It's a busy time here in the northern casa. Tile is being laid, trim is going up and getting stained, the new HVAC system is getting installed, and today, the cabinet boys started carrying in boxes and drawers that will soon become bathroom vanities and kitchen cabinets. The interior is going to go through some radical visual changes over the next two weeks.

We are still hoping to move upstairs the day before Christmas, but that will depend on everything going according to plan (a dubious expectation in my experience) and the city inspectors signing off on occupancy. Assuming all of this comes to be, we will celebrate Christmas without much in the way of furniture camped around a miniture tree and being warmed by space heaters because the in-floor heating system can't be turned on until the tile has been in for 28 days.

Then, in the week between Christmas and New Year's, we will be shuttling between the southern house and the northern one, packing and moving. It will be an insane way to end one year and start another. We will see.

Our college fresh(wo)man will be arriving home (both of them) sometime next week. She won't get up north until the 22nd but will be on break for about a month. It will be nice to have her back with us for that time. She will be a big help on the packing/moving effort since she has quite a bit of stuff that needs to be gone through before it actually gets moved north.

This time of year sees a lot of stress under the best of circumstances and this year it is topping out over the levee's. I think we are all doing pretty well, but there is so much that needs to be done. I haven't even started on the whole gift thing. Ack.

My health seems to be holding its own except for the nagging "cold" that lingers on. I am in the process of finding new doctors, dentists, veternarians to care for all of our ails when we might need them. I hope I can land some good ones on the first try.

Sometime on the other side of the new year, we will be in a position to have visitors. Once the boxes have been emptied (or at least stuck away in some dim corner) and the furniture has been set in place, we will have lots of room for visitors, whether for a meal, a chat, or for a night's lodging. One reason we laid the plans as we did was so that we could offer our friends and relatives a place to rest when passing through this part of the country and we hope that you will take us up on that when the opportunity arises. We would love to see you.

We are also in the process of changing email providers. I will post our email links in a little while when we are certain that all of the new options are working.

Anyway, I needed to post an update to let you know that no one has committed me yet, though that remains a possiblity over the remaining month. If you see a strange guest author hanging a note up here, you will know that I am taking a mental health vacation in some full-service, padded motel.

Till then,

TTFN