I have the SARS
Sigh - I was hoping to avoid being sick this season, but it appears I am afflicted. Really sore throat and a slight out-of-body-experience feeling today, and I'm not even taking medicine. Since it is because we had friends visiting who were also sick, I really can't complain much. The visit was delightful, but too short as always.
Work has been stupid busy lately. Between a couple rounds of layoffs and some wrestling with our online enrollment vendor, I have been on the run since the beginning of the year. Things have finally started to slow down somewhat, so I have been able to get caught up with some things, including keeping this here blog updated. It has been too easy to just go on Twitter and Facebook and do my little 140 character limit pings, my little bite-size updates. Now that I can breathe, I can be a little more expansive.
Facebook has been an interesting experience. I use it mostly to keep in touch with friends that I don't get to see because we live so far apart. However, I've also been finding a lot of high school people, with varying results. For the most part, I have to say we've all been aging pretty well, everyone looks so damn good! For the most part, it seems like the people friending me are the people that really wanted to get back in touch and are interested in what I am up to these days, and I feel the same about them. There were a few that I think were just curious, but otherwise we don't really respond to each other's posts. And I've probably scandalized a few church people that I used to know back in the day. My sense of humor has gotten more and more tasteless as the years progress, so I won't be hurt if they decide not to follow my updates any more. I know some work people that are on there, but I am very reluctant to friend them - I want to keep being rude and crude without having it affect my employment. Overall, it has been fascinating seeing where people have ended up in their lives thus far. It turns out I know some pretty interesting individuals.
In my free time, I have made more progress on painting the inside of the house. The craft room is nearly done - I have some ideas for linen storage solutions (utilizing the closet, or maybe the small crawlspace thingie in the guest room), so maybe I can get rid of the big bookcase that is taking up so much room, and put it in the garage or something. I think the master bedroom will be next. We will need to strip the wallpaper and patch roughly five billionty nail holes, so it will be a project lasting several weeks. But at least I have the colors picked out - a deep red for the walls with a cream trim. Rawr!
I also just finished a book that will hopefully prompt me to move forward with some things that I've been thinking about for a while - In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I highly recommend it. It isn't a book that is trying to convince you to be a vegetarian (although they wouldn't necessarily frown on that), but to stop eating processed foods and look for more locally grown produce. I've looked at CSA's in the past, and this is nudging us to sign up for delivery with one of those. I'd love to find out about farms that sell meat shares as well, but we will probably have to hold off until we get storage solutions figured out (i.e. the fridge in the garage). This also means visiting the farmer's market on a regular basis. Lucky for me, I have one of the best in the country just a few miles away. For me, this also means possibly giving up soda, but I think J would have a harder time with that. Baby steps.
Work has been stupid busy lately. Between a couple rounds of layoffs and some wrestling with our online enrollment vendor, I have been on the run since the beginning of the year. Things have finally started to slow down somewhat, so I have been able to get caught up with some things, including keeping this here blog updated. It has been too easy to just go on Twitter and Facebook and do my little 140 character limit pings, my little bite-size updates. Now that I can breathe, I can be a little more expansive.
Facebook has been an interesting experience. I use it mostly to keep in touch with friends that I don't get to see because we live so far apart. However, I've also been finding a lot of high school people, with varying results. For the most part, I have to say we've all been aging pretty well, everyone looks so damn good! For the most part, it seems like the people friending me are the people that really wanted to get back in touch and are interested in what I am up to these days, and I feel the same about them. There were a few that I think were just curious, but otherwise we don't really respond to each other's posts. And I've probably scandalized a few church people that I used to know back in the day. My sense of humor has gotten more and more tasteless as the years progress, so I won't be hurt if they decide not to follow my updates any more. I know some work people that are on there, but I am very reluctant to friend them - I want to keep being rude and crude without having it affect my employment. Overall, it has been fascinating seeing where people have ended up in their lives thus far. It turns out I know some pretty interesting individuals.
In my free time, I have made more progress on painting the inside of the house. The craft room is nearly done - I have some ideas for linen storage solutions (utilizing the closet, or maybe the small crawlspace thingie in the guest room), so maybe I can get rid of the big bookcase that is taking up so much room, and put it in the garage or something. I think the master bedroom will be next. We will need to strip the wallpaper and patch roughly five billionty nail holes, so it will be a project lasting several weeks. But at least I have the colors picked out - a deep red for the walls with a cream trim. Rawr!
I also just finished a book that will hopefully prompt me to move forward with some things that I've been thinking about for a while - In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I highly recommend it. It isn't a book that is trying to convince you to be a vegetarian (although they wouldn't necessarily frown on that), but to stop eating processed foods and look for more locally grown produce. I've looked at CSA's in the past, and this is nudging us to sign up for delivery with one of those. I'd love to find out about farms that sell meat shares as well, but we will probably have to hold off until we get storage solutions figured out (i.e. the fridge in the garage). This also means visiting the farmer's market on a regular basis. Lucky for me, I have one of the best in the country just a few miles away. For me, this also means possibly giving up soda, but I think J would have a harder time with that. Baby steps.