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The first post of 2008! Hope everyone's having a good holiday and stayed safe last night. Not much going on today, just a relaxing day off... aside from some blogging (and playing around with the new design for this site), I'll just kick back with a book and maybe some video games.

New Year's resolutions? Anyone got 'em? (I'm thinking about it. Nothing yet.)

2008. Possibilities.

I suppose the measure of how good a New Year's party is would be the hangover you have the next day... if so, then the party we had last night was a pretty good one. It wasn't wild or crazy or anything like that, we just had friends over (a bunch of them brought their kids), and it was just the accumulation over the course of the evening that did me in.

That, and the two (two! ugh) shots of Jagermeister I drank. I was mostly fine until that.

Anyway.

I never did the obligatory post-Christmas post-birthday post, either. So I'm rolling it all into one.

My birthday was very nice. We had lunch at the Bend Brewing Company where I drank their Hophead Imperial IPA and their seasonal Doppelbock. Both good. I love the fish and chips there. For dinner we had take-out Chinese and my mom and brother and his girlfriend joined us. Cake was a delicious dense dark chocolate cake.

My gifts? The traditional photo Christmas ornament (the photo is of the kids), a beer rating guide book (the name escapes me at the moment and it's not nearby), Barnes & Noble gift cards, money, a PS2 video game, a bottle of Jack Daniels with a measuring shot glass, and a neat shot glass and beer tasting glass from my brother in San Diego.

Christmas Eve was dinner at our house with the family. Lasagna, this year. (We don't really have a traditional Christmas Eve dinner, unlike, say, ham on Christmas day or turkey at Thanksgiving.) We set out the mountain of presents (90% for the kids) and the kids could hardly get to sleep.

Christmas morning the kids were up at 6:30 and going through their stockings by flashlight. So I got up a little before 7, started coffee, checked out the stocking loot, and helped the kids sort out presents. You can imagine what followed.

My gifts? Stephen King's latest novel, Lisey's Story, slippers, a bottle of beer, a book on the making of the Charlie Brown Christmas TV special, some crafty ornaments from the kids, more money, another PS2 game, a gift certificate to Pegasus Books here in town, and surprisingly, I even got the lightsaber I asked for! Totally didn't see that one coming.

Am I forgetting anything? ...probably.

Since then, I've spent some of my money and gift cards on a bunch of books, another PS2 game, some beer. And, I only worked two days in the past 11—five days off around Christmas, two at work, then four more for this last New Year weekend. Going back to work tomorrow? Uh, yeah, not really looking forward to it.

...but at least I'm not still hungover!

Happy New Year everyone. So far 2005 is turning out uneventful: we cleaned the office, watched some movies. What to expect for this new year? I don't know, maybe for it not to go by so quickly. My grandma was right, the older you get, the quicker time passes.

At any rate, I'm not making any 2005 predictions, it seems like everybody else on the internet is and I'm pretty sure anything I could come up with is already covered somewhere.

I will do some stats, though. Those are always fun. :)