Happy Festivus Everyone!!
Despite life being more complicated that it needs to be, life is good. Lots to be thankful for with Christmas nearing and the world nearly coming to an end earlier this week.
Jolene is officially moved in, as of mid-October. I can't believe it's been so long since I late updated this thing. She's been an absolutely awesome roommate and a great renter. As far as I'm concerned, Jo and her cats can stay here as long as they please as long as things keep going the way they are going. We get along really well, our humor is well received by one another, and life has been much less lonely.
Jo, along with our friends from Momentive and beyond, got to meet Tommy and Katie for the first time last night at our Festivus party at the house, and they all got along great. Tommy fit right in. We really need to plan more parties like this, because the night was fantastic. Looking forward to doing this again next year.
The company ended normal "growing season" operations as of early this week. We had a great year and are well on our way to a great start next year, but came up short of our yearly sales goal, despite hitting our monthly goals in 8 of the 12 months, which is disheartening. The company is in a great position going into snow operations, being run by my brother Nick. We had our first major snow occurrence a couple nights ago and Nick kicked some major ass. We're not completely sure what kind of winter we are going to have this year. It's typically a cycle of heavy snow one year, a mild winter the next. Two and three years ago, we had winters with heavy snow fall, followed by last year's uber-mild 3.2" of snow total for the entire season. We're right on the border of either getting hit hard or having a fairly mild winter, so we'll see what happens. If nothing else happens, I hope it gets bitterly cold this year. There's some insects and invasive plants (like Kudzu) in the south that have been overwintering because the temperatures have been well above average the last couple of years. Ohio would be much better off with a super-cold winter... and the sooner the better, for everyone's sake.
The off-season is upon us, though I'm not completely sure quite yet what I will be putting my time into this year. I do a major research/educational/organizational project annually at this time of the year that keeps me busy through the winter months when I'm not being called upon to sub-in as a plow driver. Last year, it was accruing digital pictures of all of the plants we use for design presentations and putting them on our IPad, which worked out magnificently for us during the course of the year. I have a number of projects in mind that I would like to do, but I've not received the go-ahead from my partners to proceed. One thing will be for sure though: I will not have enough hours in the day to get done what I would like to get done if I had my way. I'm going to be one busy dude this off-season.
Life in the house has been great. I love my next door neighbors and I've met the folks adjacent to me, though I've barely met a soul outside of that. I had some problems with the A/C unit late in the summer, though I got those problems resolved. I will have to replace the A/C unit and likely the furnace as well sometime in the next couple of years, which I am not looking forward to. Having Jolene at the house makes this go from being next-to-impossible to finance to possible with some budgeting. I brought in a chimney sweep on Friday to clean the chimney before we used it for the first time to make sure we didn't have a cresote build up that could cause an explosion. The chimney sweep not only gave it a clean bill of health, but told us the past owners did an excellent job in maintaining the fireplace and the internal masonry, which was fantastic news. We have since set a couple of fires and I'll be buying a cord of wood from Dave here in the next week or so. The basement/man cave where the fireplace is turns into the most relaxing part of the house when there's a fire going in the fireplace. I love this place so much.
I'm in the midst of some life changes. I lost 7 pounds from doing 30 days of the Insanity workout program between September and October, and not only did I keep it off over the holidays, but lost 3 more pounds from staying active and watching a little more what I eat. I had to stop the program because of a worsening condition with my lower back that was causing me a lot of pain. I had it diagnosed and it was more serious than I thought it might be. I saw a chiropractor twice a week for 5 weeks and with an exercise plan to loosen in the muscles in my back, I'm now seeing him once every 4 weeks and am now in recovery. However, I'm not sure I'm going to be in good enough shape to make the Tough Mudder here in the spring with the setback I had with my back. My goal is to lose another 15-25 pounds next year.
I am also planning on having another go with the church choir again this year. I was inspired by the youth at Ye Olde Christmas Feaste and persuaded by both Princess Jill and Lindsay to get back into it. I will be pursuing it after Christmas. I've known for some time that the key to getting me going back to church on a regular basis is to get my ass singing in the choir again, and it seems things have changed a little since the last time I gave it a go, so I'm going to give it another shot.
On the dating front, I'm not dating anyone currently, but I've been putting myself out there a lot more than I have since the spring. Received some inspiration from the movie Swingers earlier in the month and I've been running with that. Been getting out more, staying loose, and having fun with it. Bottom line: when you're having fun, other folks are going to want to join the fun that you are having. It has always worked for me and never let me down. In addition, Jo's taught me a lot about do's and don'ts with girls in the 2.5 months we've been living together and that has helped me tremendously. She's also the one that suggested Swingers to me with Dana and has been the catalyst for us getting us out of the house, so I owe her a lot.
Outside of all of that, I'm really looking forward to spending some time with friends between now and New Years when I'm not working. Tommy and Bobby will be in town and it seems like a lot of people will be home this Christmas. Looking forward to that. This New Years is going to be a good one... and I'm really looking forward to the new year. This past year has been a great one for me personally... WAY better than the year before. Hoping to continue the train to bigger, better, happier, and simpler things.
I'm off to bed. Until then, rememeber that "You're money baby and you don't even know it", and don't do anything that I wouldn't do.
Marcus