It's been a while, faithful readers. Okay, i'll drop that annoying columnist tone right now. According to my records, the last time i posted was the day after Veronica's family arrived from Iowa. The week leading up to Christmas was pretty hectic, including:

• A trip to Fremont to drop off presents and attempt to get my new Jetta mirror casing installed, which was thwarted because i was told i didn't need a service appointment, didn't make one, then was asked by the service rep why i didn't have an appointment. Grrr. On the plus side, on the drive home, shuttling sister Hilary over to pick up her Toyota Matrix from its servicing in Palo Alto, i got a call from the Mini dealer asking me if we could buy our reserved Cooper S on the day after Christmas. They wanted to boost their sales numbers by the end of the year and were willing to cut us a deal. Eager to reclaim my Jetta and finally bid farewell to the decrepit Tercel, i agreed and wondered what kind of negotiating lay in store for us.
• The unexpected arrival of Bob, filling our house to capacity. I had spent one night in the spare room in the garage, now Bob claimed that space and V and i slept on a mattress on our living room floor. Bob brought with him a belated birthday gift for Veronica, a dual iPod mixer that will allow her to explore her DJ alter-ego.
• Loads of last minute shopping, for new arrivals Arlene, Alan, Ramona, and especially little spitfire Ana, as well as George, Lynda, Jessi, Naomi, and Geoff. Despite my plans to bestow Veronica with a new car on the day after Christmas, i came up with a genius actual Christmas day present for her. A 1920's art deco shelf clock from a local antique store, one that won Alan and Arlene's approval and fit perfectly on our fireplace mantle.
• Late late late Christmas tree shopping with Alan and Ana. On the evening of Thursday the 22nd the tree lots were being dismantled, but we found that Home Depot had marked their trees down from $60 to $10. We bought one along with a stand, tied it to the Tercel roof, hopped in the car Dukes of Hazzard style, and brought it home. Arlene and Ana handled the decorations with some similarly discounted lights and ornaments from Target.
• A Friday the 23rd two car caravan to Sacto to have an early holiday get-together with George, Lynda, Jessi, Naomi, and Geoff. Lynda made chicken mole and enchiladas, and Naomi served as bartender. I gave Geoff his wrapped presents, which a few days later he found were my extra Xbox, a new controller, a new copy of Halo 2, and the copy of Sniper Elite he'd bought a while back and i had appropriated. We stayed until about 11:30pm, when we started the two hour trek back to Redwood City. In our car, consisting of myself, Veronica, Alan, and Ana, we played the "be quiet" game and i was the big winner. Bwa ha ha. Upon arriving home, we found Tara had sniffed out a one pound box of chocolate my parents had given to Alan, Arlene, and Ana, and had surgically removed it from the present bag, opened it, and consumed its contents. Despite the toxicity of chocolate to dogs, white she devil luckily showed no ill effects from her binge.

By Christmas eve our chores had mostly been completed. Bob headed back down south, taking Veronica's grandmother Ramona with him to shuttle her down to stay with Veronica's aunt and uncle. We settled in to relax and await Santa, but unfortunately our house had other ideas. I mentioned before the implications of your toilet bubbling, and the problems resurfaced the afternoon of Christmas eve. I was doubtful we could do anything about it given the impending holiday, but i called Rescue Rooter nonetheless and was amazed to have them tell me a technician would be at my house in an hour. Well, that hour turned into three, and further calls got me promises of another hour and a 10% discount. But lo, a dedicated plumber amazingly arrived at 7:30pm and set to snaking our drain for the second time. Again, he was unable to clear an unknown blockage at about 70 feet into the drain line, and recommended a camera inspection, but thankfully our drain was functioning again. We resumed our pre-holiday festivities with an Alan-prepared leg of lamb dinner, a bottle of A. Rafanelli zinfandel, and partaking of two or three showings during TNT's 24 hours of A Christmas Story. We convinced Ana to turn in around midnight, and the rest of us shortly thereafter climbed into bed.

