Happy New(ish) Year!

You can still say Happy New Year in January, right?  Even if it’s the very last day of January?  Anyway, I hope 2019 ended well for all of you, and that you’re all having a great start to 2020.

I meant to do at least a few posts in December, but as usual time got away from me.  I had a few projects at work to finish up, and the usual holiday stuff just seemed to take over beyond that.  Here
are the highlights since the last time I posted:

An oldie but a goody:  Howard the meerkat.

We had our holiday meal at work.  It was a lunchtime potluck in mid-December.  I really like how the new job does it.  There aren’t many nearby options for lunch so almost everyone brings their lunch almost every day.  So bringing food to work and eating it there wasn’t really an inconvenience for anyone.  And I loved that it was during the workday.  It’s so much better than trying to fit in yet another event after work or on the weekend during the holidays.  And the food was awesome, which I’m sure contributed to my good opinion of it.  I got a few new recipes I’m looking forward to trying.  I brought macaroni and cheese, which went over very well. 

Nick and I went to my sister’s for Christmas.  It was just the three of us this time.  Nick’s mom and step-dad weren’t able to come because one of their cats was extremely sick, and they couldn’t leave him.  Fortunately, he’s doing much better now.  Our friend Alex ending up going to Florida to be with her family.  It was a little odd without our usual group, but the three of us still had a great time.  We’re working on putting together a second Christmas so everyone can get together to see each other and exchange gifts.

I bought a camera.   A nice one.  I’ve been toying with the idea for a long time.  I took pictures for a Realtor for a couple of years while I was going to school, and I fell in love with taking pictures.  I’ve never had any formal classes or training, but I love it, and I’ve dabbled with trying to improve my skills over the years.  I’ve never taken the plunge on a good camera, though.

One of my coworkers, Doc, has a degree from an art school and has done professional photography.  He was nice enough to look at some of my pictures (taken with a cellphone) and offered me some pointers that have been helpful.  He also said I have a good eye and have potential.  One really good Cyber Monday sale later, I was the proud owner of a new camera. 

Doc showed me a few things with the camera, and has sent me out into the world to practice.  He has promised to look at my pictures and tell me what’s working, what isn’t, and how to get them to turn out how I want them to.  I haven’t had as much time as I had hoped to experiment, but I think that will change now that the holidays are over.  You’ll probably be seeing more pictures from me.  Hopefully you’ll also notice an improvement in the quality. Just FYI, the pictures in this post are the usual cellphone pictures.

Nick’s mom sent the cats some catnip bananas for Christmas.  All six of the cats absolutely love them.  Tara loves them, which made me so happy.  Tara was a few years old when we adopted her, and had an extremely hard life.  She’s still very skittish around people.  Some days seem better than others, and lately she seems to be really coming out of her shell.  She loves the bananas so much that she came out and played with them, and even let me get some pictures of her playing with one.

Tara

 It snowed today.  It started off light around mid-morning, and then started coming down heavily.  We have the option to work at home during bad weather, so I panicked, took my laptop home, and finished up my work for the day at home.  I’m a South Carolina native, and we don’t handle snow well!  It’ supposed to get warmer this evening, so the snow should all be gone by tomorrow.  I certainly hope so!  Nick sees this as a dusting.  I see it as accumulation.   I think most of you who read and comment regularly live in colder climates, so I suspect most of you will see it as a dusting like Nick does. 

The view down our street. 

In my defense, it did snow some more after this picture was taken.

We had a Crock Pot cooking competition at work last week for a fundraiser.  I entered my macaroni and cheese.  I came in second place.  Obviously, first place would have been great, but I don’t think second place is too bad. 

Duke had surgery a couple of weeks ago.  He had two cysts on the top of his head that needed to be removed.  He also had some broken teeth that needed to be pulled.  The vet thinks he probably broke the teeth chewing hard on something.  Given everything Duke gets into, I think that’s an excellent explanation.  He did well with the surgery, and is recovering nicely.  Duke is pretty popular at the vet’s office, so I know he was treated very well.  He insisted on going around to tell everyone bye before we left.  He did manage to look very pitiful the next day, and convinced us to give him quite a few treats. 

Duke

Nothing else is really coming to mind that merits posting about.  It always seems strange to me how the end of the year seems insanely busy, but whenever I try to list what we did there’s just not much.  Does that happen to you? 

So how has 2020 started off for you?  Was the end of 2019 insanely busy?

Of course, no catch up post is complete without random cat pictures, so here are a few more for you to enjoy. 

Charlie & Mortimer

Howard

Mortimer

Caroline