Well, another New Year. As Archie Bunker would say, "Whoop-de- doo." I am just not feeling it. Perhaps the fact that I am old enough to be quoting Archie Bunker has tempered my enthusiasm.

Not to be a fun sponge, but this year I am resolving to avoid resolutions. Oh, I thought about them, but when I look back at some of my prophetic fiascos of seasons past, I figure it might be safer to just let 2007 muddle along without any further interference from little old me.

You see, all of us, even the hardest of hard-core runners among you, have vowed to get in better shape during a given coming year, generally to make ourselves more attractive to others. Now, as you noticed by the column headline, I do not run. So I have come up with my own succession of alternate bright ideas over the years to further upgrade my already semi-studly physique.

I think it was 1985 when I decided to join a gym. It took me about two and a third visits before I discovered the fly in that embarrassing ointment. Turns out gyms are filled with scores of young, strip center-tanned dudes whose biceps diameter matches their SAT scores, in short, the kind of guys who are dating every single one of my former wives and girlfriends. My chances of getting a date in a gym were akin to the "before" picture on the back page of Grit.

By Martin Luther King Day of '85, I had taken to doing squat thrusts in front of retirement homes. My logic was that I would look incredible compared to everyone else. That ended when an 83-year-old ex-school librarian helped me up off the sidewalk, offered to loan me her Rascal and suggested I still had time to enroll in pottery class.

Then there were the diet options.

1982: The Pritikin low-fat diet was my foray into whole grains and ultra-lean meats. If I had consulted a thesaurus, I would have known that the terms "lean meat" and "poster board" are synonymous. Nonetheless, my essential-fatty-acids-starved-body stuck with this one till January 12, when my neighbor woke me from sleep-walking through his backyard stirring my triple scotch with a Slim-Jim.

1991: High fiber. Unfortunately for my bank account, I drew the line sometime after I bought a third TV set and spent another $120 to have the cable guy run co-ax to the bathroom.

1997: Vegetarianism. Technically this was not a resolution so much as it was me meeting a very hot naturalist at a New Year's Eve party. That one actually lasted five and half weeks, in spite of the alarming gastric side effect of a veggie diet. Things were terrific until I tried to get away with the old silent but deadly routine and accidentally blew the back wall out of her greenhouse. On the plus side, thanks to the flare- up, it was the only time her legs had been shaved since third grade.

2003: Atkins diet. I loved this one. It was four Denny's Grand Slams a day; hold the toast. And then there was lunch and dinner! Maybe it is just me, but my enthusiasm for this one waned in April when the diet's 258-pound inventor had heart failure. It puts the old "I'm between girlfriends" thing in perspective.

2004: Jenny Craig. It was not the diet program. See; I was dating this girl named Jenny. Then I lost 28 pounds after I found out that in high school, she hadd been named Craig.

In between there were numerous early January expenditures on various exercise equipment, rowing machine, cardio-glide, treadmill, Soloflex. They all proved useful. In the end, though, my informed opinion is that you can hang much more once- worn clothing on the Soloflex and the cardio-glide.

I liked the Soloflex for working out, too. I have always been fond of working my upper body. Occasionally when I am in the mood for landscaping and yard work, I even eschew chainsaws to cut tree limbs with an axe. And that is in spite of my neighbors' complaints.

"Hey! What are you, crazy? That's my crape myrtle!"

My favorite exercise contraption was the rowing machine. It made you feel manly. Let you imagine the salt spray in your face. After awhile though, it just got too expensive to hire a day laborer to stand in the hall and yell, "Stroke! Stroke!"

No, folks. No more resolutions for me this year. Face it, none of the other ones paid off. And, who knows, maybe the change will do me good. It could turn out that after all these years, the girl of my dreams has been standing in line for funnel cake.