New Year's Eve 2013

Today is New Year’s Eve 2013.  I’m going to try to write my usual New Year’s Eve blog post. This is usually a retrospective look at what my year has been like.  Today, I’m starting a little early because I’m trying out my new Dragon Naturally Speaking software which types what I’m saying.  I think this software is smarter than I am.  I can see it’s going to take a little bit of work to figure out how to use it easily.

Okay. Today is a really gorgeous day outside, if a little bit cold. Anyway it’s cold for me since I’m a Texas girl.  I’m on vacation right now, sort of.  I’m taking these two weeks over the Holidays off, but I’ve been going in to work to sign out test results.  It takes about an hour out of my day which isn’t too bad.  Other than that, I’ve been puttering around the house doing small chores and basically doing whatever I want.  Still, I was hoping to get some yard work done in these two weeks and I haven’t been able to because I really don’t like the cold.  I think that I would’ve been happier with this stay-cation if I had been a little more productive during it.  I did manage to do a lot of reading and other things that I just wanted to do, but I hate to say it . . . it feels a little bit like I’ve wasted this time. Which it shouldn’t, because it’s a vacation after all.  I suppose I need to stop feeling guilty.  

I do want to do my annual retrospective of the year, and I am going to try doing it with this software program because it’s kind of fun to play with.  It’s really an incredibly smart program. And its spelling is a whole lot better than mine is.  I’ll be really interested to see how it handles anime-related spelling, when I use this to write my anime blog.  *Laughing*  I just trained it to use the word 'anime'.  It really is a pretty smart program.  I may have a hard time doing my retrospective because I’m having so much fun playing with this program.

This is been a long and hard year for me.  The biggest thing probably is that my health has been an issue, which is a little ironic considering that I started off the year decided to pay more attention to my health.  Good news first: I ended up 18 pounds lighter than I started the year which is great.  And my diet is a whole lot better than it was at the start of the year.  I’m eating things like fruit and yogurt and I’m not eating fast food, or not very much.  I’m also not drinking Coke.  So from that perspective I’m in pretty good shape.  The bad news: I did end up getting TB this year, although luckily just latent TB.   I’m currently slightly less than halfway through the treatment for that.  I also had four bad colds this year, but I haven’t had any since I began the TB treatment which was in September.  So I have to say that although my health has been an issue, it’s basically looking pretty good right now.

The other part of this year that’s been hard for me is all the work that has had to be done on my house.  Beginning in September I had foundation repair done which was pretty expensive and extensive, followed by repair to my plumbing in the slab (ditto on the expensive/extensive), and now I need interior work done on the house to repair the damage done by the foundation issues. Yes, this all started in September and I still need to get the interior work done. It’s been a long and depressing Fall.

On top of the house and health issues, I also ran for office in my national organization and didn’t win. It’s actually the first election with them that I’ve run in and NOT won. That kind of hurt my feelings, although it’s silly because my opponent deserved to win just as much as I did.  It kind of felt like typical of how my luck has run this year though.

In all fairness, there have been good things about 2013 also. Even though both my parents had bad enough health issues this last summer that we thought we would lose my mother, both of them are doing incredibly well right now. That’s something that I’m amazingly grateful for.  I’m just so grateful for having been able to spend both Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with my parents when last August I wasn’t sure I would be able to spend any more holidays with them at all.  Also my current state of health is a pretty good thing.  And I did get to take a 10 day vacation to Japan in May with my friend. That trip created some memories that I’ll be remembering fondly for a long time.

So basically, I’m really glad to be getting out of 2013. This year has had some really high and really low emotional swings and has been an expensive year.  Overall it’s been pretty good to me, since I have a stable job which I enjoy, I like the people I work with, and most importantly, my family is all well and mostly thriving.  Plus, now I'm fairly healthy myself and I can afford the house work.  Still, I’m ready to leave 2013 and start a new year.  Time to move on.

Pictures are of Zoe acting more like a cow than a cat.  She does love her cat grass.  And also of the little budgie.  He still shows up at my feeder randomly, so I guess he’s surviving so far.  