Tara woke me for her breakfast at about 8am on Christmas morning, but i then returned to bed and got to sleep until Ana discovered the fruits of Santa's labor around 10am. When i was a kid i never got any sleep on Christmas eve, i was so excited. Every year my sisters and i had a negotiation with my parents as to when present opening would begin, usually settling somewhere around 8:30am. Anyhoo, Ana set to raiding her gifts, and was very pleased with her haul. I was with mine as well, getting a portable Sirius satellite radio from Veronica, a bunch of DVD's including the Brian Jonestown Massacre/Dandy Warhols documentary Dig! from Hilary and a couple of Family Guy box sets from my parents, the Xbox western shooter Gun from Geoff and Naomi, and a new Italian leather wallet (from Italy, no less) from mom and dad. Veronica loved her new shelf clock. Alan was also pleased with the books we gave him as well as the N.W.A. (nuns with attitude) t-shirt we found for him at Macy's, and Arlene liked her swanky new boots. Alan then set to making Christmas dinner, a scrumptious spread including a currant-basted turkey, cornbread stuffing, and mashed potatoes.

I awoke relatively early on the day after Christmas to head to Circuit City to get my new satellite radio installed in the Jetta. Thanks to my early arrival, it was completed by 11am and i got to begin experimenting with Sirius. V bought me the unit with replay capability, and it is surprisingly versatile. You can also use it as a stand-alone media player to listen to saved broadcasts, which i will probably take advantage of once Howard Stern begins his new show on January 9. Part of Alan and Arlene's Christmas gift to Veronica and i was the rods and endpieces for our curtains in the living room and newly completed dining room, so we headed to Palo Alto that afternoon to pick them up at Restoration Hardware. Expectedly, we weren't the only ones shopping that day, but we managed well enough. Despite Ana's pleas to go home and get more time with her apparent favorite gift, the mind-numbing Super Mario Sunshine for GameCube, we had a 4:30pm appointment to buy Veronica's new car at Mini of Mountain View.

As i mentioned above, the salesman had agreed to get us a deal on the demo model we were buying. Usually, they knock off half the markup ($1250) when a demo reaches 250 miles, and all of the markup ($2500) when it reaches 500 miles. The one we were looking at now had 93 miles, so we really had no idea what kind of offer the guy was going to float us. Or in other words, how eager they were to boost their end-of-the-year sales numbers. We arrived on time and set to filling out a credit check form with our salesman, former race car driver and our apparent new best friend Elvis. Despite the form being only one page long, it took nearly 30 minutes to fill it out because Elvis was intent on telling us a new five minute story with each completed blank. He then left us to go talk to management to find out what deal they could offer us. V was intent on getting at least half the markup knocked off. Again, we were forced to wait for about a half hour. And i thought this would be quick. While waiting, i learned i had made a booboo ... i had brought the expired convenience check for our auto loan from our credit union, instead of the reissued one i'd picked up earlier that week. Uh oh. Veronica and i quietly agreed to play dumb. Anyhow, the salesman returned with good news: management had agreed to knock off the entire $2500 markup. We happily accepted that offer, and then got 45 minutes of tutelage on the car: how the windshield wipers work, how you turn on the headlights, etc etc. Apparently this is a required part of the car-buying process, but it was incredibly boring just the same. We then were shuttled to the neighboring BMW dealer that housed the BMW and Mini finance department, and waited another 45 minutes for the only finance person on duty that evening. She quickly noticed our expired check, but luckily came up with a solution that allowed us to finalize the sale and have me bring the valid check the next morning. After yet another 30 minutes of paperwork, the deal was done, and V, after a three year wait, was the proud owner of an astro black metallic Mini Cooper S with a camel leather interior. We caravaned off to dinner, with Alan and i in the Jetta and Arlene, Ana, and Veronica in the Mini. V got lost suspiciously quickly, with me surmising she had done so to avoid having to follow me, allowing her to play with her new toy. We finally rendezvous-ed at Kan Zeman in Palo Alto for a yummy middle eastern dinner.

