Here we are at Week 52 and I'm glad to see the end of 2015. While there were no major calamities, the garage tear-down and rebuild took more time, money, and emotional energy than anticipated. And it isn't finished as we're still waiting on the builder to install the garage door opener. I called and left a reminder on his voicemail yesterday and hinted rather strongly that I'd like to get this wrapped up by the end of the year or, if that isn't possible, by the middle of January. If that fails I'm going to Angie's List to look for someone who can do the job. Due to the way our garage was framed I'm not confident in our ability to do it ourselves (even though jebra installed openers on his parent's and grandmother's garages).

Our aging cars were another source of frustration and financial woe. For a while we were making weekly trips to the auto repair and/or transmission shop. No sooner would we bring home one car than the other one would break. I'm knocking wood that the cars behave in 2016 as I doubt we'll be in a financial position to replace them until 2018.

Another major source of stress was dealing with my back/dropped foot and worrying about upcoming changes to our health insurance. I still don't know what is going to happen with either one although I'm certainly trying harder to lose weight and become more active.

Anyway, about Week 52. On Christmas Day jebra and I went out for Chinese then drove over to our friends Jean & Marshall's where we hung out and watched one of Jean's favorite movies, The Year of Living Dangerously. I'd never seen it before and while I wasn't wild about the movie I fell more in love with Linda Hunt. She's amazing.

Saturday we slept in, played Ingress, and went shopping for the ingredients to make chili. Sunday was more of the same plus laundry and actually making the chili. (Not that I can take credit for the cooking -- that's jebra's department.)

Monday was back to work, lots of rain, a bit of Ingress, then home to knit and finish watching the episode's of the Homicide Hunter I'd recorded during A Very Kenda Christmas.

Tuesday the plan was to get my allergy shots then go to work only the thermostat on the furnace refused to turn on so before leaving for work I had to call the Heating & Cooling guys (Robin Aire, who have always been wonderful to us). They made us their first or second call of the day and promised to be there within the next two hours. So I took myself off for my shot, the worst part of which was gingerly making my way down our icy driveway while worrying about slipping and falling. The main roads weren't bad (Sunday's rain had turned to sleet come Monday and had frozen overnight) but I fishtailed a bit while turning onto our street on the trip home. The furnace repair guy was working on our system when I returned home and had it up and running not twenty minutes later. He replaced the (still under warranty) thermostat so all we were out was the cost of a service call.

Then it was off to work for a day wrangling computers and trying to clear off my desk. Didn't manage to clear it yesterday and today isn't looking promising. After work
jebra drove me home by way of an Ingress portal then switched cars and went off to have dinner with friends while I stayed home and finished the scarf I'd started the day before. It's a simple garter stitch thing and although it looks okay I'm not thrilled with it. For one thing I didn't like the yarn -- it was a collection of odds and ends gifted to me by someone in guild and although it was all acrylic/wool blend some of it was itchy and/or dusty. I ran it through the washer and dryer last night and now it's clean but static-y. There are days I just can't win. Like Hamish & Fiona's newest cat bed, which is the one to the left on the above scrapbook page. The sides felted the way they were supposed to but the bottom simply refused to tighten up. It's wool and not superwash so heck if I know why. At least the cats like it and there's plenty of room for both of them if they get cold and want to cuddle up.

I think that's all I have to say about this week but as usual, if you have questions, ask away.

Scrapbook papers & elements from the kit The Best Is Yet To Come.
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http://mrs-sweetpeach.dreamwidth.org/766331.html.



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