While Ana has become hopelessly addicted to Super Mario Sunshine (those withdrawals are rough, let me tell you), i've been delving further into Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories on the PSP. I've now unlocked all three islands, and am roughly 50% through the game (i'm almost done with the story missions, but as usual there's a bunch of other stuff i have yet to explore). Maybe it's the PSP format, or my personal deemphasis of audio on the PSP, but this is the first GTA game on which i've skipped the cutscenes. I have little to no idea what the story is, i just go commit crimes. It's fun nonetheless ... it's great to return to Liberty City and reacquaint myself with locales from Grand Theft Auto 3, to speed around on my hijacked PCJ-600 performing insane stunts and kicking the crap out of anyone who dares to cut me off. When i have been able to wrestle the TV away from Ana, i've started playing Geoff and Naomi's present Gun on the Xbox. I had to shoo Ana into the other room during the ultraviolent opening cutscene of Indians scalping Spanish explorers. Gameplay is pretty good, and the story looks interesting, so i've got high hopes.

On the literary front, i finally finished Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything last week. It's an interesting popular summary of natural science, from the universe to earth to life. It took me a while to complete as i became bored during the later chapters, where Bryson spends an interminable period trying to convey the complexity of life on earth, particularly the number of different species and their accelerating extinction. The whole genus/family/phylum thing has never really caught my attention, and this treatment didn't change that. The discussion of the argument over man's ancestry i found was better treated on the recent History Channel documentary Ape to Man. However all in all it was a good read, a satisfactory summary of natural science for a widespread audience.

The bay area has gotten craploads of rain so far this winter, and the latest barrage shellacked us on the night of December 30. Arlene, Ana, Veronica, and i fell asleep to the pounding of rain on the roof. I heard the wind blow our chair off the porch somewhere around 3am. I arose at about 9am to feed the dog, and wandered into the kitchen to get her food, glancing out the back window. And there i saw a nice little four inch deep pond, maybe ten feet across, sitting in our driveway. I went out to inspect and was pleased to find the water hadn't reached the foundation of the house or the garage. However, i did see there was standing water in the strips of soil on the back and left of the garage, but they were relatively shallow and didn't concern me too much. I tried to remove some of the main puddle with a bucket, but gave up after ten minutes or so. Unfortunately a little later i ventured into the crawl space to survey the situation down there, and found four inches or so of standing water lining the foundation of the house. Eek ... everything i've read about water in the foundation has told me this is bad, bad, bad. I freaked out for a while about how much this was going to cost us, before observing that the newly emerged sun was quickly clearing up all the puddles in and around our house and a call to my dad told me as long as the wood posts were not submerged (they weren't) then the situation wasn't critical. Wet concrete foundation is not great, but the solution is to better direct water away from the house, which we can do ourselves relatively cheaply. Hopefully an ounce of prevention and the knowledge this happens only with the worst storms will keep our house healthy.

However, these continued home breakdowns have left me emotionally drained. Now i seem to fear the worst with every creak and other portent, and it's driving me nuts. We're putting up our new curtains today or tomorrow, and i have visions of walls toppling over when i put a screw in them. The only solution i can come up with is drawn from G.I. Joe: knowing is half the battle. It just sucks that i tend to always be reacting instead of proacting.

I'd come to grips with this latest catastrophe by mid-afternoon, but then a new dilemma presented itself. Veronica couldn't find the tickets for the evening's New Year's party at Mezzanine in SF, featuring Every Move a Picture, She Wants Revenge, and the Lovemakers. We spent an hour or so searching before succumbing to hunger and gathering the gang to head down to Santana Row for lunch and shopping. We had a look in Donald Pliner before stopping into a Mexican bistro. Veronica had tried to tempt Ana with promises of ice cream if she ate, but Ana struggled to stomach the fairly good quesadilla we identified as the most likely food source that would be agreeable to her. We let her off the hook and finished our soup, sopas, tamalitos, and carnitas, before moving a few doors down to Ben and Jerry's. We rotated through Cole Hahn, keeping the cones outside, before returning home to resume the hunt for the lost tickets. V finally located them around 7:30pm in a pile of cd's near the door. More stress under the rug.

Veronica and i left Arlene and Ana to their own New Year's devices and hurried up the 101 to Jenz's house for a quick slice of pizza, then drove downtown to Mezzanine. The club was packed, with the crowd at the bar four people deep. Kevin and i got the first round just as She Wants Revenge began their set at 11:15pm. They sounded pretty good, although the singer's posturing, ridiculously derivative delivery, and being from LA turned me off. Unfortunately the heat instigated a bad reaction in Veronica, and we absconded to the smoking/mash-up back room/open garage where she could get some air. Our crew (Jenz, Brandon, Kevin, Hakim, Doug, and Raffi) came our way before long and enjoyed dancing to the assorted mash-ups. We tried to go catch the Lovemakers' set, but the heat again sidelined Veronica and we soon found our way back to the back room. We decided to leave at 2am, with me snaking one of the mash-up room's posters featuring a photoshopped union of two pop star's heads. V wanted the particularly good one joining Annie Lennox and Dave Gahan, so i stripped it off the wall and we headed home, dropping Jenz and Brandon off in hopping North Beach and getting some Burger King before returning to the not-too-trafficky 101.

Today we're headed over to my parents to have some celebratory chili and make use of their washing machine while ours is sidelined by our plumbing problems. Happy 2006! I hope everyone's year gets off to a smashing start.