The tally of broken resolutions begins.

I took twenty-three days and a visit to Jones Bar-B-Q to do it, but I've finally broken my first New Year's Resolutions (3, 5, and 20 to be exact). My wife and I have been on the Atkins diet since New Year's Day, and we had been fairly successful. I had lost about twenty pounds, Tina twelve. We were fairly happy with the diet.

Basically, this diet makes you eat meat and salads the first few weeks because you're only allowed a few carbohydrates per day (about twenty during the first phase which lasts until you've lost the bulk of the weight you want to lose). Sure there were some pains in the ass since we couldn't eat breads and sugars. I couldn't eat my sandwiches (which I believe are the most perfect food on the planet), Tina couldn't have chocolate, and neither one of us could have my grandmother's desserts. The list of vegetables we couldn't eat also meant that we couldn't eat much of my grandmother's Sunday dinner either. Most fruits were out, too: no oranges or grapefruits, bananas were a no-no, and we couldn't so much as look at an apple. Oddly though, while potato chips were most definitely out (along with all root vegetables) we could eat as many pork rinds as we could hold. There were drawbacks, yes, but we were coping and coming along fine.

Meat and salad, then.

Last Friday, neither Tina nor I felt much like cooking. She'd been at work all day, and while I hadn't actually gone to work (I'm off on Fridays) I had spent much of the afternoon running around the underground city of Arx Fatalis battling evil with a song in my heart and a +20 enchanted sword of ultimate destruction in my hand (resolution #8), and I was just too plumb tuckered out to cook.

We were both a little weary of pork chops and lettuce, too.

We decided, then, to go to the Bar-B-Q joint right down the road from us for a change. Bar-B-Q is, after all, meat and Jones Bar-B-Q has a kick-ass salad bar (by Temple standards, anyway . . . they have three bean salad). They also have some of the best Brunswick stew I've ever tasted. And it has gobs and gobs of meat in it, too. My plan, then, was to have a heaping helping of chopped bar-b-q pork, and generous helping of salad, and a bowl of stew to top it off.

"It has corn in it," Tina informed me when I told her of my intentions.

"Yeah," I replied, "that's what makes it so good."

"It has corn in it," she continued, "Sugar, too, I wouldn't doubt."

Corn is one of those vegetables on the bad list. Lots o' carbs; sugar, too.

"But," I stammered, "It's Brunswick stew. You can't have bar-b-q without Brunswick stew."

"It has too many carbs, honey. You can't have it on this diet." (Tina had come off her diet the day before she was going to enjoy her stew [and cole-slaw, too, I might add, another taboo dish])

I sat staring at the menu. The waitress came, and we sent her away. I stared at my menu some more.

"You can still have bar-b-q and salad."

"It won't be the same," I mourned. "You gotta have the stew."

"I don't then," Tina shook her head, feeling my grief and perplexion.

I came to a decision. I laid the menu firmly on the table before me and looked my wife in the eye.

"I can't have orange juice," I said slowly, "I can't have a grapefruit for breakfast. Yesterday they had doughnuts at work, and I couldn't have one of those, either."

I took a breath.

"I could live with this," I continued, "but any diet that says you cannot have Brunswick stew with your bar-b-q had to have been developed by exiled Nazis and Al-Qaeda members. It smacks of communism and tyranny. It's downright un-American. Any diet that makes me talk like this is clearly a danger to society."

I took a breath. Tina looked at me as if my head had suddenly disappeared and been replaced by a very attractive display of potted roses.

"To hell with the diet." I said and when the waitress came back I ordered a bar-b-q plate with all the fixin's, a large bowl of stew, a sweet tea, and had a York Peppermint Patty for dessert.

Sunday, I ate two helpings of my grandmother's dinner and ate several of her chocolate chip cookies.

Last night I had a taco.

This morning I had regained five pounds and reneged on resolution #3.

But, hey, Arx Fatalis is still safe and resolution #8 remains intact.