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AT&T is no longer my friend. It’s not like we were good buddies before but at least we had an understanding. I sent them a check every month and they provided a service. Times went bad and they left me in the cold. I’ve been spurned by a telco – the horror.

It all started when the wife’s phone up and died. Some battery swapping between the wife and I uncovered the problem: her battery was dead. It would never return to this world. A new battery would cost about $30. That hardly seemed worth it. Her contract was up and mine soon would be. Let’s just sign a new contact and get some new phones. It sounded easy enough.

It wasn’t.

AT&T has a ton of cool offers on their web site. Phones are free or provided for a deep discount. This wasn’t a surprise. All wireless carriers — Verizon, T-Mobile, Cingular — pimp out their phones to get that elusive contract. The first bit of crack is free. After that, poney up.

The problem is that, with AT&T at least, these deals are for new customers only. If you are a current customer or, in our case, a faithful customer of more than three years, they have little interest in talking to you. They offered me a couple of measly discounts to sign a new contract but no offer even approached what I could get if I wasn’t already an AT&T Wireless customer. It just wasn’t right.

I even mentioned this to the customer service rep. Why on earth would I accept this deal when any of your competitors would give me a much better one? Just get on the web. Take a look. Even you kick your own ass.

They didn’t even want to compete. Maybe AT&T assumes customers like them so much they don’t want to switch. I’m guessing their stock price is tied to the amount of new subscribers they acquire. Turnover rate is probably assumed to be high. Why fight it?

They should fight it because I’m now a Cingular customer. I have two pretty new phones and a plan that is $10 cheaper a month with more than twice the number of minutes. I’m upset that I had to spend the time to shop around and that I’ll spend the next month handing out a new number (I didn’t keep my previous number for a couple of reasons) but I can’t get too out of shape. They actually did me a favor.

This is the picture that went out in our Christmas cards this year. The ceramic tree is a family hierloom from my grandmother. The presents themselves are — shh — actually mine but went much better in the picture than his own. It’ll work out in the end. He’s much more likely to enjoy my boxes than I am.

The cards themselves went out late – which should be no surprise given my track record – so don’t get all sad you don’t already have one of your very own. They are in the mail. If you don’t get one, take solace. It’s not that we don’t like you. It’s just that we don’t like you that much – either that or we just don’t have your address. Work with us people. Like many things Christmas, cards were a last minute accomplishment.

And that doesn’t exclude my wife’s presents; the last of which was wrapped last night. I have to say I was quite surprised at the ease of my late season shopping. The lines were reasonable and the stores prepared. Color me impressed. One store was open until midnight. Who shops at midnight? 10:45 pm, well that’s perfectly acceptable but midnight? Sheesh and — ahem – color me lucky.

When Cambell wasn’t posing for Christmas cards, he was nestling up to Santa. And by nestling, I of course mean peeking around the room at all the staring faces before bursting into tears. He was a good enough sport and we got The Picture. I’m sure Santa won’t hold it against him.

I’m finally in the mood for Christmas and, thankfully, I’m not too late; I’ll soon be heading to church. Before I go, I wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. The Son of God was born not so long ago and it’s about time I go and celebrate the occasion.

From egg nog to the Christmas tree, traditions are part of the Christmas holiday. I’ve got two on my docket and one already has a check next to it.

Several years ago, on a whim, the wife and I got together with our best friends for a little neighborhood sightseeing. This close to Christmas the sun sets early and little bulbs of green and red quickly light up to replace it.

Riding around in the car looking at Christmas lights was nothing new to the wife and I. Including our friends, however, was. We ended the night with the girls in the back seat singing Christmas carols and my friend and I searching for the a copy of the South Park Christmas album. The next year it became tradition.

Since then, we’ve added some members to our group. They had a child a couple of years ago and we added one just this year. We’ve outgrown both their Xterra and our own, requiring the quickly growning group to borrow a minivan to complete the adventure.

This year was much like the rest. We warmed up with some coffee and wound through neighborhood streets. Next year we might have to rent a bus. The minivan had just one empty seat.

My other tradition this time of year is to make some time in the schedule for Christmas with my father. This one has been a little sidetracked. It was supposed to happen last weekend and my wife, child, and I were sick. It was rescheduled to this weekend before a similar affliction occured within my brother’s family. We’ll get it done. In the meantime, Dad, Merry Christmas. We’ll catch you before the new year.

Ah, traditions. Now I can wait for the one where I open all my toys.

I woke yesterday morning to a knock at my door. I might not have heard it if it were not for the dog. I’m not normally expecting visitors at 6:15 am.

I wandered downstairs in my very own sleep-induced walk and fumbled for the light switch. The Christmas tree lit up. That wasn’t exactly what I was going for. A flurried, and useless, look through the peephole revealed nothing of my visitor. I decided to take my chances and open the door. I had my ferocious dog to protect me. If there was danger, maybe he would lick it to death.

Danger did not lurk on the other side but what did was a good view of why I was awoken from my sleep. “I hit your car,” were the words that greeted me. Our truck had received a bit of a spanking, courtesy of a neighbor who couldn’t be bothered to scrape the ice off her windows; a simple porthole is not enough. “I’ll be back,” I said as I hurried upstairs for a pair of sweatpants.

