Hello, hello

Welcome 2009. I hope everyone is doing well out there. Things have been rather nuts around here it feels. Seems every time I turn around we are out of town. Not really, but sometimes it feels that way. Gone over Thanksgiving. Gone over Christmas. Who knows where next. Hopefully we will be home for a few weeks straight now. I shouldn't complain, it is nice to go out and see people, but it is also nice to be home sometimes. Especially when it is so cold out. It dosen't help to hear about how nice and warm it has been down in the "home" area (70s to 80s!!).

I recently started working as a collections management consultant for our local museum. It will be nice to have a gig that gets me out of the house five days a week, and is close enough to home that I do not have to stay in a hotel for weeks at a time (although those jobs are not bad, I just miss home). I am still working on report writing with a certain government agency. This is hard to do at times when you are trying to get information from a wide range of sources and people, and when people do not return emails and phone calls. It makes it even more discouraging when what you are doing is intended to help them and their place of work, yet they do not seem to hold it as a high priority. I guess some people do not understand that many of us operate under deadlines, and if they do not participate in the help, I can not get the work done efficiently, correctly and thoroughly, it makes me look like I am not doing my job, and I do not get paid till it is done to boot!

Things at home are calming down. We currently do not have any foster kittens/cats, but we did decide to adopt Gizz (left), one of the members of our last foster litter. He is a sweet boy and adding an interesting dynamic to the cat mojo here. The dog, Tikka, has proven a constaly bottemless pit, eating anything that you do not keep an eye on. Our food. Food on the counter. cat litter (gross). Cat food. Everything. Its rather discouraging that we can not leave him alone and trust him.

We are also enjoying our new couch. I am worried we are going to flatten out some of the cushions prematurely (we have favorite sitting spots already), but hopefully it will hold up to it. It really makes the room look larger, so that is nice. John has been writing alot and I am quite jealous of his motivation. I wish I had some. I am trying to work on a new research project with a friend, and need to work on something for a meeting in May, but just do not feel like I am making much progress. I watch shows on the Food Network or like Project Runway and just want to cook or sew all day instead. Hopefully it is just the winter blues that have me down. I need some sun to snap me out of it. It has been cold and bleek here recently (see snowy picture to right that fellow blogger Sliver Fox took on her trip through here before Christmas). We had a really bad inversion all last week, but it looks like maybe it has cleared out. I sure hope it has at least!

I miss all my friends right now, so thanks to those of you who keep coming by and reading!