I’ve been kind of quiet here lately, partly because I haven’t had anything burning to say and partly because of how busy I’ve been. So here’s a quick recap of the last month (since I see it’s been exactly that since I last posted).
December saw us visiting a lot of family. My in-laws came up for Christmas and we all spent about a week in Portland with my family. It was a nice trip and fun having Christmas with a big group. It’s been several years since I’ve spent Christmas there and with the other side of the family so scattered around the Northwest it’s been a long time since I’ve been at a big family gathering for Christmas.
It was great being around so much family for such an extended period of time. I spent quality time with my cousins, including Rachel who was visiting from out-of-country, and my cousins, aunts, and uncle all enjoyed seeing us and especially Rosamond.
One of the highlights of the week was seeing a chunk of family we don’t see often enough. I arranged for almost all the cousins on that side of the family to be there and it was the first time we’d all been together in quite some time. It was a lot of fun reminiscing and catching up. Soup and pie was the theme for dinner and my aunt and cousin really out did themselves with the menu. Three delicious soups and three delicious pies. Pretty wonderful.
After the holiday Lurline, R, and I got some quality time at home together as a family. We had a quite New Year’s Eve. I was the only one to make it past midnight, though I didn’t tune in to see the ball drop. I was too busy playing video games to notice the time until about 12:30. Even though I missed having the parties we had the first few years we were in the house it was still a nice night. Maybe next year we’ll have a party again, but I don’t regret not having one this year.
January has been very busy. I decided to take two classes in the winemaking program at one of our local colleges and they are pretty time consuming. Between reading and class I’m busy for a fair amount of my free time. It’s fun, but one of the classes is in the evening and it really eats in to my time with the family and that’s a bit of a bummer. I plan to take more next term and hopefully it works out so that any evening class I have to take isn’t butted right up against orchestra practice.
I am, however, really enjoying the class. I am taking Intro to Enology and Wines of the World. The former is a lot of review for me after working in a winery, but I’m still learning some of the “why” behind a lot of the “what” I already know. That’s really helpful. Wines of the World is pretty interesting. I’m not familiar with much of the wine from other countries, so the information and tasting are really interesting. About half the class is lecture about the various regions and the other half is tasting wine from those regions. I’m glad that I’m learning about international regions and wine and also glad for the tasting that will help me develop my palate. (Palate is the term used for the ability to taste wine and discern it’s components and complex flavors.)
After some of my lonely chunks of the last year I’m trying to schedule in more social time with friends, both with and without children. With the friends with kids it’s great for R to get to spend time with the kiddos socializing (as much as a one-year-old socializes) and without the kids it’s easier to have an adult conversation, which is nice in a totally different way. Today we go meet with our friends Jeremey and Sage, which I’m looking forward to. Last time we got together both us adults and the kiddos had a great time.
I’ve also snuck in some time to work on some house projects. We’ve been pretty frustrated with some of the lighting in the house basically since we moved in, so we finally decided to do something about it. Last weekend I spent probably around 5 hours installing a new light in R’s room. Though it was sometimes frustrating and always tiring I got it done and feel pretty proud. Next up is my office and the living room. I think I learned enough about the old lights I’m replacing and the new lights I’m installing that the next two lights should take nowhere near 5 hours each. Here’s hoping.
The new lights in R’s room.
This is the canister light the track lighting replaced. I used a kit to basically convert the canister to a junction box with a brace to hang the light from.
The rest of the month promises to be much of the same, and promises to keep me busy and engaged. This should be a nice change from some of the lonelier parts of the last year and I hope the social time and classes keep up. That’s it for now.