Is it 2006 yet?

Through no fault of my own, I seem to have survived into 2006 without having my brain-engorged cranium do any sort of harsh explodey thing. It was touch and go for a while, though. Without going into too much detail, let me just dispense this free advice: never, ever, in the month after having your home mortgage refinanced to pay off part of a mountain o' debt, allow your work vehicle's engine to go kaput in such a manner that you have to go out and buy another vehicle without doing any financing that would screw up the mortgage refinancing whilst simultaneously doing your holiday shopping and holiday party planning and paying to fix the radiator and brakes on your spouse's truck and caring for your dog whose immune system has apparently decided to flake out and attack her red blood cells and cause low appetite which the vet misses the first time around despite some expensive blood work.

Trust me. I know it's tempting, but... resist.

Fortunately, things are looking relatively up going into 2006:

--> The mortgage refinance went smoothly (having a brother-in-law who does these things on a regular basis helps greatly), and now that Kris is working again and some monthly spending has been trimmed and I've gotten my modest yearly salary boost, I'm hoping we can see the mountain o' debt shrink some this year. That would be... nice.

--> Thanks to some additional money coming in in December, we were able to get a '95 Saturn to replace my old dead work vehicle minivan. And thanks to the power of vehicle donations and the tax benefits they bring, we'll actually get more money back than we spent. As far as the vehicle itself goes, for its age, it had not-bad mileage (around 100k) and more importantly, great mileage per gallon of evil filthy costly gasoline.

--> The dog (Unni) is recovering and is regaining weight and energy, though we'll probably be going to the vet rather often for the next couple months or so while they monitor her progress.

--> Holiday shopping and festivities and such went smoothly, and some nice loot was given and acquired. My six-month-old niece excelled in cuteness and spitting up.

--> The truck is fixed and functional.

--> Tomorrow, I start on the long-awaited editing and redrafting of The Novel. Despite an almost four-month layoff from even looking at it, it still occupies vast tracts of my conscious and subconscious mind and swats at stray neurons like a giant ape swatting biplanes, which bodes very well for what is to come (since, clearly, I'll have to finish this first if I want to write anything else ever).

So, that's it, the long-promised, semi-mythical Life Update for Gary. Next up... the Christmas card you never received from me!

Ow. My cranium...