New Year's Eve is a night in which, by all repute, you're supposed to post something thoughtful and pithy and resolute. Or just drunken, depending on your inclination. Instead, it's just me and Joey Negro, riding the end of my alcohol intake for the night off into the land of sleepy buzz.

2005 was quiet. For the most part, I've come into my own. Life is good, if quiet. House. Cats. Friends.

In olden days, the twelve days of Christmas were likely to bring a standard human unmanageable herds of drummers, milkmaids, lords, rings, and the ever-present partridge. However, it's with tepid pleasure that I note that the holidays are becoming a bit more inventive in their 'gifting' this year.

The "twelve days of Christmas" now refers to the twelve days that my overly-adored Jetta spent at the dealer's, having innumerable tests run upon the suddenly-quirky engine. I strongly suspect the silly thing spent most of those days cozied up in the back of the repair shop, drinking spiked eggnog with distant relations, swapping owner stories, and totally living up the vacation.In the meantime, I got stuck with a crappy Audi A4. Older. Base model.

Kat: "I think we're going to need a buffet table for all this food."

From a Saturday-night email dated mid-September of this year: "Our Recruitment office is doing really well. Normally, this is good, but come Christmastime, it's a royal financial pain in the tail to buy gifts for everyone in the group. Yeah, yeah, I know gift-giving is supposed to be a 'gift,' not a 'right,' but lots of things work out differently in theory than in practice… Would you be interested in drawing names for a Christmas exchange this year?"

You know your group of friends has expanded when you remember when planning for your yearly Christmas party once was "scrawl down a list of friends' names, email everyone to see if they're available next Saturday, and make something edible." Something edible, of course, meant "I'll figure out what I'm cooking sometime later." You know things have changed when this year's holiday party planning involves lunch with two other friends, details, and actual division of labor.

Fast-forward three months to what jokingly became known as the Pan-Holiday Extravaganza; too late for Christmas, too early for New Year's.

In the grand southern tradition, we gathered together and ate copious amounts of food. It could be said that geeks don't cook, and this would probably be a true statement if the geek in question was Jeremy (whose sworn duty for the PHE was to obtain carbonated drinkage), but the rest of us appear to have mastered the art of applying varying amounts of heat to tasty morsels of edible matter:

Roast turkey, ham, sweet potato casserole, corn, baked beans, green bean casserole, salad-of-doom, rosemary and garlic mashed potatoes, three kinds of freshly-baked bread, turtle cake, pumpkin cheesecake, turtle cheesecake, pecan pie...

Why, yes, we did explode. Whatever made you guess?

Well, I certainly got my Christmas present today.

I should've figured out that something was up when Andy wasn't on ICQ last night. I know good and well that the only time he completely shuts down his computer is when he's not at his house.

You can probably guess who, along with Heather, showed up on my doorstep this morning. With the Christmas present (a signed copy of Orson Scott Card's book, Ender's Game) of course.So much for a quiet day of getting the house clean. Instead, we went grocery shopping, team-cooked a nice dinner, and socialized. We watched the Penguins game. I didn't do much, but I'm still wiped out.

I'd write charming pithy commentary, but my brain's starting to fuzz over from the antihistamines that I took. Hopefully they'll help me sleep, too.