Ah, the holidays. In the old days, I relished the paid days off work, the food, the friends, and the family. This year, I'm dreading missing out on a precious day to eek out a living, but still looking forward to the rest. Plans include Santa Cruz on Thursday, Friends-giving Friday (after work, of course), Oaktown party-time Saturday, and then dinner-in-the-Berkeley-hills-with-the-owner-of-the-new-place-I-work on Sunday. Busy, but all good in the hood, so no complaints from me.

Come to think of it, there are four keys pieces of information I don't think I've mentioned, mainly:

• 1. I got a new car. It's a black Jetta (such a girl's car) and although it was cheap, I just spent over $800 getting it repaired today, and it *still* needs work and California registration. Damned Florida plates.
• 2. I'm a delivery driver, again, and have been for the past 4 months or so. Off and on, that is. To give an example of my typical day, I drove around San Francisco Bay the other day with human eyeballs, medicine, tires, graphics for Sunset magazine, and 3 boxes of Bob Dylan tour posters. Nobody believes me when I tell them that I carry around really expensive organ transplants in the back of my '86 Honda. Nobody.
• 3. I have another job, this one at a really awesome Berkeley hair salon. Some days we have "Beer Saturday" which is, well, fucking rad. They don't let me touch people's heads though, just clean up their messes.
• 4. I'm going back to the UK in January with, of all bands in the world, Taking Back Sunday. I don't really know how this happened, but it has. Very, fucking, weird.

OK. Time to put up a new MP3 of the week. My new favorite iPod playlist is titled "Playcount = 0" and showcases the approximately 2,500 songs that I've never listened to on my iPod. Very strange, very cool.