February 1, 2009

Wow it is February already, although with the way this winter is going, the sooner through these next two months the better. I'm guessing ole, Puxatony Phil is going to be predicting 6 more weeks of winter - at least. They had on the news this week that our usual average snowfall is 11 inches by this point in the season - we are now at 30 inches and still growing. But we are enjoying having the forest covered with a beautiful coat of white.

Jo spent the week in Berlin (hence the Brandenburg gate photo this week) although didn't manage to snag any bratwurst and sauerkraut the whole time there and only had spatzle at one meal. The problem at these meetings is that the organizers always want to plan fancy meals that don't usually include the important basics. She came back pretty exhausted as she was only getting about 5 hours of sleep a night and this is someone who enjoys a good solid 8 - at least on the weekends. I had clear evidence when one night she gave me a call at 8:30 in the evening - which is 2:30 in the morning over there.

My week was difficult as this is the week my group found out their employment status with Pfizer and naturally it was my job to inform them. I'll leave it at it was a terribly difficult week for me and one I hope to not have to repeat again in my career. I fortunately was able to get some exercise in as I find running really helps me get through the stressful times. We did get some snow this week, unfortunately, before I could get home and get the snowblower revved up the precipitation turned to rain and soaked everything. While the snowblower is great fun it isn't capable of handling throwing a soaking wet snow. That meant, back to the manual method. Which provided an interesting experience of shoveling wet snow, in the rain, with periodic lightening as a backdrop. Never shoveled snow with lightening before.

For the weekend, I tackled the year-end budget and savings along with starting in on taxes. Not good news on any front there. Very disappointing to be paying capital gains for a mutual fund that has lost 20-30% of the value. Joann putzed around - pretty much what she always does on weekends. We decided to have turkey and stuffing for dinner, so we purchased one of those that just has breast meat (I do wonder what they do with the turkey legs and dark meat - turkey sausage??). Really hit the spot. Today's big plan is to watch the Superbowl - as is our usual tradition, we use the Superbowl as an excuse to eat nothing but junk food, so nachos are on the meal plan for today.

The coming week holds a trip to Miami for Joann, who is looking forward to running somewhere warm once. And I'm off to St Louis for a couple of days at the end of the week. We cleverly planned our travels so that Jo returns on Wednesday, while I leave on Wednesday just to keep our trend going of not both being in the same place at the same time.

Have a great week.