Not "real" snow, just frozen fog. Though the fog was so heavy yesterday that the weather button reported it as "snowing lightly". I know that the everlasting fog combined with the dark affects my mood, but it was a hard week nevertheless.
It would be pretty, if only I didn't have to drive to work in it most days.
I sometimes wonder if vacation days are worth it. They don't mean that I work less: it's just deferred until I return. I took two days off before Thanksgiving and it left me behind all week. I know that I shouldn't grouse about it with so many unemployed and underemployed people out there, but being "overemployed" is taxing (pun intended). I've now held "the day job" for 16 years and 3 months which means that I have spent basically all of my 40's there and am working hard on the 50's. My goal has been to leave when I hit 60 and some days that feels attainable while other days I despair that it won't be.
Sometimes I look back and can't figure out where the 16 years went; it feels as if the time was squandered. And in another 16 years we'll be 73. If it passes as quickly as the last 16 . . . and I fear that it will.
We would like to take another winter vacation in February or March and go to where the sun is shining. It would be so much easier to leave if there was one more person in the department as my understudy and to do the invoicing. Kathy handles the a/p and payroll now, except for the more involved bills and the taxes. Mari processes payments and does a good job with collection calls. Both answer calls with billing questions and are kept busy 40 hours per week. I really can't assign any more tasks to either, especially when they see personnel in another department get paid for knitting and reading books while they wait for the phone to ring. Kathy knows how it is because she worked in monitoring before moving to my department in 2003. She learned to crochet there. But on the other hand working for me does not require nights, weekends, and holidays.
I would so much like to spend my time knitting and reading books . . .
Of course I would have no place to put an additional person in our office, were I allowed to hire one. When the office was redesigned a few years ago, our department was short-changed on square feet per person. We have a beautiful spacious central station, and have been told it is a showplace for the industry. We have a sales department with a lovely conference room and private offices for people who are seldom in the office. But such is the way in the business world.
Other depressing news for the week:
The Bandon shows are not on the 4th of July weekend in 2010. We will need to go ahead and release the campsites we reserved to lose only the reservation fee. If anyone wants to go to Bandon and camp on the non-dogshow weekend let us know right away. There appear to be lots of campsites still available for the following weekend: the 9th-11th or 12th. The Lost Coast (Ferndale) shows will be 3 days on 4th of July weekend (the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th) and I presume that Redmond will also be that weekend. And if you want to go to Bandon the dogshow weekend, let us know that as well (and which nights) so that we can reserve the appropriate number of spaces.
Yesterday would have been Jawoo's 16th birthday. I miss her: though it's the young-to-middle-aged Julie I miss, not the ancient dog she had become.
Yesterday an ultrasound revealed that in spite of 4 witnessed ties Nola is not pregnant. So there will truly be No-Pies.
Tuesday night when we returned from the SOKC meeting there was a message that Wendy-Sue, littermate to Kacy and Axel, had died the day before.
On the plus side, I finished the socks I was working on over Thanksgiving. I'm keeping this pair. Other recent projects included a pouch for holding cell phone, glasses, book, etc. for my side of the bed in the trailer. Only Tom's side has a nightstand which has been inconvenient for me. I'll take a picture of that someday when it's hung up and in use.
I've knitted on-and-off for years, though I started on large projects like afghans which I did not always carry with me. Socks are much easier in that regard and are useful as well so I have enjoyed working on them. I presume that there have been family members who did not realize I could knit (or for that matter do anything considered at all domestic). When I was working on my socks last week in California the remark was "Oh, you're knitting socks. How nice. That's the first thing we did as children when we first started knitting, before we moved on to bigger projects."
The only thing I could figure was that maybe they were tube socks with big yarn. The fitted socks are actually somewhat more complicated than the afghans, sweaters, hats, etc that I have also knitted. Humph.
Time to quit playing on the blog and to get some programming work done for the other job. And I have the laundry detergent set out in the kitchen to thaw as it solidifies in the garage where the washer and dryer are. The garage is refrigerator temperature when it's this cold outside.
Maybe the sun will peek through tomorrow or the next day. Do not believe the NOAA forecast linked on the blog. It is obviously written for people flying by in airplanes.
1) The view out my my back door. The ability to live out-of-town away from the noise and traffic.
2) Animals and all of the things they give us. I am happy not to live in Ingrid Newkirk's ideal world.
3) Julie, the first Cardigan. Who says "I'm still here!" each morning.
4) Healthy, well-fed puppies. In fact, puppies!
5) The good friends that the dogs have connected me with.
6) Computers, which allow us to be able to afford to live out of town, have puppies, and to communicate with our friends.
7) Google, which puts all of the world's knowledge at my fingertips.
8- My fingertips. Having one which doesn't work perfectly anymore - no thanks to dogs - makes you appreciate the others.
9) My eyes. Some people are aural in nature, others are visual. I have learned over the years that my brain is wired such that I am a visual person. The spoken word can go right past me (ask Tom).
10) My day-job. Sometimes. Or at least for my 401(k) may it live long and prosper, and the generous boss to help it do so.
11) Digital cameras, for making it easier to preserve and share memories.
12) For Oregon and for living here. I love living in a state and region with both some of the most spectacular and unspoiled coastline in the world . . .
and for equally spectacular mountains and desert.