Catching up

I haven't been keeping up with blogs lately - I haven't been feeling all that well the last week or so and just haven't been on the computer much.  I went to the doctor yesterday and got some drugs; so, I 'll hopefully start feeling better soon.

First off, a belated merry Christmas to everyone.  I was planning on writing a Christmas blog post, but it just didn't happen.  So, I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas holiday.

For the very first time ever in my entire life - we had a white Christmas.  It snowed pretty much all day Christmas Eve.  At first it wasn't sticking as the day before it had gotten up to 70 degrees.  But, as the day wore on the temperature continued dropping and the snow kept falling with an accumulation of about 2.5 inches on our yard - which was till on the ground Christmas morning.  By noon Christmas day it had started melting and the streets were pretty much clear - but even today there are still patches of snow under trees and next to buildings which don't get much sun; and, we're supposed to get more snow this afternoon. I'll have to say that white Christmas's aren't as glamorous as they sound - it's cold!  And I slipped and almost fell when I went out to get the newspaper.  I'll take a balmy Christmas, thank you very much.

And, in case anyone is wondering, that is an actual picture of my house on Christmas morning.  I risked life and limb to go across the street to snap that picture.  Next is a picture of my backyard.  It may not seem like much snow to all of you Utah folks - but it's a lot for us.  Something to consider is that we don't have snow shovels.  Our local cities don't have the equipment to keep roads clear; so, it was pretty icy Christmas Eve night which resulted in quite a few accidents.  Also,many flights were canceled at D/FW airport; so, a lot of people woke up Christmas morning in an airport terminal.

Christmas day was pretty quiet overall.  Christmas Eve we had two of our children over with spouses for our Christmas dinner.  My daughter then spent Christmas day over at her in-law's while my son and his wife spent Christmas day with us.  We slept in and made Eggs Benedict for breakfast before we even started opening presents.  Christmas afternoon we went to see Avatar in 3D - it was good, but not great.

I had one present that I bought for my wife that didn't arrive before Christmas.  I bought the latest "Star Trek" movie on DVD from Borders online.  It came today, and I discovered I had ordered the blu-ray version - and we don't have a blu-ray player.  Actually, I knew I was getting the blu-ray version, it's a 3-disk edition and I thought it also came with the regular DVD (which a lot of movies are doing); but, evidently not this particular version I got - I failed!  Fortunately I was able to return it at the local Borders bookstore and didn't have to hassle with sending it back.

Saturday morning I had signed up to clean the church building.  There were 3 families there; so, it went pretty fast.  Plus, it was pretty clean to begin with since it hadn't been used since the previous Sunday.  I took it upon myself to go around the building to find things in need of repair (lights out, broken tables, etc.) and sent an email to both our ward and stake building coordinators.

Since Christmas I've just been chilling.  I have to keep a box of kleenix nearby as I've been blowing my nose constantly.  I have some sort of sinus infection for which the doctor gave me antibiotics.

I'm starting to think maybe I should just give up on the idea of being a teacher or work in the I/T industry.  Both area's are pretty dried up - at least from my job searching.  I just need to find a job - any job.  Realistically, I don't really need to make that much - the children are grown and we're pretty much debt free (just the house and a car payment).  The biggest worry is health insurance - I need to work someplace that offers health insurance.  Right now I'm still covered under COBRA - but that's going to be running out in the next few months.  And, this watered down, over compromised, pork filled, health care bill that is currently being peddled through congress isn't going to do much, if anything, to help people in my situation - I'm neither old enough nor poor enough.