[Workaround] System hangs after updates this morning

The notifier on the taskbar indicated there were updates this morning which I let it install. I think were there a couple dozen of them including cpupower, a bunch of mariadb pkgs, and notably, a new kernel 3.12.13 and nvidia driver packages. Upon reboot immediately after the update I saw a plymouth error and no graphical desktop. Since then, with full poweroff/poweron reboots the system (actually just ctrl-alt-f1) hangs trying to start Avahi with the message...
[** ] A start job is running for Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD stack (the two asterisks are in varying shades of red)
Although it hangs ctrl-alt-f1 at this point I can log in ctrl-alt-f2. I tried to find the exact list of pkgs it installed this morning but if the list exists I couldn't find it.
Rebooting using the old 3.12.9-1 kernel pauses briefly at the Avahi startup but then goes on all the way to "[OK] Reached target Graphical Interface" - except that there is no graphical interface present. ctrl-alt-f2 does still work.
I suspect something with the nvidia driver with or without contribution by the new kernel but I don't really know what to do about it.
Suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.
[** ] A start job is running for Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD stack (the two asterisks are in varying shades of red)
Although it hangs ctrl-alt-f1 at this point I can log in ctrl-alt-f2. I tried to find the exact list of pkgs it installed this morning but if the list exists I couldn't find it.
Rebooting using the old 3.12.9-1 kernel pauses briefly at the Avahi startup but then goes on all the way to "[OK] Reached target Graphical Interface" - except that there is no graphical interface present. ctrl-alt-f2 does still work.
I suspect something with the nvidia driver with or without contribution by the new kernel but I don't really know what to do about it.
Suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.