Merry Christmas and a busy new year!

I’m probably posting this to no one because I’m sure you’ve all been as busy as I’ve been…

The end of the year has come and I’m almost out of time.  A few more days and I’ll be packing up my bags to head back into the frigid cold of Chicago.  A welcome change in climate but I’ll once again be separated from my family, never fun.  So rather than sit here and bitch about it, I’ll spend this time cuddling up next to Teresa and hopefully I’ll get to visit a few more people in the next couple of days.

In short: Christmas was a success.  Mrs Claus was good to me and I got some new DVDs.  We’re getting back on track financially after the sale of the old house kicked us in the nards.  We decided to make this another in a long string of holidays that we’ve had to go thread bare to break even.  But the good news is we didn’t go into debt for a good holiday season like we used to do.  The credit card hangover is always a bummer.  We splurged on getting Becca a lot of the CDs and T-shirts she wanted and we hosted the family dinner but all in all we stayed close to the projected budget and “close” is better than we normally come.

Teresa’s business licence came in and we even took out a small loan to get the thing started.  She’s bought a lot of the necessary gear (most of which I’ll be putting up tomorrow) and she’s going to have the DCF inspector out to the house next week.  She should be open for business within two weeks.  If this goes according to plan, next Christmas should be a blow out.  Even better than that, if she makes even half the money they are projecting, I’ll be able to take a local job (pay cut) and be home every night.  Of course, only after the income proves stable.  Hopefully by this time next year I’ll be able to think about coming home for good.

So on that note I’ll head off to bed.  We’ve had an exhillerating few days and I’m tired as hell!  I can already see that there are several things I want to get done that will just have to wait.  I won’t be able to encode any Beta video and I won’t be able to get my djembe re-headed but hopefully I will get a chance to go see a few more people before my next flight out.

BTW: You people here in Florida just don’t know how to throw Christmas.  80 degrees is too damn HOT to instill any kind of Christmas spirit!  This year my Ghost of Christmas Present was wearing shorts and lounging around in a pool!