Sugary delights are behind all those weight-loss goals

It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back.

- Mick Jagger

I don't think people decide to lose weight Jan. 1 because they resolve to make themselves healthier and slimmer in the year ahead.

I think they resolve to lose weight because they have just spent a week eating all the covered plates and round tins of homemade cookies and cakes and candies that people started bringing into the office the Monday after Christmas.

I confess that I have eaten more cookies, more brownies, more things with nuts and pecans and red and green sprinkles during the past five days than I ate in the past 11.75 months.

And every day I'd say, "OK, that's enough." And the next day there would be fresh plates and new goodies sitting about.

I am amending my previously held theory that no one makes potato salad the same way. No one makes chocolate-chip cookies the same way, either.

l

COCKTAIL CHATTER: If you're at a party tonight and the band starts playing Auld Lang Syne, you can be the one who tells others what it means. It's Scottish and translates "Old long since ..."

And as a bonus, if anyone asks about Guy Lombardo, the famous band-leader who made New Year's Eve partying popular, he died in 1977.

l

MAILBAG: Jim and Barbara Hogan, of McCormick, are spending their holidays far away. They write: "After a great Christmas in Seattle, we came down to this beautiful spot on the Oregon coast - it's cold but sunny. Have watched the beautiful sunsets and enjoyed shopping in sales-tax-free Oregon."

l

TODAY'S JOKE: Both a Georgia and a Georgia Tech grad were captured behind enemy lines, and things didn't look good.

"We're going to execute you two as spies," their captive commander said. "Do you have any last requests?"

"Why, yes," said the Bulldog graduate. "Do you think you might get your band to play Glory, Glory To Old Georgia, so I could hear it one last time?"

"Certainly," said the commander, who turned to the Georgia Tech man and asked, "Do you have any last request?"

"Sure," said the Tech man. "Could you shoot me before you play that song?"

Reach Bill Kirby at (706) 823-3344 or bill.kirby@augustachronicle.com.