Almost There

I'm about to call it a very long day. By the time I wake up in the morning, Maria and Nate should be boarding a plane to begin their journey back to LA and they'll be closing the chapter on their journey. Which means I'm about to close a chapter on mine as well. I'm very excited about seeing them. I miss them terribly. It's been a very interesting month. While I knew it would be different, I'm not sure I did everything I expected to do.

Looking back now on what I accomplished versus what I thought I was going to do, I come to the same realizations I have every other day of my life, there just isn't enough time to get it all done. You find you make time for some things, hopefully, if you're doing it right, they're the things you value most. When I look at the last 4 weeks, I can say that my priorities have been working, golfing, my dog and my fitness. I fell short of my intentions in terms of seeing Lorraine, mostly because she was sick. The incident with Tony's seizure also changed some of my intentions there, however overall about what I expected. The house is still standing, in fact I even made a few repairs, mostly with paint and spackle. Got a tray made for Aggie's Xmas decorations. Did laundry and kept the mess to a minimum, luckily I haven't had to do much to clean here in the last few days. I didn't leave the house as much as I thought I might, wound up working from home alot. Recovered a PC crash from a bad hard drive and isolated the issue with Maria's laptop. I'm nearly ready for valentine's day, just need to figure out what to do for dinner. After all, they'll be too jet lagged to do anything too special. Didn't go skiing like I wanted, not sure if it was laziness or not wanting to do it alone, probably a bit of both, with a little lack of new snow thrown in. I did get my taxes done and have a strategy for the next steps with Lorraine's house, but the hard work is still to come there. Back yard is in a bit worse shape than I'd like, but didn't plan to have so many issues with the dog and she tore up the back yard quite a bit. All in all, I guess I'd grade my time a B. I could've done a little less HP work and had some more me time to accomplish a bit more, but like when Maria's here, I always struggle to minimize that piece. Got the major things done I wanted to accomplish and had some fun. Overall, glad it's coming to end and I can be back with my family and get back to the normal routine, which is anything but normal or routine.

I'd chat more about V-day plans, but if Maria reads this, I don't want to spoil anything. It's not much anyways, things are tight now, and it's a down economy. We'll save anything major for her birthday coming up. Looks like Mike and Lilia will be joining us for skiing in Tahoe. Looking to book a room at Harvey's for a night or two. That should be a fun getaway.

Time to hit the sack, and plan out the last few things to do before maria gets here. I know I need to catch up on laundry and file away Lorraine's '08 paperwork, but I keep thinking I'm missing something else. Maybe it'll come to me while I'm dreaming.

Good night!