sundry holiday chaos

Actually, it's not that bad.

I may or may not have shingles on my tailbone.
I may or may not have the equivalent of bad hips in a German Shepard, requiring surgery in my not too distant middle age.

I did not party hard with the rest of the household the last two nights. I did drink enough last night to get on myspace and to leave Christmas cheer everywhere.
Most of the Christmas shopping is done. Close enough.

The new espresso machine works alright. This means that Matty and I won't be powering through the gallon of French press every morning. Our guts thank us.
The meat pies do taste like dogfood mince.

The truck needed an expensive clutch job.
We don't have a renter for the house we're buying from Matt's mum.
I still want my kinky four way pluot (75 percent plum, 25 percent apricot) tree for Christmas.
I bought a year's supply of special Bishop mahogany smoked streaky bacon (known in local parlance as "crack bacon") because it was 25 percent off. I have had tomato growers in other states tell me that their BLT sandwiches don't taste the same since they can't get the bacon shipped anymore.
To get proper crema on the espresso, we'll need a better coffee grinder.
Let the cash hemorrhaging begin.

Lovely Tom and lovely Mark will be coming over to spend some time here in the Valley to ski, drink, and be merry with us.

Dad will watch the boy and Matty and I will get (gasp) another date and get to see Cat Power, Gnarls Barkley and the Flaming Lips after all.
And we'll still eat all the Chinese food we can stand, so tripe and chicken feet for days!