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Saturday, January 16, 2009

One of the side effects of travel anywhere is coming back with renewed enthusiasm for my everyday life with this past trip being no exception. After putting 1777 miles on the car, ending up in a snow bank in a cemetary for two hours, being stopped in traffic on I8O West in PA and traveling 55 miles in 40 hours, and driving 150 miles through the mountains in a snowstorm, I arrived home pretty tired this time. I learned a lot about patience. In any one of the situations it took about three minutes to realize that I could do nothing about it so I just needed to chill and go with the flow. It happened that I had my iPhone with me, OnStar working, food, books, knitting, heat, XM radio...all of which helped to pass the time.

So I get home and it really took a few days to get rested and unpack, get the laundry done. I still have newspapers to read and TV shows in the DVR to watch. I had told Liz to leave all the Christmas stuff up as this is the year that I am cleaning through it and throwing out anything that doesn't mean anything to us. This year's additions to the Christmas tree are "Hounds on the Sound" magnet and am looking for something that says "World Series 2009" to add to the ornaments. The last of the tree ornaments and the tree will be down today and Christmas will be cleaned out. MLK Day is the new Three Kings Day, right?

Now....the overwhelming thought is to get my life into some kind of order. I need to really crank up my lists of things to do. I need to get everything straightened financially. I need to get my photographs into smugmug.com and get them tagged. I needed to read more books, watch more movies. I need to get my email and computer cleaned out. This is the year I need to buy a new computer, new luggage, and a macro lens for my camera. For what? A macro lens? To take yet more pictures, of course, that need to be put into smugmug and tagged. I need to really work at going through this house room by room and throw out stuff, take pictures of anything valuable for insurance reasons and so that the kids will understand what some of this stuff is some day.

I need to......I need to......I need to......I need to... wait......I am retired. I need to take a nap.