Kris and I got back from our trip a few days before New Year’s in hopes that we’d get invited to a happening New Year’s Party. Instead we got invited over my friend Peter’s place for the evening of the 29th. We had a good time that night, even though we were exhausted. So we spent most of New Year’s Eve cleaning the apartment and reorganizing furniture to make it more spacious and easier for more people to see the (new - thanks everyone!) tv. We took a trip out to pick up a package of late-arriving Christmas presents at the post office. There is unfortunately no line for “I’m just picking up a package” and there’s always twenty-five thousand people waiting there. Instead you take a deli number and wait for them to call you. I knew the wait would be a while (I got #20 and they were only on #73), so I sent Kris out to get the “after hours” stuff done at work that he needed to. He got back to the PO before they were even at #80. So I told him to make the trip to Circuit City to pick up an adapter to be able to hook the computer up to the TV for easy rally-video watching the next day. Of course this is when they start accepting people “who only need to pick up a package.” I was a bit uneasy that I wouldn’t be able to actually get the package since it was in Kris’s name; I did have to show them my license to prove that I lived at the same address.
So now I have my package (it was actually a present for me!), but I still had to wait, not only for Kris to get back, but to be able to buy some one- or two-cent stamps. Yes, I must be living in a cave because I had no idea that the price of postage was going up another two cents on January 9th! Of course the vending machines carried only three-cent stamps, which thwarted my attempt to get out of there and not wait a ridiculously long time for 40 cents worth of stamps! Our timing actually worked out well though, since Kris got caught in a bit of traffic. We got groceries to re-stock our fridge, and some champagne for the night. After finishing with the cleaning, we popped in Katamari Damacy and spent the rest of the night rolling people up. (Sidenote: This is a really awesome game, for anyone who still has yet to discover it. I know I’m behind the rest of the world when it comes to most things, and there is no difference here. But both Kris and I LOVE this game - thank you Aunt Paula for searching all over for both the games Kris wanted for Christmas.) The “funny part of the night” was when we turned on tv to watch the ball drop. We’d actually missed it by a couple minutes, getting up to get the champagne - popping the cork that flew all the way up the stairs, hit the wall and went the rest of the way up the stairs before it came back down to the landing - so we paused the tv with the TiVo. “What’s another couple of minutes when the dropping of the ball is time-delayed 3 hours for us anyway?” Kris commented. So we toasted a TiVoed New Year’s. 
New Year’s Day was our first hosting of a Rally Marathon Party - a tradition Kris had before we met and I didn’t mind keeping up. Speed TV disappointed us this year by not playing the past season of WRC as a marathon, so we completely missed the start of 2005’s shows. Guido had brought some web videos of the highlights of each rally, a good replacement for an otherwise completely missing part. I want to thank everyone for stopping by, and bringing things, whether it be drinks, snacks, videos, or just yourselves. We had an awesome time, and we hope you all did too! It was awesome to have interest in our own videos too, and get to see some in-car from Jeff and Guido at Ramada.
Kris had today off too, so we slept in VERY late, played some more Katamari, and relaxed. Back to work for both of us tomorrow, and school for me starts on Friday.
