So This is Christmas...

As usual, this year's Christmas was hectic as hell as for Megan and me. It was once again filled with running from house to house, tearing through gifts, then skeedadling to our next stop. And as happy as I am for it to all be over, I was there was a way that we could have stretched it out a bit longer. By that I mean if the holiday was actually longer, we might actually be able to spend quality time with our families and friends and not feel like we always had to be somewhere else in 15 minutes.

That said, there were some pretty great Christmas moments this year. The best was cooking breakfast at our new house on Christmas Morning for some of our family. My brother and his girlfriend Lizzie came over bright and early and Lizzie, Megan, and I got down to business. Lizzie did most of the work, but together we whipped up biscuits, eggs, hashbrowns, bacon, sausage, and pancakes mad from scratch. My dad and his wife Brenda came over and we all had a nice family meal together. It was the first time Megan and I entertained at our house and it was pretty near perfect.

The runner-up for best Christmas moment was definitely getting to see Nate on Christmas. I hadn't seen him in about a year and it was nice to catch up a little. The coolness of this moment, however, was tarnished by us being at Clancy's East. Normally, this would have been fine, but it turned out that Clancy's was apparently be the bar to go to on Christmas and by our last round of drinks we were having to scream at each other just to be heard. I think that every senior from UNO was there and whichever one of them had money to throw into the jukebox was not only in love with cock rock, but had a hearing problem, because the got the bartender to crank the volume up to 12 on Rock and Roll All Nite and it never got turned back down. Merry Friggin' Christmas.

The worst part of Christmas? That was delivered on my doorstep by Apple on Christmas Eve-eve. I sent my iPod in for a tune-up and the sent me a replacement instead. Naturally, I was excited, but when I turned on my brand new iPod, I was greeted by a frowning iPod. Yeah, the freakin' thing doesn't even work! It was like a package had arrived from Santa, but when I opened it, instead of finding a present, I found a steaming turd.

Needless to say, I have spent the better part of the day online or on hold, trying to get the whole thing resolved. The best part is when I was told my iPod is no longer under warranty. This is sort of true, since my original warranty ran out on the 22nd. Thankfully, I bought an AppleCare extended warranty which is good until December 22 of 2006, but it makes me wonder if they sent me a defective iPod thinking that I would basically be stuck with a lemon with no way of returning it. Yay, Apple! Thanks for showing me you care. And to think, I used to consider you the good guys... Anyhow, I faxed them some stuff, which was a huge pain, but hopefully I'll be able to get a new iPod soon. We'll see, but if this keeps up, I might be going back to mixtapes. I mean, at least my Walkman never made a face at me.