Starting 2017

Hah!  Surprised you, right?  Didn't think I'd post again so soon, I bet.  Actually I'm kind of surprising myself, but I do want to keep up with this blog more this year.  

2017 is starting out good so far in most ways.  I'm sticking to my exercise schedule, despite having pulled a muscle in my lower back some time last week.  So I'm sticking to it a bit gingerly this week, but I'm sticking to it.  And the diet thing is better.  I actually have fruit and veggies in my house.  Definite moves in the right direction.

Work is going well too.  My new faculty member continues to be awesome, and I'm nearly caught up!  Yes, that's correct.  All those many things I had on hold because of association duties last year, are almost all done.  And the book that I'm senior editor on is at the printers!  What a chore that was.   So I'm quite happy with work and how it's going.  

There are two things I'm less happy about.

One is that I lost my renters on my old house.  They left at the end of the year with no notice.  So they don't get the deposit back, but the deposit won't cover the repairs on the house.  It has to be completely repainted (which should be happening this weekend) and the carpet has to be replaced (which I've arranged to happen as soon as the ordered carpet arrives). There are also lots of other more minor things like the kitchen faucet needs to be replaced, doors need re-keying, fence in the back needs to be repaired, plus general cleaning, etc.  Luckily my agent is dealing with all this (except I went and did the carpet arranging) and just sending me the bills.

There are two good things about this.  The best one is that my agent does not think the house will be empty long.  He says the housing market is good for rentals and we don't have much competition.  The other good thing is that an honorarium I got for speaking last year arrived this month, and it is enough to cover a big chunk of the repairs.  So the timing on that was perfect. I do hope it rents quickly though so I'm not paying two mortgages for very long.

The other thing was something that happened this week at work.  An IT guy repairing my computer on Monday was bumping into my big African violet which has been blooming in that corner of my desk for almost 2 years now.  Tuesday morning when I came it, it was lying on it's side!   I re-potted it, but even when I left on Friday it's not clear whether it will survive or not.  The center seems to be holding it's own, but all the outside leaves are drooping and I've been removing the increasing number of leaves that are obviously not going to make it.   I hate to admit, I have put about 10 leaves from that plant in water, to make sure I can restart it if it doesn't survive.  The two pictures here are two angles on it's poor damaged self from Thursday and it looked about the same on Friday.  We'll see what it looks like when I go in to work on Tuesday.  The African violet picture earlier in the post is one of the other ones in my office - blooming happily.

I haven't done any yard work beyond cutting back the roses on New Year's weekend.  Last weekend I was "stove up" as they say, with my back problem, and the weather was sucky.  This weekend the weather continues sucky - drizzling or raining and temps hovering around 50.  Maybe I'll try the inside chores I didn't do last weekend due to the fact that mopping and sweeping doesn't work well when you're back is bothering you.  We'll see how motivated I am - or am not.

Addy continues well.  I hope I am able to make that particular statement for a long time yet in each blog post.  Hang in there, baby.

That's all for today.