January 9, 2011



A winter wonderland!



My first posting of the new year.  It has been a while as Jo and I have been swamped with the holiday season, travel, and dealing with the changes happening with Jo and Pfizer. 

We spent our holidays split between visiting my parents in New Mexico and having some time at home to catch up on sleep and a few chores.  New Mexico enjoyed great weather while we were there and we got in several good runs through the open lands - although the lack of oxygen is always a challenge, especially as we have aged.  My brother and his family came down as well and it was nice reconnecting with the Wyoming side of the family.    We did manage to miss all the weather problems with our travel and got back home with only a pretty minor delay flying into to Providence.  One upside, the snow storm that had tied up  travel throughout the Northeast left us with a driveway needing snowblowing.  This was the first time for starting up the blower and that is always a special one.  The rest of our vacation we spent doing some year-end cleaning around the house and visiting with friends. 

The more interesting end of the year event (besides the countdown to midnight on New Year's eve that is)  is that Jo is no longer working with Pfizer.  Her boss came to her in November about possibly downsizing her role and after some serious and intense discussions between us, we decided it was the right move to make.  Jo has a few minor items to clear up with work and then she will be a lady of leisure - at least until she gets bored.  I'm predicting about 2 weeks for that to happen.  In the mean time, I'm hoping for fancy dinners at night and slightly cleaner closets in her office (very wishful thinking on that last one).

More recently, we spent the weekend hunkered down through 2 snowstorms.  Friday night we got about 4 inches that blanketed all the trees with white and justified getting out the snowblower.  Then another storm came through on Saturday night with another 2-3 inches.  For those keeping a running total (as I am) that's 3 snowblowing events so far - the year is off to a great start!  I'm spending the rest of today working on our fried computer.  Just before the break our main computer gave up the ghost, refusing to boot up.  After some repair work, we now have it back, but without any of the software or information loaded on.  That's my job today.