I've been planning a New Years Resolution for about a month now. I need to lose weight because it's putting a lot of strain on my knees and it's just generally unhealthy too. 
I decided a few weeks ago to go on a diet and my mother-in-law said she would give me £5 for every stone I lost. Being the kind of person who generally lacks motivation, I needed something more than that to make sure I stick to a diet so I hit on the idea of getting sponsored for charity to lose weight.
So, I'm looking for people to sponsor me to lose weight in aid of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. The RNID is the biggest deaf charity in the UK and are BT's partners in the textphone and voice relay phone services for deaf people. They also campaign, along with other deaf charities, to get sign language introduced as an option at schools now that the government have recognised it as an official language of the UK. The most common languages taught at UK schools are French and German yet there are more people in the UK who sign as a first language than there are people who speak French or German as a first language. I believe they also outnumber the amount of people who speak Welsh as a first language and signs and public bodies are all dual-language in Wales!
My reason I chose the RNID is because my father-in-law is deaf and he's the reason I learnt to sign. When my wife first introduced me to her parents just after we started seeing each other, I felt so embarassed that I, a grown man of reasonable intelligence, was incapable of speaking to this man. I asked Lez to teach me some sign language that evening and I haven't look back since. I now know more sign language than she does and I sometimes even get to correct my father-in-law (although, that's probably more to do with his memory loss than my abilities). It's proved immensely useful over the past few years and even caused a rather embarassing moment on my stag night when I was telling my father-in-law that the young lady with my friend was over 10 years younger than my friend and she just happened to be able to sign and relayed everything I was saying to my friend 
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Anyway, enough rambling - please sponsor me. Any amount you like - pounds preferred but I will take Euro or US$ by PayPal. I am going to keep going until I feel like I've lost enough weight but for the purposes of getting sponsors, cut-off date will be 3 months.
2005 is here - a happy new year to everyone.