Hmmmm.  Last thing:  I should make some resolutions.  Okay, keep being healthy, including start exercising again, which I quit right before Thanksgiving.  Also . . . get the house work finished, and spend some time on keeping the place up, including doing some basic yardwork - like replacing the shrubbery killed by the repair people.  Lastly:  I failed miserably to get my finances under control (one of my 2013 resolutions).  Partly that was the house.  Plus when you lose 20 pounds, your clothes no longer fit, so I had to update my wardrobe.  So my third resolution again this year will be to take a stab at controlling the spending.  

I guess that's pretty much it.  Oh!  I quit using the speaking software about 2 paragraphs back.  Not too shabby.   

Ice storm

That's the big news around here this week of course.  The ice storm.  I'm posting some pictures of ice-covered trees and the poor doves, who are congregated around my bird feeders and all puffed out from the cold.  Interestingly, some of the mourning doves have a definite pink tinge to their breasts and above their beaks.  You can kind of see it in the picture below.  And there's one white-winged dove out there too (pictured walking by himself). 

The ice storm came in Thursday evening.  I was driving home from a dinner with a speaker when it was beginning and the bridges were already starting to freeze.  I stayed home Friday, which is unusual for me.  I have an all-wheel-drive Subaru, so I usually go to work, but I just wasn't ready to face it Friday.  So I worked from home (thank you remote access!) and took pictures of icy things.

Unfortunately yesterday I had to get out in it.  I had committed to interview medical school applicants on Saturday and the applicants got here.  So I left my house about 3 hours before I had to be there, and it took me about an hour to get into work.  I really thought I was going to die at one point though.  

About 5 other cars and I were inching our way across the Trinity River over a five lane bridge that was horrific.  Refrozen into slippery 4 inch deep ruts that threw your car around besides the basic slipping.  We were probably all going less than 5 mph, maybe 2-3 mph, but we were inching our way across.  I looked up into my rear view mirror and there's a semi barreling down on us, doing at least 50 mph.  I thought, well that's it.  Nowhere to go.  No way to get there even if there was.  No way was he going to be able to stop.  I didn't even get an adrenaline surge, maybe because I thought it was inevitable and there was nothing to do.  

The semi moron (well total moron, but driving a semi) whipped into the nonexistent left hand lane and flew past us all.  Really I had forgotten about that lane because it was iced over so badly, nobody was even trying to drive in it.  If there had been anyone in that lane, or if he hadn't controlled it on that ice, none of us probably would have escaped being involved in the wreck.  That was by far my scariest moment of the day, going in.

Coming back had some nerve-wracking moments, but nothing like that one.  It also took me longer (almost 1 1/2 hours) because my way home usually involves some long, high ramps.  I went alternate routes in order to miss those, and then secondary alternate routes from my alternate routes when the alternate routes were blocked off as impassible (long steep hills).  I was just glad to finally get home.  Even if my garage door opener was frozen and I had to get out and open it by hand.  

This morning I fell on the ice going to get my mail.  Not serious.  Bruised knees probably.  Have I mentioned that I'm not that fond of ice?  The good news is that even though the sun hasn't shown itself since last Wednesday some time, it's slightly above freezing now.  A lot of this stuff is melting.  I have a small rainstorm coming off my roof.  Of course it will freeze back up tonight, but any little thaw makes the roads somewhat more passable for tomorrow.  

And the cat kids and I are staying in and staying warm today, although Zoe would like a chance at the dove congregation, as you can see.  And I have every faucet in my house dripping for the duration.  I'll shoot myself if I have any frozen and broken pipes.


In other news, my big laptop has blue screened 4 times in the last day, despite everything I've done to try to fix it, so it's packed up to go back to Fry's for some work.  I pulled my receipt on it.  I bought it in July 2011, with a 3 year service/warranty contract.  Must have been psychic.  So I'm on the Internet on my small travel laptop today.

I suppose that's it for today.  I'll save other news for the next post.  Later.