New Year’s Eve 2012

Here we are again.   Or here I am again.  It’s hard to believe that I first did a New Year’s Eve blog four years ago, and that I started this blog in December four years ago.   A LOT has happened since then.   Actually, a LOT has happened this year.   I guess I’ll review the year a little and try to put it all into some sort of perspective.  And of course I'll put in the requisite pictures of the cat kids.

The biggest item this year of course was the new house.  I can honestly say that the new house consumed me from May through the end of the year.  Especially from the June closing date until the end of September, when all the interior work was done and I was mostly unpacked and I began to feel like the house was my home.  During that time, everything I did was house-related.  And of course, dealing with all the details around trying to rent the old house only added to it.  I feel good about it now though.  I love my new house.  Really love it.  Things I’ll do to it in the future will be cosmetic or minor.  Plus the old house is rented so I won’t be carrying two mortgages as long as it stays rented.  I think I’ve finally made the switch to feeling at home here and thinking of the other house as a rental property and not my home.  My cats and I all struggled a little with that switch.  It really is harder to make changes as you get older.

Another item from this year is that I got a really large raise.  Work has been going well, and I’ve been staying busy, both at work and with my national associations.  I actually got elected President –elect of one of my associations!  So in 2013 I’ll be President-elect and in 2014 I’ll be President.    I was pretty delighted to be elected.  Anyway, the raise was because we got a new department chair last year.  When he came in he made a lot of changes including a new evaluation system for faculty.  He also promised the faculty that he would bring our salaries up to at least 35% of the national average (our school having notoriously low faculty salaries).  And he kept that promise!  So between the new evaluation/incentive system and increasing the overall faculty salaries, I got a nice raise.  It allowed me to buy a new house without selling my old one and carry two mortgages if necessary, so I was happy with that. 

Vacation to Utah this year was outstanding.  I got to go with a friend of mine who hasn’t been able to go along for several years, so we really enjoyed it.  It would have been nice if my sister could have gone also, but sometimes schedules can’t be made to match up no matter what you do.

Another item I have to include in this year, much as I would prefer not to, is that parts of my family are feuding.  This has been going on essentially all year (actually I guess it started in the Fall of 2011) and has devolved to the point of people not speaking to each other or having anything to do with each other.  One of my minor resolutions for 2013 will be to stay the hell out of it.  Trying to do anything to solve it only antagonizes folks  – as I discovered.  So the feud will continue until they work it out themselves. 

Self-reflection time:  First (and most important) I worry that I’m turning into a grouchy old woman.  I got a bunch of Thanksgiving pictures from my sister that she took when she was here for Thanksgiving, and I’m looking sour in more of them than I’m looking happy.   I don’t want to be a sour, grouchy old lady, so I guess it’s time to consciously work on both my attitude and on my facial expression.  Or maybe the attitude work will take care of the face.  Although, I didn’t feel like I was being grouchy at Thanksgiving, and I enjoyed myself.  But you’d have never known that from my expressions.  So I guess I’ll consciously work on both.  

Second:  I need to get my finances back under control.  I went crazy after buying the house.  New carpet and ceramic tile. New wood flooring, new interior paint.  New furniture throughout the house.  My finances are currently more out of control than they’ve ever been, and because I have a good credit record, the credit card companies just joyfully increase my limits.  They love me!  Waaaaaaay past time to STOP SHOPPING!  So that’s high on my list for 2013.

Third: Health.  I’m so not getting any younger.  The vacation this year where I barely made it up my favorite hike really hit me hard.  It’s way past time that I pay more attention to my health – including my diet and getting more exercise.  I just am not very fond of foods that are good for me.  That and my crazy life style make eating healthy sort of difficult, but I know I can do better than I have been.  And I’ll need to get back on an exercise regimen so I don’t die out there hiking next year.

So I guess those are the major things that have happened this year and the major resolutions I’ll try working on for next year.  It's been a good year, but I'm ready to let it go and move forward.

End of the year!

Wow.  I’m so, so, so far behind on posting to this blog.   Here’s another attempt to do some catch up before the year is over, so this will be a bit random as things come to me.   Hopefully I’ll do a New Year’s Eve post reminiscing on 2012 in general so I don’t want to do that now.  I just want to talk about what’s happened since the last time I posted.

For one thing, Thanksgiving happened.  It was a blast.  My nephew from Denver came down with his wife and two daughters and stayed with me for three days.  The girls are shown clowning around in the picture below.   My parents and sisters and brother and his wife and son came to the new house also on Thanksgiving, so I had a houseful.  We had a big Thanksgiving meal – my parents essentially bringing the contents of their kitchen with them and cooking in my kitchen.  If you’ve read this blog much, you know my idea of cooking involves a microwave, so you understand why my parents had to bring so much stuff with them.   It was a lot of fun, and felt like a good way to break in the new house. 

This year I decided to put up a Christmas tree, which is something I haven’t done in a lot of years, but again, I wanted to break in the new house.  Plus I have so much nice space for a Christmas tree.  And so many ornaments that I’ve collected over the years and been saving in boxes in my garage.   So I put one up, which you can see in the first picture.   I’m enjoying it a lot.

A couple of weeks ago I had a brief power outage and it kicked my sprinkler system out.  Since I have it set to only water every third day, it took me about a week to realize it wasn’t working.   I’m very proud to say I figured out how to reset the system and get it back running again – just in time to turn it off for three days of freezing weather.

Snow!  I walked out last Monday morning and had a nice layer of snow on my lawn, probably less than half an inch, and big, fat, wet flakes coming down and layering on me as I walked to get my paper.  I was totally surprised.  Yes, the weather had called for a slight chance, but I ignored it since their ability to predict snow here is notoriously low.  It was my favorite type of cold weather.  Pretty, and around just long enough to say “oh, look, snow”, then it’s gone.   I’d be okay with it going back to daily low 70s for the rest of the winter now . . . which it seems to have done for now.  

So that’s basically what’s been happening.  My lawn service has switched from mowing and weed whacking to leaf blowing and garden cleaning. 

Oh!  I almost forgot a piece of big news!  My old house rented!  Yup, there are people living in the old house as of December 1^st.  My agent’s taking care of all of that, so I’m letting him deal with it.  I’ll just be glad to be getting some relief from carrying two mortgages.   Yay! 

I'll be doing a bit of traveling over the Christmas Holiday, seeing relatives who are coming to the metroplex, and relatives in east Texas and relatives in Colorado.  It'll be a little whirlwind, but should be lots of fun too.    I'll try to remember to take pictures.