This year for the holidays you might have gotten an iPod, some new gloves or a restaurant gift card. But if you were really lucky, you might have been gifted with Obama gear.

According to the Gregorian calendar, January is always a good excuse to start fresh or get started on something in general.

With the economy being what it is and with retail sales being what they are, more and more people are bargaining – for everything.

If 2008 was the year of bankruptcies and bailouts, I better declare mine before it’s too late. Not a financial bankruptcy. I need to declare media bankruptcy.

Just when I was ready to call it a slow news day, along came scandal-plagued Gov. Rod Blagojevich to appoint Roland “Opportunism First” Burris to Barack Obama’s old Senate seat. As my late grandmother Helena Sweeny would have said, “Land sakes alive!”

Are you singing “Auld Lang Syne”? Or “Another One Bites the Dust”?

The winners of the 2008 Thunk to the Head Awards give new meaning to the phrase “embarrassment of riches.”

Just when you’ve finally gotten your mind around the enormous $700 billion financial bailout — even if none of us is really sure where all that money’s going — there comes an even greater, breathtaking price tag.

Funny Thing ... 2008.

Let’s face it. If you’ve been rambling around Earth long enough to claim menopausal status, your stuff has been through some stuff.

The migratory behavior of the yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) is unusual among woodpeckers in eastern North America. Visible evidence that it lives in Arkansas is present year-round, although the species typically is seen here mostly between October and April. Spring and summer reminders of the activity of the bird remain as a series of holes pecked into selected trees.

New Year’s, as it turns out, is far more than a time for making a few unreasonable resolutions. This is when people all over the world -- and not all of them are drinking -- do unusual things for the sake of starting the new year off oddly, just because they always have done these things.

What a great way to begin the New Year. Celebrating the long, dark and cold nights of winter, we don our scarves and caps -- some fresh from under the Christmas tree -- and head outside under the stars. While most of the sane population this time of year is snug in bed with an extra comforter or finding a good old-fashioned jigsaw puzzle or novel in the warmth of your home, likely a scant few are not missing the winter sky.

In past New Year’s resolution columns regarding waist management, I’ve advocated one key rule to avoid failure: Aim low.

As Baby New Year ushers in 2009, the little tyke brings to Americans hope with a new administration and Congress and perhaps shed some light at the end of the tunnel that could bring an end to the recession the world is now mired in.