Shouts of Joy

Hurrah for a weekend!

     Rounds of light snow and then a -10 morning have renewed my gratitude over having a garage...and now, an attached garage, too!

     A lovely evening Tuesday getting together with the Towners for dinner...that was special too, as their daughter made it and brought it over. Delicious!

     I'm very grateful for the small two-person huddle rooms on my floor, as I've been able to use those on some of my lunch break to keep moving ahead with book 5 pass 5 reading through the book out loud. If not for that, I wouldn't be able to keep up or get ahead of my schedule, not this week!

     Thanks to credit card points, I ordered a hand warmer from Amazon and got it just in time for the cold day. It certainly helps when I have to drive a frigid vehicle! This type of weather also reminds me to be thankful for the blessings of heat in general and reliable electricity.

     The big storm expected today ended up starting later than expected. So many people took off, worked from home, or left early that traffic leaving work wasn't bad at all and I didn't get home nearly as late as I'd been bracing for. Especially grateful for that since I can't edit on the bus rides right now.

Sundry gratitudes:

     I'm delighted my iron was high enough for a blood donation on Thursday.

     Considering how much I've been using it lately, I must mention my gratitude for the editing software I've been using as I worked on my fourth pass through my fifth Geren book. The same software also allows me to create eBook files, another blessing.

     A treat this week due to my parents' generosity with their Disney+ account. Started watching The Mandelorian as well as some other movies for exercise bike fodder.

     Annnnnd, pass 4 is done at last! Now I have little over a month to get through passes 5 and 6, though at least I could start on pass 5 before pass 4 finished. Got my work cut out for me and excited for mid-February!

New Year blessings:

     New Year's Day brought a lovely sunrise that I took bad photos of from my bedroom window. The afternoon was also lovely--around freezing with little wind, so I took a walk over to the rich neighborhood and got a little work-out wading through shallow snow in places. A great way to start the year.

     More fun thanks to Amazon Prime streaming. Accepted the reality that I won't have much time for reading for the foreseeable future, so I went ahead and watched the BBC Jane Eyre over three days and put 45 miles on the exercise bike. Very glad to become properly acquainted with the story at last!

     Very grateful that my scare Friday afternoon with the sense of vertigo coming on went away after a couple hours and has not (yet) turned into anything worse. Thank you, God!

     Deliciousness is my wonderful mother's wonderful homemade fruitcake, that I started in on Saturday.

     Delighted to get in contact with my editor, find out she enjoys my calendar picture, and start in on arrangements for the fifth Geren novel. I'm going to be very busy for the next month if I want to make the deadline!

A wide array of blessings:

     Really blessed Friday evening because the movie I chose to watch on Amazon streaming was An Inspector Calls, and it was the most amazing movie I have seen in quite some time. Unfortunately it hasn't been released in region 1, or I'd buy it for certain.

     Etsy and eBay started charging local sales tax in 2019! This delighted me when I started working early to calculate Use Tax for the year, because once combined with Amazon doing the same, not much is left for my online purchases. Over 90% is the hundreds of dollars in Use Tax to pay for thousands of dollars in professional editing costs, and I set up a budget for that. Happy day--since 2019 Use Tax is lower than expected, I can use some of that budget money for editing instead!

     So that ghastly ice storm Saturday meant I didn't get out to see the latest Star Wars movie until Sunday instead. But it was fun, especially the soundtrack!

     It being quite warm lately, and lots of rain Saturday night, meant that I was finally able to finish demolishing the ice mound in the parking lot that I have tried to chip away at over the past weeks. Just in time for the next snowfall, ha!

     A literal treat Monday morning with fresh fruit and goodies to celebrate Nancy's 20th service anniverary at work. Quite enjoyed that time.

Recent joys:

     Fun at work on Tuesday when I accidentally hit a keyboard shortcut that made my monitor display everything in greyscale! I think my boss might want to prank somebody with that now...

     I bought some good apple cider from an apple orchard a few months back, and I'm glad I remembered to open it Christmas Eve. Delicious!

     Thanks to just a half day of work, I got out to two Christmas Eve services. My own church at 3 pm, and a local megachurch at 7 pm, which had live animals on the stage. Goats, a camel, and a fluffy donkey make sense, but the alpacas were a bit of a creative addition!

     More fun driving around looking at neighborhood Christmas lights Monday and Tuesday evening.

     Christmas morning I got to relax at home, enjoy my decorations, and work on book 5 edits. Christmas afternoon was at the Towners, lots of fabulous food, gifts, and a good time.

