Women get a little more excited about New Year’s Even than men do. It’s like an excuse; You get drunk; you make a lot or promises you’re not going to keep; the next morning as soon as you wake up you start breaking them. For men, we just call that a date.

-Jay Leno

It’s a new year and time for us all to make our New Year’s resolutions so we can get busy breaking them. For many years now, the first resolution on my annual list was to never set foot in the state of Texas. I lived up to that resolution for more than 20 years. But a couple of years ago the sister of my daughter-in-law got married in Texas. Naturally, we went to the wedding. It was lovely and we had a wonderful time and even visited a high school friend of mine who had moved to Texas and who I therefore assumed I’d never see again face-to-face.

This year my No. 1 resolution is to never set foot in the state of Florida. Given Florida’s lack of proximity to Bainbridge Island and my reluctance to fly, unless there are Irish pubs or Scottish golf courses on the other end of the flight, I believe my chances of accomplishing that resolution look pretty good.

Also on this year’s list of my resolutions is a commitment to losing 10 pounds. That is not a new item, but it is a different 10 pounds that I am trying to lose this year. I don’t know where the 10 I lost last year went, but the 10 that replaced them (all of which seemed to have arrived between Thanksgiving and Christmas) have taken up residence around my waist, evidently believing in the concept of safety in numbers.

But I’ve got a plan for them, and that includes a gift of a 10-visit punch card to the Bainbridge Recreation Center near Meadowmeer that Wendy gave me for Christmas. I’m thinking this year I may actually push beyond my 10-pound weight-loss target and lose a few extra pounds that I can bank for 2025. I’m targeting some excess poundage currently residing in my cheek and jowls region. I no longer need the extra fat or skin in that area due to a recent surplus of new skin that has been expanding upward on my forehead over the past couple of years.

Another resolution making its annual appearance on my list is to invent or develop a million-dollar idea. Reaching that goal has eluded me for as long as I’ve been making lists. But this year I think I’m on to something, and it has to do with tattoos. I read an article recently about the difficulty of removing tattoos. The tattoos in the article that were being removed were of two types: (1) neck and facial tattoos that may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but over time proved to be an impediment to employability, and (2) the names of current boyfriends or girlfriends tattooed prominently across the chest or on the lower back. Such tattoos present challenges when the tattoos outlive the relationship they were meant to memorialize and solidify. According to the article, such tattoos are painful and time-consuming to remove, and current removal technology isn’t effective in removing them.

My idea is to develop a simple, efficient tattoo removal cream that quickly, painlessly and effectively erases even the most elaborate tattoos and leaves the satisfied user with a pristine skin palette for the customer’s next ink-based exercise in poor judgment. The name of my product would be “Tat-a-Way.” My marketing plan practically writes itself. Picture an attractive person with a large and striking “Robert” or “Beatrice” tattoo walking by friends or family one day without any trace of their former tattoo. His or her friends immediately notice clean blank skin where the tattoo previously resided and ask, “Where’s your tattoo?” The tattoo spokesperson turns to the camera and says, “Why, it went Tat-a-Way!”

I’ve run this can’t miss marketing plan by some folks in the soap and skincare industry and, while they don’t deny that my marketing plan is a sure-fire winner, they nevertheless take the narrow-minded and unimaginative position that I need to invent or develop a tattoo-removal product that actually works before I can begin marketing it.

So I guess I have my work cut out for me in 2024. But I’m not worried. I haven’t put all my invention eggs in the Tat-A-Way basket. I’m also working on a golf ball that smells like hamburger, so if you hit it deep into the woods you can quickly find it, assuming you happen to have your dog with you. As you can see, there is no off position on the genius switch…

Tom Tyner of Bainbridge Island writes a weekly humor column for this newspaper.