Winding Down The Year

The last few days I haven't felt that great so I've watched almost every old movie ever made, some of which I've never seen or heard of, which is amazing. It's been nice to stay out of the hectic rigamarole of life for a few days, tucked cozily into the house with a soothing old, b&w movie running in the background maybe with a little Perry Mason sandwiched in the middle.

Tomorrow though I'm jumping back into it. At least the traffic is ultra-light this week, which makes work less stressful from the get go. Still with health care legislation having been announced, I know my work life is going to become frenzied. I received notice of another one of our high performers giving their notice today. I guess the fact that I lived through 2009 and if I can survive 2010, I can make it through anything.

I just overheard a commercial that talked about, "hotel sheets giving you the creeps". Where do they come up with this stuff? This is decidedly one of the pitfalls of watching the old movie channels, the commercials are full of $19.99 infomercials that will throw in their firstborn "absolutely free"!

"Napoleon and Samantha" is on the Hallmark Channel right now. It's the only movie plot I know of about an old, throw away lion. I don't typically watch this channel, it's a little too family friendly for me but this movie stars Jodie Foster when she was about 5 or 6 (maybe older, she was so tiny it was hard to tell) and she was just too cute. However, I'm quite certain this was the last time she was amenable to wearing ruffles. Just watching her run down the road was a riot.

I guess I'll go watch it for awhile rather than just listen to it from afar.

A Month's Hiatus

What is it about December that causes your normal and orderly life to fall by the wayside? Is it the decorating? Is it the Christmas letter/card preparation and mailing? Is it the gift shopping and buying? Is it the gift wrapping? Is it the watching of every Christmas movie I own? Is it the food shopping and prep? Is it the holiday events like plays or concerts? Is it the parties both at my house and theirs? Or is it the jammed noses (direct contact with my 3-year old grandson's head) combined with the sinus infection? Somehow I think it's all of the above.


What I'm saying is that the last month has excluded; exercising other than a few haphazard attempts, the appropriate diet which was replaced with a completely inappropriate diet, zero trips to my parents's house, reading, keeping adequate track of calendar events and obviously posting any blogs.

So, rather than waiting for the new year to restart my normal activities, I'm using this lazy day to get my writing urge rebooted.


I think I'll talk about what's happening now, as we come to the end of 2009.


Supposedly we have some kind of health care legislation that has been passed. You'll notice I left out the word "reform". As far as I can tell, Congress managed to avoid reforming health care by simply spending a buttload of money to simply expand the overly expensive, lower quality version we have across more people. The fact that I work in the field of health care means this bill will undoubtedly have some kind of an effect on our business, I just don't know what that will be just yet.


So many beloved, or at least famous people, passed away this year:


Jennifer Jones, Andrew Wyeth, Walter Cronkite, Michael Jackson, Farah Fawcett, Ricardo Montalban, Natasha Richardson, Gene Barry, Patrick Swayze, Frank McCourt and Andrew Wyeth...


We also lost Jack Kemp, Al Martino, Enunice Shriver, Edward Kennedy, Soupy Sales and Mary Travers, to name just a few.


While we have avoided the excessive snow of a year ago, it is a bitterly cold wind that has been blowing through and encourages us to stay indoors by a cozy fire. I'm just hopeful our trees all stay standing here unlike those in the immediate vicinity of the beach house. One daughter will welcome the New Year in Kentucky. Another will be with her husband and their two babies, one of whom will be celebrating his first, New Year's that is. Our oldest daughter will be celebrating her first New Year's as a married woman and our son will probably be fighting fires on his.


The new year promises to be challenging and exciting with new experiences to enjoy. Work will be work but I need to be sure I focus on outside interests as much as possible just to stay sane.


I guess you could call that my New Year's resolution. Happy 2010!