And now it's December. The last month of the year, when most of us spend a great deal of time reflecting back on the year that has passed, and how we are going to improve our lives for the next year, if at all. One thing I hope to do is find a job...that's most likely going to be my New Year's resolution. Funny, I made the same resolution last year. For the record, I did keep it...I was just laid off again.

So, it's been almost a week since my last post, I believe. Quite a lot has happened since then, not the least of which is the appearance of a rather large zit-like object on the bridge of my nose. I say zit-like, because it seems impervious to all efforts to pop it. (Well, I have written about both zit popping and asparagus pee in the last two weeks...I'd say that this is more or less an all time low.)

Thanksgiving was good, as always. I don't think I've ever had a bad Thanksgiving. How can eating more food than a person has a right to ever be a bad thing? As I said before, I spent the holiday on Balboa Island with my brother's wife's family. They have this somewhat large house on the island that Jaime's grandparents purchased back in the 1950s or something for like 20 bucks. Present at this dinner (besides me) was, of course, my brother, Erich; his wife, Jaime; her parents, Steven and Kathy Baum; Jaime's maternal grandparents; her paternal grandmother; Alyson and Sawyer; and, finally their friend and neighbor, Les Walker and his wife. Les Walker, apparently, is the Senior Photographer for Surfing Magazine and travels all over the world taking pictures of big ass waves and stuff. Currently, he is working on a project for Billabong...I guess they're making a surfing movie along the lines of Endless Summer, which is an entertaining film, even if you've never been on a surfboard in your life, like me. Further, Les is a very close friend of Tony Hawk, and several other pro-skaters. I guess that was my brush with greatness for the week.

On Friday night, while I was just sitting at home minding my own business, the phone rang and I answered and it was Kim Price, wanting to know what I was doing for the weekend. I told her that I wasn't doing anything, and so she invited me to come down to San Diego. Since most of my friends in this area were missing in action for the holiday weekend, and I'd not seen her since early August, I decided to take her up on the offer and, on Saturday morning, drove down there. She lives in a really old Victorian house in Hillcrest that has been converted into several apartments. It's quite a nice place...much better than my little hole in the wall here in Montrose. Anyway, we had breakfast/lunch at a place called The Hash House a Go Go with her sister Cori and Cori's fiance, Cody Rush, whom I had never met before, but he seems quite nice. They're scheduled to be married in February. After lunch we returned to Kim's house, where we basically just hung around until it was dinner time. At that point, we all opted to go eat at The Cheesecake Factory at Fashion Valley.

After dinner, we ended up in Ocean Beach at the home of some friend of Cody's named Brian Something-or-Other, and we all ended up sleeping there. I fell asleep on the floor, but woke up on the couch...I'm not quite sure when I moved from one spot to the other. I'd had a moderate amount of alcohol, but that had nothing to do with my memory lapse. I'd chalk it up to sheer exhaustion.

Anyway, the next day, while we were in Ocean Beach, Kim locked her keys in the car so we had to get a ride back to her house from a flamboyantly gay cab driver who did not wear his seat belt. It could have been really awkward if we'd gotten in an accident...I mean, what is the passenger's obligation if the cab driver dies?

After breaking into her apartment, I drove her back to Ocean Beach so she could get her car, and then I headed home. On the way home, I made my inevitable stop at Filiberto's in Vista. I thought about stopping by Ryan and Mandy Yingst's house but then I imagined that they had probably had a flood of visitors, what with her having a new baby and all, and figured that an unannounced visit on a Sunday afternoon four days after the birth of an infant is probably not ideal. Besides, I will probably be down in that area again later this month when Eric and Tisra Fadely are visiting from Tennessee, so I'll just wait until then to see little Macy.

When I got home, I went right to sleep, even though it was only like 5:00 in the afternoon. I'd only slept about 4 hours the night before and was beyond tired. I woke up around 8:45 last night and watched Alias and The Simpsons on Tivo then went back to bed and slept through until this morning.

And that's my week in a nutshell.