V returned to work on the 27th, while i had resolved to spend a day with my family in their rented holiday cabin just over Donner Pass from Tahoe. I dropped Alan off at the airport as he was due to return to Iowa, then had a quick coffee with Veronica in the city, before zooming up the 80 towards Sacramento and the Sierras. I stopped briefly in Vallejo to buy chains for the Jetta, in case the pass was snowed in. For better or worse, snow wasn't the problem ... rain was. It poured rain from Sacramento on, with traffic slow through Auburn. I finally arrived at Kingvale and the cabin around 4pm. Hilary and her boyfriend Jeff had left the day before, so i spent the evening with my parents and Emily and Jared, in from Texas. We played the "Mexican train" dominoes game Veronica and i had bought for my parents, then had a nice dinner of mushroom rice meatballs made by Emily, before watching Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith on DVD. This was done under protest from my mother, who insists that there are no redeeming qualities in Anakin, Padme, or George Lucas's horrid dialog. I quite enjoyed Anakin's brutal come-uppance the second time round. All except for Darth Vader's ridiculous "Nooooooooooo!". We played a dice stacking game briefly before turning in.

I had a little breakfast and helped my dad shovel the driveway before heading home around 11:15am on the 28th. Only a little snow had accumulated, but the rain had persisted. My drive down the mountains was done in a torrential downpour, which ended up being only marginally faster than if i had had to put on my chains. The trek allowed me to reacquaint myself with my reclaimed Jetta, as well as to explore the iPod interface and the new satellite radio, on which i'd read up at the cabin. I'm getting into it ... i've been focusing on the 80's alternative ("First Wave") and indie rock ("Left of Center") stations. I arrived back in Redwood City around 3pm, and took Arlene and Ana out to Red Robin for a late lunch/early dinner. Our friend Kevin arrived shortly thereafter, to take part in the bay area New Year's festivities. Tara, overstimulated by Alan's cooking efforts in the kitchen the week before, found new mischief to get into the next day. Kevin noticed her chewing on a bone before he went out shopping, and called Veronica to ask if it was okay. It turns out our white she devil had gone through one of the trash bags Alan had put outside, locating the turkey carcass and having herself a right old feast. Luckily she didn't hurt herself on any of the splintered bones, but she gorged herself enough to turn her nose up at dinner later that evening. Scheming pooch.

V, Kevin, and i had planned on going to Popscene on Thursday night to see Jeremy Goldstein/Jeremy Popscene/DJ JPEG before he returned to NYC, but our house again thwarted our plans. The drain again clogged, this time during the washing machine cycle, and for the first time pushed water back up the drain. It would've overflowed the toilet if i hadn't quickly emptied the bathroom garbage can and thrown the excess into the bathtub. This happened literally when the three of us were about to head off to the city. Because it appeared our clean out line had leaked, i decided i needed to go under the house to inspect, and advised V and Kevin to leave without me. After they took off, i found that there was no significant problem with the clean out, it had just overflowed when the drain water had been forced up. I scheduled a camera inspection for this morning, and spent the rest of the evening finalizing our new two hard drive/three partition PC setup and copying Veronica's and my mp3's to this new storage arrangement.

The Rescue Rooter technician (easily the most knowledgeable and helpful of the three we'd met) arrived at 8:45am this morning and set to inspect our drain with a camera snake to determine what the heck this recurring problem was. After fighting with the piping to get the camera in (ultimately having to cut the pipe), the technician found that the problem at 70 feet was that the pipe was broken. Uh oh ... that means big money to dig up and replace the broken section, buried under a few feet of concrete and asphalt. However, the tech informed me that Redwood City is responsible for the piping past our property line (ie, under the sidewalk and street, where our break lay). That probably saved us $3000. The bad part is that we have to get ahold of the city and have them send someone out. And naturally, trying to do that during the holiday season is not so productive. I have to wait until Tuesday, when the office opens, to schedule that. According to the tech, the work can be done in a day, but who knows when the city's schedule will allow them to come out. Until then, the washing machine is off limits and we have to moderate our usage of the shower, dishwasher, and toilet.

And that brings me to typing this diatribe. I hope everyone had a good holiday, hopefully devoid of the stresses that i've been subjected to. At least we've gotten some resolution this morning. Take care, and bring on 2006!