Today we discovered the truck was undrivable. The tailpipe is bent over backwards. I spent the morning waiting for a rental car. I could hardly contain my excitement over the tiny Chevy Cavalier the family will be limited to this Christmas season. Is there a kicker to this whole episode? Yep. It turns out the neighbor was uninsured. Here comes Mr. Deductible. A very uncomfortable, but necessary, visit to the neighbor’s house will be in order.

All this came on the heels of a hellish weekend. The whole Wootton family got sick this weekend. The wife and child were very sick, as was I for a while. The result was a very quick indoctrination to real parenting. The flu epidemic got us and got us good. Thankfully, the worst seems to be over. We’re barely carriers of the plague anymore! Not only can we breathe easy, we can breathe.

On the (kind of) upside, we picked out a new front door today. It’s just one of the several projects to come at our home. The old door is beaten to hell and sports the oddest door handle I’ve ever seen. Someone mentioned to me the other day that if a thief ever got in our house, they’d never figure out how to leave; the handle would have them puzzled for hours. We’re hoping the new door is better at stopping thieves from getting in, not out.

I’m taking a weatherman’s approach (i.e. I’m making a wild guess) towards the future. I’m hoping I have time to finish Christmas shopping in between the phone calls to the bank, contractors, bodyshops, and insurance companies. I’m really looking forward to Christmas itself, despite the fact that the house looks much like all the king’s horses and all the king’s men are still standing around discussing the remains of a Mr. Humpty Dumpty. We’ll take our lumps and make sugar. And maybe if I whine long enough that’ll be just what we need to make a batch of the wife’s cookies.

I’ve been musing about the light outside my basement door. A couple of weeks ago, I shattered the bulb trying to change it and, while trying to fix my newfound problem, I made things worse. Long story short, I need a new light.

If that little light behind my house was all I had to worry about, I’d count myself lucky. It’s not. If I was forced to rank my worries in order, I’d have to say that light is somewhere around 162, give or take two. Yep, that sounds just about right.

Topping my list is mold and I’m not talking about a science project left in the fridge too long. A couple of weeks ago, the sump pump in our crawl space overflowed. Oddly enough, the pump appeared to be fine. The basin that collects the water was the problem. It had disintegrated. Water wasn’t looking for an escape through the conveniently placed pipes nearby. It was spreading directly into the crawlspace. For a while — and exactly how long, I’m unsure — we had our very own creek located right under us.

This didn’t seem like a very big deal. I was able to get the pump working and we bought a humidifier to clean up the leftovers. A couple of days later, our designated builder (the wife’s brother) sent a crew (consisting of her nephew) to replace the pump (lock, stock, and, most importantly, barrel).

Obviously, that wasn’t the end of the story. Shortly thereafter, I discovered mold between the rocks in the crawlspace. I pulled up some nearby boxes (we use our crawlspace as a storage area) and found more problems. The bottom of several boxes revealed even more mold. This didn’t look good. We called in some folks to do testing.

The test results confirmed our fears. Mold had found its way into our basement. It was in the crawlspace. It was in the rafters of the crawlspace and it was all over a leak near our fireplace. It was bad mold — evil mold, if you will. We needed to take action and we needed to take action fast. Mold of the evil variety isn’t that big of a deal to the wife and I. Factor in our 11 month old son and you have another story altogether.

What followed was a whirlwind of events. We quickly found a contractor willing to come in and fix our problems. We needed the mold removed. We needed our fireplace leak repaired. We needed all of this now.

The leak would be fixed by waterproofing the basement. We knew about the leak. In fact, we believe we can prove that the previous owner maliciously sold us the house without mentioning the leak. However, it was expensive to fix. Pipes needed to be run between the leak and our sump pump. These drainage pipes would carry the water to the pump and, eventually out of the house. The problem was that everything between the leak and the sump pump would be damaged. The floor would need to be destroyed to place the pipes into the concrete. The built in cabinet would need to be removed to get at the leak. We decided to waterproof the entire wall, meaning the wall would be left without – well – a wall.

Sadly, the mold was a bigger deal, at least in terms of overall price. Specialists cost money and this was no exception. They brought in their equipment to contain the mold. They wore heavy gloves and masks. We lost a lot of stuff we stored in the crawlspace but that wasn’t our real concern. We wanted to make sure it didn’t come back.

We added a couple of things to the bill to accomplish this. The crawlspace lacked ventilation of any kind. A humidex would fix that. The floor of the crawlspace is made up of simple dirt and stone. An extra sump pump and plastic sealer would help us out there.

The total bill was rather impressive, impressive enough that we spent Tuesday at the bank acquiring a home equity line of credit. I’m still getting over the cost and there’s more work to do. The mold is gone but the construction is just beginning. We’re still redesigning the basement. Hardwood floors? Maybe. A whole lot less paneling? Definitely. And what about the bathroom?

So, I’ve been musing a bit about my light out back when I have no shortage of more important things to think about. Why? I’m of the opinion that when the least of my worries is finally taken care of, the bulk of my worries will quite likely be history. At least, I’m hoping.