     Some gifts don't require money. Case in point, the two amazing Christmas songs Aaron shared with Greg and me. I had to find them and put them in my Amazon MP3 cart right away when I got back home: 'What Child is This/Child of the Poor' performed by The Hound + the Fox, and 'Fall on Your Knees' by David Phelps with Charlotte Ritchie.

Weekend joys:

     On Friday evening I watched the last two episodes of Numbers season 6 while on my exercise bike. It has been quite a treat to be able to stream all six season for free thanks to Amazon Prime.

     Happiness is a package from my parents with delicious goodies! In this case, brownies, praline pecans, shortbread cookies, and my mom's priceless homemade FRUITCAKE.

     Blessed that the line for the post office Saturday morning was not nearly as bad as I'd feared.

     The warmer weather of late, and sunny sky, made it perfect for Cindy and I to talk a walk at the zoo Sunday afternoon. We had great views of the animals and it was fun to catch up.

Workweek delights:

     Enjoyed watching part of my employer's holiday concert during lunch on Thursday. Somebody played what looked like either a baritone or a euphonium--whatever it was, sounded marvelous, and the choir songs were fun also.

     Thursday evening brought my church group's holiday party, which was a lot of fun and food and goodies, as ever. Stayed too late, too!

     While I was running around Kowalski's trying to find something to bring to that party, I was blessed and delighted to find a whole display of Sprecher soda! I'd tried to buy some Sprecher root beer a week or so prier and been really disappointed to not find any...well, this time they had not only root beer, but cream soda, orange creme, and others as well! Since I already have a stockpile of cream soda, very happy to get root beer and orange creme and now I have enough to last until spring!

     Friday was wonderful because I brought gifts to work, and Tammy, Sarah, Nancy, and Dawn all really enjoyed their gifts!

     So grateful for answered prayer, because after multiple delays and then getting lost in the mail, the package with my single-page calendars for 2020 FINALLY arrived. What a relief!

Recent blessings:

     Found a fairly decent Christmas tree at Home Depot for less than $40. Though it's over 6 feet, it looks tiny because my ceiling is so high!

     I also found my 'Holiday Specs' that I bought last year as gifts for my nieces and nephews. It's a lot of fun looking at my lighted tapestry and Christmas tree through those.

     Also on the Christmas decor theme, it's a blessing to have the space to set up my mother's Christmas village for the first time in years. I love how my decorations look in my living room, and the new nativity lantern I got from eBay.

     Plenty of delays with various orders lately, but at least everything is finally moving!

     Lots of work on pass 4 in my fifth Geren book over the past few days...feel like I'm finally getting some traction!

Recent blessings:

     A delightful evening with the Towners on Tuesday, over a delicious dinner and getting to catch up.

     More happy feasting on Friday with the department year end party. For the second year in a row, they catered from Brasa, so I was in culinary ecstasy, ha ha. I really enjoyed getting to sit with Nancy, Perri, Dawn, and Mary. Got a neat Christmas gift from Nancy too.

     What a wonder to have a week that didn't just have one t'DoL dream in it, but TWO. Last Sunday morning and today, Saturday morning. Extremely different and both quite precious.

     Hurrah for a three-day weekend!

Weekend blessings:

     Two days in a row of delightful sunsets. On Friday while on the bus, got to see a vivid sun pillar that was some color between orange and magenta. Then on Saturday another fantastic sunset I rushed outside to take photos of. Quite a treat!

     Blessed to find that I already had two butterfly 3d models, so I only wound up spending $2 on a third for my single-page calendar project. Also blessed to find free images on the internet that I could use for the models. Also thankful to God for the idea to add the butterflies in the first place!

     Sometimes my desktop Quartus really impresses me. Like when I try to add the butterflies to the scene and it puts in over 300,000 without even blinking. Tertius would have been staggering around screaming warnings for certain!

     Delighted to enjoy the gift of my wonderful mother's delicious apple bread.

     I had to buy new Christmas tree lights this year, as I haven't had a tree since 2011 and all my prior lights either broke or got thrown out with moving. So the last week has been occupied with the fun of switching the bulbs around so each strand combines green, red, and gold. (Of course the bulb sockets were not interchangeable, so every bulb had to be pulled out of its socket.) Glad to be finished, and that I only smashed two bulbs by accident--the same number as the spares. Hopefully soon I can saver the fruits of that labor.

     The expected snow started later than forecasted, so I didn't have to get out early for shoveling Monday morning, or take an earlier bus. Always a treat to have some extra time to use for catching up on something else!

     Fourth night of blowing past my bedtime but I'm so glad I finally made it to the finish line with my 2020 single-page calendar project! What a relief!