It’s 2006 now, a new year and a new opportunity to, um, make resolutions we won’t keep and lose weight that we’ll gain back over the end of year holiday season.

New Year’s Eve found us at Jason and Tracy’s house, as usual, though with a significantly smaller crowd than we normally see over there. Not to worry, much fun was still had by all with a rousing round of Catch Phrase played in a sort of teamless, group way that we made up on the fly. Lots of fun and I hope to repeat that with an even larger group.

Stu and Tif were there to enjoy the festivities, and when the ball dropped in New York (adjusted, of course, for west coast time) at midnight, we called Stu’s parents in England to wake them up and yell “Happy New Year” in a sort of eight-hour-delayed fashion.

The party wound down at about 3:30a and we were home in bed by 4:00a. A late night (I’m surprised Jenn made it) but a fun one.

The next morning, Stu, Tiff, Jenn, and I went to breakfast at Shari’s (at noon). That seems to be a regular thing after a party night - all of us getting up and going to breakfast. It puts a nice cap on the festivities, setting you off on the right foot again. We were IHOP people, but it seems that the IHOP near us is really busy whenever we want to go and Shari’s gets us in a little quicker, so Shari’s it is.

I made the most of the day by putting up some shelves in this closet in the spare room. We keep our board games in the top of the closet and it was getting a bit unruly with them all being stacked on top of each other - if you wanted the game on the bottom, you had a task ahead of you. Instead of fighting that, I figured we should put some shelves in. So I went to Home Depot and bought all of the stuff to put modular closet organizer shelves into the top of the closet. Here’s how it turned out:

Not bad, huh? I thought it would go up a little faster than it did (it took a couple of hours instead of the half hour I originally estimated) but I had drill problems (battery charger’s dead) as well as incorrect length wall anchors (I needed 4” anchors; I had 2” anchors). No biggie, though, and the shelves are great. Not cheap, but great. I may have to put some more shelves in that closet for the rest of the crap in there.

Today is clean-up day around the house. Last day of vacation before heading back to work tomorrow, too. Best make the most of it.

Happy New Year, everyone!