Happy New Year

I know, I know, I've been bad about posting. But my excuse du jour is that it's the holidays. I've had better things to do than blog, and you've had better things to do than read my blog. Right? Okay, now that we've got that out of the way...

Woo hoo! It's New Year's Eve. The Husband's on hour two of a power nap, prepping to go over to some friends' house tonight for five bottles of champagne (okay, technically, "sparkling wine"--I looked at some Moet et Chandon, but wouldn't pony up $33 for the French stuff when Cava was $8). I haven't had a nap yet. I've been on the computer--booking a trip to South Beach!

We planned to take a few days off this coming summer, around July 4 (which falls on a Wednesday in '07; shouldn't Independence Day be one of those "always on a Monday" holidays? There's a bunch of historical scholarship about the relative insignificance of that date to the events of 1776 anyway...). Anyway, we were thinking we'd probably just go to Kansas for a visit. Or maybe this would be the year when we bought a one-way ticket to Kansas and drove back that second U-Haul full of stuff we've been storing for six years. I actually went online and found tickets for that plan--for $365 each.

Then this morning I just did a quick check of my e-mail before church and... ooh, Yahoo! Travel SFO-Miami for $173 + tax. Let's see what dates I can get. Long story short, we're spending four nights in Miami Beach in July. AND our timeshare had availability--right on the beach! So the 2007 budget I just did, with $1200 set aside for gas and lodging on our cross-country U-Haul trek, well, that's going to be $1200 spent on new shoes at the Bal Harbour Shops instead. :-)

Shoes are actually much on my mind lately. I am having a hard time finding any work-suitable shoes to replace the four pairs that are rapidly deteriorating in the NoCal rainy season. I actually ordered a pair of shoes online! Given the difficulty I've had my entire life in finding shoes that fit my feet, that's the couture equivalent of Russian roulette. But it's free shipping and free returns--plus a coupon--so it can't be worse than NO shoe shopping, right?

But back to the beach: Two hundred bucks for a coast-to-coast flight and free lodging (in the #1 property in Miami Beach, according to Trip Advisor). Can't pass that up. But more importantly, I've never been to South Florida and I've always wanted to go, David Caruso's bad acting on CSI notwithstanding. It's like a gay hajj. Castro, check. WeHo, check. Russian River, check. Palm Springs, check. Chelsea, check. Provincetown, check. SoBe? Soon to be checked... I'm so excited! It was one of the reasons we bought the timeshare (four years ago).

Speaking of gay and shoes, we've been watching a lot of Sex and the City lately. I never really cared for it when it was in production, but its syndicated afterlife on TBS has got me interested, if not quite hooked.

Long time, no post

Well, I meant to blog... I was going to write about the cute Highway Patrolman I met (while he was writing me up for my first ticket in 14 years). Then I was going to write about the jarring experience of being awakened to the less-than-dulcet strains of "Fergilicious" when Stan hit music wake instead of alarm wake one morning. Then I was going to write about how quickly luxuries become necessities (a thought initially prompted by the use of my remote keyless door entry on a rainy evening but even more appropos of the last two days at work--our Outlook server crashed, so I've had absolutely no idea what's on my calendar and have been suffering from serious e-mail withdrawal). Tonight I suppose I could write about how nice and quiet the house is--Stan's out on his own for the first time since the surgery. But somewhere along the way Blogger prompted me to switch to a new version, and then I promptly forgot the new password, and, well, I just didn't blog after all.