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I wasn’t really sure how to approach a New Year’s blog entry right now.  I started by reading what I had to say last year.  My prediction that 2005 would be better for me than 2004 was largely accurate.  There were a few rough spots, but I think the good days more than outweighed the bad.

My "favorites" list in 2004 was all media-related, but the highlights of my life in 2005 were all experiences.  Here are some of the most notable ones:

• February 28, 2005 – My nephew was born.  Now he’s crawling everywhere he goes and wearing clothes in 18-month sizes.
• In March I went to my first roller derby event.  It was the first bout of the season and I ended up going to all of them.  I can’t wait until the new season starts this spring.  My goal is to have my band play at one of the matches.
• In June I went on my second ever camping/canoe trip.  Now that I know how much fun it is, it’s hard to believe I went so much of my life without ever going camping.
• June was also when I joined the band I’m in now.  Over the next several months, I took up lyric writing and by the end of the year we had started recording our first five original songs.
• Oh, and speaking of June, that was also the month when I was made president-elect of my local Soroptimist Club.
• I spent my birthday (July 7th) and several days after that in New Orleans.  If I’d had any inkling of the devastation that Hurricane Katrina would wreak just a few months later, I’d have tried to see more of the city.  Still, I have some amazing memories of the trip.
• I went to the BlogHer Conference at the end of July.  What a wonderful chance to meet some of my favorite writers!  It may be a strain on my finances and available vacation time to attend BlogHer 2006, but I’m determined to make it happen.
• In September, I got a firsthand look at the world of gay cowboys well in advance of the opening of "Brokeback Mountain."
• Also in September, I learned the hard way that I never want to make my living harvesting grapes.
• In November, I failed to write so much as a single syllable for NaNoWriMo.  However, I managed to get a lot of other things accomplished that month (notably, a good deal of songwriting), and I fully intend to make novel writing a part of my 2006 plans – perhaps even before NaNoWriMo ’06.

I’m looking forward to 2006 with even more enthusiasm than I had in greeting 2005.  Here’s hoping that all of you feel the same about the coming year.

Remember the running joke on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" about Mary’s parties?  Basically, all of her parties were complete disasters, usually because nobody showed up. 

Last night I had my second party in less than a month where the turnout was ridiculously low.  I’m thinking of giving up on entertaining altogether.

My first party disaster was in mid-December.  I can kind of understand why it wasn’t particularly popular:  it was one of those candle parties where the guests shop for things.  Now that I and most of my friends are in our late 30s, we’re pretty much over the whole shopping party concept.  I’m still a sucker for Pampered Chef parties, but not so much the other stuff.

However, I’d promised a friend that I would throw a candle party, so I invited 40 or so women that I thought might be interested.  The Evite showed that there would probably be 3-4 guests, but that sounded acceptable to me.  I cleaned my house, made a cheese ball, baked some cookies and waited for the guests to arrive.  My friend, the presenter, came and set up the candles.  We sat and chatted.  The party start time came and went.  We continued chatting.   An hour passed.  Nobody showed up.   My friend started putting away her candles.  I started putting away the food.  We parted ways and went on with our day.

My next event, a cookie exchange party, ended up okay.  I had a total of six guests, two of whom stayed into the evening to play games.

Then I decided to throw a gathering last night.  I’m friends with a group of women who meet most Wednesday evenings for dinner, wine and conversation.  Nobody had "called" this week, so I sent an e-mail to the group on Monday offering to make ham and bean soup, potato soup and cornbread.

Quite a few regulars declined for various reasons, and one person accepted.  There were at least 6-8 others who never replied at all, so I figured I’d have a smaller than usual group.  As it turned out, only the one person who replied that she would be there actually showed up.

So there we were:  two women, two big pots of soup, two batches of cornbread and a bottle of Zinfandel.  Both soups were lovely – I had a bowl of each.  We drank most of the bottle of wine and had a nice time discussing politics, work and travel.  Eventually my husband came home and helped polish off a little bit more of the soup.

I can’t help wondering if I’m the problem here.  Are my parties boring?  Am I boring?  Is my house unpleasant in some way?  Do I just throw too many parties?

Whatever the problem is, I think I will try to cut back on my impulsive party throwing.  As much as I like having people over, it’s too much work and expense to go to if nobody attends.  Every year, fewer and fewer people bother to RSVP, even for my annual parties.  Among those who do respond, many of the "Yes"es fail to show, and I never count on the "Maybe"s. 

It’s time I sat back and played out my social life for a while as a guest instead of a host.  I’m sure it will be a lot cheaper and less frustrating.

I know I usually come off as calm and reasonable on this blog, but in reality I often tend toward crabbiness and irritability (just ask my husband).  Because I have the entire week free, I decided it was time to take steps to remedy the one thing about our house that has been driving me the craziest:  our shower.

