Well - we knew it was bound to happen someday. On Christmas eve I went to turn on our PC and nothing happened. No lights, no odor of ozone - just nothin'. I checked everything I could think of and then just threw up my hands in despair. We figured Santa had run out of coal and decided the next best thing was to toast our computer. We cried, fretted, wrung our hands in mourning, but there was nothing that could be done until the following Tuesday when we hoped our computer repair guy would be back in the shop.

I took the corpse in the day after Christmas and it was pronounced dead on arrival, but salvageable. The capacitors had bulged and leaked and the mother board was toast. A week and a half later and a boasting a new mother board we're now back on line.

Now, I believe that everything happens for a reason, so in an attempt to put a positive spin on all this we decided that this was the opportunity we needed to attack our basement. This area of our house has become a storage pit for all sorts of stuff that Meri deems unsuitable for any other part of the house, and over the past few months it has really become almost uninhabitable down there. With all the potential of a party room (that's where all my musical gear is stored, plus a pool table, theater room and a wet bar) we decided to invite some of our neighbors over for New Year's eve. OK - now we're committed! We spent two+ days sorting, stashing, tossing and cleaning and finally got the whole basement in shape to receive visitors an hour before party time. We had a great New Year's eve party, played lots of music and toasted 2007 with gusto!

The point is, none of that would have happened if the computer hadn't died. That down-time away from this infernal machine put things in perspective for us, and, while we were out of touch with the outside world for two weeks (no access to phone numbers even) we did get a lot accomplished and had a great holiday! We hope you did too. For those of you who may have sent us e-mails in the past couple weeks, please bear with us. Going through over 200 new messages in our inbox is going to take some time.

Since we missed the opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, let us be the first to wish you all a Happy Ground Hog's Day!