I’m an extremely competitive person. I like to be the best at whatever I do. Not to say that everything is a competition, I know better than that. I simply want to compare my life to others and see who wins.

This can be a bad thing, of course, but it can also be good. Some of my greatest accomplishments are due to the fact that I wanted to be better than somebody else; good grades in school, productivity at work, the ability to stand on my head longer than anyone else I know without passing out. What? I didn’t say they were all useful accomplishments.

My latest obsession is a Facebook game called Bejeweled Blitz. The actual Bejeweled game has been around forever, but this particular version (released by Pop Cap) is a hand-held edition that I can play right on my iPhone (convenient!) and it syncs with the Facebook version which allows you to battle top scores with all your Facebook friends (DOMINATION!!). Getting friends together for board games is all fine and well, but there is just something about the immediate satisfaction of seeing your score high above your friends in a tangible, non-debatable numeric fashion! Oh, it’s just too much to handle, you guys. And best of all? I can be better than someone else practically anytime, anywhere. With my iPhone in hand, I can open a can of Bejeweled whoop-ass right from the privacy of my bathroom toilet. Enter disturbing visual right about…now.

Recently I beat my highest score ever on Bejeweled, which was nice…but more importantly, I was able to once-again shimmy on past Chris’ high score and, of course, rub it in his face for days and days. That always leads to a series of affectionate dialogues like this one:

Oh, and you’ll notice in the picture above that I’m not in top place out of all my Facebook friends. The first and second spots belong to Zachary Zabarsky and Jonathan Britton, respectively. Those two are freaks of nature and should be destroyed.

Anyway, to continue on in my theme of competitiveness, I wanted to share with you the first of my many New Year’s resolutions: I’ve decided that sometime in the year 2010 I am going to get back down to the weight I was when Chris and I met. For the sake of my vanity, I won’t divulge my current weight, but know that it is twenty pounds heavier than what it was just 3 years ago, and that bothers me a great deal. Growing up is fine, but growing outwards is a step I’m not yet ready to accept. Chris is going to diet with me, and we are both dreading the end of our fast food lifestyle more than the Apocalypse. I’m not even going to lie. I would slap your mother for a glass of Mountain Dew, and it’s going to be hard to give that up. To make things more enjoyable, I suggested we keep count of our calories each day and discuss our results each evening. Not a competition in any way, I would never suggest that. We’re just going to tell each other how much we ate and see who wins.

I look forward to putting Chris to shame becoming healthier together in 2010.