Here’s the basic scenario:  irritable Jane is in the bathroom fixing her hair.  Shower: "Drip, drip, drip, drip…"

Jane is in the bathroom feeding the cat.  Shower: "Drip, drip, drip, drip…"

Jane is sitting in the living room, six feet from the bathroom door.  Shower: "Drip, drip, drip, drip…"

Jane:  "Aaaaaggggghhhhh!!!!!!"

Our house was built in the 1950s and I would guess that our one full bath was remodeled sometime in the early ’80s.  The plumbing in the shower has been getting progressively worse over the past several years, but I kept holding out hope that the Money Fairy would stop by and provide the wherewithal for us to do a bathroom remodel.  Ha ha ha!

Aside from steadily dripping a couple of gallons of water per day, some valve or other in the shower knob allowed hot water to squirt around the handle when the shower was turned on.  Also, the drain was so slow that you’d end up wading in ankle-deep water through most of every shower.  We’d been putting up with some of these problems for YEARS (although the drain thing has only been happening for the past several months).

I arranged for a plumber to come by yesterday morning.  He looked at our shower situation and immediately began throwing out estimates that made me blanch.  I was suddenly VERY glad that we’d kept our holiday shopping in check.  We agreed on a price and he set about enlarging the already gigantic hole in the lath and plaster wall of our closet to reach the necessary portion of the plumbing.  I wandered off and took down the Christmas tree while he worked.

Since I was already spending a fortune, the plumber didn’t charge me any extra to clear the shower drain and install a new shower head that I’ve had kicking around since we had our water softener put in.

As soon as I charged the whole mess to my credit card and showed the plumber out, I took the best shower I’ve had in years.  The water pressure was amazing, despite the fact that the new shower head was supposedly the water-saving kind.  The drain worked perfectly – no more splashing around in a puddle of my own shampoo residue. 

Having a properly functioning shower has made me think of other things about our house that I’ve been putting up with for far too long.  There’s the breaker leading to our stove that trips any time I turn on more than two burners or the oven and a burner.  There’s the living room light switch that throws off scary sparks, which means we haven’t turned on the overhead light for a couple of years.  Heck, we’ve been buying bags of ice the entire ten years we’ve lived here because we’ve never managed to get the ice maker in our freezer to work.

Well, one thing at a time.  For now I’ll enjoy the delightfully rejuvenated shower until I pay down my credit card a bit.  Maybe I’ll look into hiring an electrician after that…

Because we’d chosen to only purchase gifts for the children, this year’s Christmas celebration ended up being all about food. 

I arrived at my sister’s house a little after 9 a.m. and had the turkey stuffed and in the oven by 10.  We spent the morning watching my niece open gifts…and it took all morning, too.  Her grandparents alone had seemingly bought out a toy store.

My 10-month-old nephew got a lot of fun stuff as well, but he enjoyed the box lids as much or more than he enjoyed the toys.

While dinner cooked and we waited for the rest of the guests, we snacked all day on fondue, phyllo cups filled with cheese and artichoke, shrimp, cheese and crackers, cookies and candy.  Any restraint I would ordinarily exercise was gone.

My sister and I served dinner around 1:30 p.m.  For the fourteen of us (counting the baby), we had an 8-pound honey ham, an 11-pound turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, corn casserole, steamed broccoli and dinner rolls.

I don’t know if it was the L-tryptophan in the turkey or just the staggering quantity of food, but the dinner put me out as though it contained tranquilizers.  I curled up on the couch under a fleece throw and slept for probably an hour.  My husband slept on the couch almost all afternoon.  Different groups of people would gather around him in the living room to chat, and he’d sleep on, oblivious to their presence.

All in all, we had a lovely time, but we all agreed that it just didn’t seem very Christmas-y without gifts for everyone.  It was a relief not to have to spend the money, but I know we’re all hoping our financial situations improve so we can go back to a "regular" Christmas celebration next year.

I was seriously worried about my Christmas weekend when I awoke at 4:40 a.m. on the morning of the 24th with a sore throat.  I thought of all the work I needed to do later in the day and mobilized every treatment I could think of:  Claritin, Tylenol, Listerine and a zinc losenge.  Once I was thoroughly medicated, I went back to sleep and when I woke up my sore throat was gone and it hasn’t returned.

Once I was awake and ready to go, I started fixing breakfast.  On Friday, I’d gone to a grocery store that caters to the local Hispanic population, with the idea of cooking something that would remind my husband of the Christmas fare his abuela used to make.  When I saw a prominent display of huge steaming pots for tamales, I knew I was out of my league.  My compromise was buying fresh tortillas and chorizo to make breakfast burritos.

I should admit now that I’d never actually eaten a breakfast burrito before.  I thought that scrambled eggs, chorizo, green peppers, onions, cheese and salsa in a tortilla would be adequate.  I rolled two burritos for my husband and one for myself.  Frankly, I thought mine was bland and unpleasantly squishy.  Apparently fast food breakfast burritos contain jalapeños and potatoes.  I’d never even considered including potatoes, but that would have been an improvement.  Oh well, live and learn.

