunately, does it justice.

After the run, Mrs. Blocletters and I cruised by in the Saturn. We drove back slowly, the tree sticking precariously out of the open trunk. Now, it lives in the backyard awaiting planting.

The owner apparently though better days had passed this poor guy by. If I have anything to do with it, his sunniest days are yet to come.

Update: Alas, it might’ve been salvageable, but … It was too ugly for the front yard, and there wasn’t a good space for it in the back yard. Out to the curb. Maybe next time I’ll think things through before I go curb-raiding.

Consider this a rebirth, of sorts. My brother/collaborator and I fashioned Blocletters.com more than four years ago. He did the heavy lifting in the form of database programming and other coding, and I got the easy part: the ideas.

Now, we introduce version 2.0. If you have an RSS feed to the old site, you can subscribe to this one by clicking “RSS Subscription” on the right side of the banner at the top of the page. If you’re finding the site for the first time, I hope you’ll subscribe (or at least make it a point to come back now and again).

And, if you are a new reader, you can find out a little about me here. I can also save you a click with a little introduction. I work as a copy editor at the Detroit News. I write headlines and photo captions, and wrestle with stories to force them to conform to grammar and style rules. My current fascinations include: politics, the media, coffee, beer, mead brewing, Apple products, cooking, bread baking and running (in no particular order). I tend to write on those topics the most so, if one of them tickles your interest, I hope you’ll read on.

Again, welcome, and I hope you’ll like the new site. Look around. The archives include all the posts from version 1.0. Going forward, I have a whole new bandolier of tools available: video, audio, comments and photos. I hope to take full advantage.

Our buddy Stanley stopped by the office.

Go Wings.