Much of the day was a blur.  I had a LOT of stuff to do:  gift wrapping, light bulb replacement, weeks’ worth of laundry, basement cleaning (which includes heavy duty catbox maintenance and floor mopping), mattress turning, etc.  In between, I managed to make ground beef burritos for lunch (since we already had tortillas and salsa…) and meatloaf for dinner (which used up the rest of the chorizo).

Don’t think the day was completely fun-free.  We watched Bad Santa and UHF on DVD in the evening.   We’re so traditional.

My final task of the day was to make rolls for Christmas dinner, but I waited way too late to start the process.  By the time the dough rose twice and the rolls finally came out of the oven, it was well after midnight and my husband had gone to bed.

So that was our stay-at-home Christmas Eve – not very exciting, but satisfying nonetheless.

Tomorrow:  Our gigantic Christmas feast.

If you’re finished playing with all of the interactive holiday stuff I posted on Monday, here’s some more to take you into the weekend:

• "Santa Ain’t Fat" MP3 – a little holiday funk/rap from Ze Frank
• Pimp My Nutcracker
• Virtual ornament maker – just like a kitchen table craft, but a lot quicker and easier.  (Unfortunately, the "add to gallery" function doesn’t seem to work properly in Firefox.)

I wish you all a lovely Christmas weekend.  No matter what you do this weekend, relax and enjoy yourself!

Just two more days of work left.  My company will close at 5:00 p.m. Friday and won’t reopen until January 3rd.  Woohoo!  Now if only I didn’t have to complete two weeks of timesheets before I go…

I tried to schedule a bunch of doctors’ appointments and service calls during my week off, but it seems I’m not the only one taking an extended holiday break.  I hope to at least take the cats to the vet and get a plumber to fix our constantly-dripping shower faucet.  It would be nice to get a few things accomplished during that week.  Otherwise, I predict day after day of reading and watching movies.

I really have almost nothing planned for the break.  We have two sets of heavy-duty shelves for the garage that need to be set up.  Also, the house could stand a little deep cleaning here and there.  I think I can handle all of that.

One household task that can’t wait:  changing light bulbs.  Every once in a while, our antiquated electrical system goes on a light bulb slaughtering rampage.  Right now, two of the three globe lights over our bathroom mirror are out.  It’s dark enough in that room at best; for the past two days I’ve been going into work with no idea how my hair and makeup look.  Our porch light is out again (although the icicle lights on the eaves provide enough light that it doesn’t really matter) and I’ve run across other burned out bulbs in various lamps.

So, you can see just how exciting next week is going to be for me.  I’ll do my best to ruminate on matters of general interest to spare you five days of domestic chore posts!

I know I’m in for a looong winter because it’s only December 20th and I’m already heartily tired of the cold weather.  Call me a whiner if you will, but I face each morning’s two-block walk from the parking lot to my building with ever-increasing grimness.  I think the walks back may be even colder and uglier.

Our house is old and drafty, so we’ve had to move our betta fish into a small bowl on top of the cabinet above our toilet, just to keep him warm enough to survive.  If we have an ice storm and the power goes out, I don’t know where we’ll take him.

On Sunday during my cookie exchange party, my niece was watching kids’ Christmas videos in our bedroom and complaining about how chilly it was in there.  That evening, I moved the window blind aside and discovered that – d’oh! – the storm window was still open.  Ditto for the storm window in the kitchen.  Way to keep those gas bills down.  Sigh.

It’s one thing to be cold at home – I’m used to that.  The bad thing is that my office is cold now, too.  I had a meeting yesterday in a corner conference room that might as well have taken place outdoors.  The area around my desk is uncomfortably cool as well.  I’m considering bringing in a throw to wrap around my legs like a sleigh blanket.

The only good thing about the cold weather is that it spurs me to make a lot of soups and stews.  Just in the last few days I’ve made pots of chili and potato soup and I have all the ingredients for minestrone lined up and ready.

There’s nothing to do now but bundle up until spring.  As much as I’d like to jet off to a tropical island to finish out the winter, that’s not in the cards.  I suppose I should be glad I don’t still live on acreage with livestock that has to be fed and watered all winter long.  Yes, just remembering that makes me feel a lot better!

It’s the last week before Christmas, and things are pretty calm at my house.  Frankly, I have nothing of interest to report.  Instead, I’ll pass along a few interesting online holiday diversions:

• If you’re apt to indulge your Griswoldian decorating tendencies during the holidays, you’ll enjoy this educational guide to "Fancy" Outdoor Lighting Schemes for Christmas.
• In The Incident Before Christmas game, you’re an elf trying to keep a drunken Santa from randomly leaving gifts all over the place.  It’s a little difficult at first, but more fun as you get the hang of it.
• Remember folded paper snowflakes?  Make-A-Flake lets you create as many as you like without all that unwanted confetti.
• If your kids are too sophisticated for the "Santa report" on the TV news, maybe they’ll be more impressed to watch how NORAD tracks his progress by satellite.

That’s all for today.  Enjoy!