I think my word of the year shall actually be a phrase....
DO IT NOW.
Prime example - I check emails on my phone, with the intention of answering later on my desktop.... and then don't. So something that should take less than a minute to do, can drag out for days. This really applies to my VFW stuff.
I also want to attend the weekly (optional) training with the search & rescue team at least once every month or two. They are tentatively planning training K9s at cool places like the Detroit Zoo (but I'll be in Kalamazoo that weekend - SOB!) and Greenfield Village so those would be cool to go to. I don't have a K9 and don't ever plan to, but those of us non-K9 peoples go to help them train, either as flankers (to watch out for danger) or as victims for the dogs to find. It also gives us a chance to get familiar with our GPS and radios.
Anyhoo.
New Years Eve was fun. I went out to dinner with Sis1, Sis2, the Brother-In-Law and some of their friends, then we went to a comedy show. After that, we went back to Sis2/BIL's house and we played board games until about 1:30am (with a brief stop for the countdown to midnight).
Last Thursday was the Grandson's 5th birthday! I almost had heart failure when the Spawn pointed out that soon she will be registering him for Kindergarten in the fall - how is he that big???
Construction Cake!
Since it hasn't been that long since Christmas, I opted to get us tickets to the Reptarium which isn't too far away from home. This was really cool and we can't wait until the Aquarium opens up across the street.
I wish you could see the oil-slick sheen on this snake!
So pretty!
They have a Fish Spa, where you can sit and put your feet in these tanks and let the fish nibble on you.
They were covering my hand!
We could hold, pet and feed all sorts of critters.
They also have a capybara and a sloth!
And they have a 2 headed turtle to go with the 2 headed snake!
Each enclosure had the animal's name and species posted on it.
And the employees were going around with various critters asking if we wanted to hold or pet.
Fabulous Iguana!
It was a lot of fun. We got an hour time slot and that's about the perfect amount of time. Of course, they keep it very warm & humid in there so I was sweating pretty good and was ready to leave. Otherwise, 2 thumbs up!
So work's been pretty slow - the company I work for hauls a lot of freight for the Big 3 and they've been on shut down over the holidays - so the last 2 weeks have been brutal! And dumb me - for the last 2 years I've realized at like Thanksgiving that I have a lot of vacation time I needed to take! Our days don't carry over, so in 2023 most of December was half days. I should have done the same in 2024, but I still ended up losing 1 1/2 days since I was concerned about getting things done. Oh well. Since I'm coming up on 25 years (GASP!!!!) with the company in June, I get quite a bit of vacation time. I will plan better!
I'm starting out with 2 days here in a couple weeks to fly down to Arkansas and visit the Spouse since he works remotely from his Mom's house for a while in the winter. I haven't been there in 5 or 6 years (thanks, Covid!!) so I'm looking forward to going to the Buckstaff Bathhouse in Hot Springs. I absolutely love going there. I've posted about it before, but the link is pretty explanatory.
So I somehow got suckered into taking over as the VFW newsletter editor. Which in theory seemed fine, but then I found out that the previous editor used an Apple computer which is not something I'm familiar with! So I had to fight & cuss while trying to get it into a format I could edit and then figure out appropriate formatting and margins, etc. I thought I had it looking tolerable but then one of the old guys from the post messed with it and made it look awful. And of course it was while I was at work and he submitted it before I could fix it again. I just emailed the printer to get him to send me a copy of it so I can put it on the post website. The printer was supposed to do some tweaks, too but he only did some stuff with the ads so it looks as horrible as I feared. I'm pretty embarrassed to have my name on it.
Oh well! Better luck with the next one.
I was lazy!
CVS photo Christmas cards for the win!
However it'll be a more wonderful year when it's just me, the Spouse & the cats!
Fingers crossed that one day we'll become empty-nesters!
I was looking thru some old posts to find my last post about the bathhouse and realized I used to do a lot of bloghops - wonder what happened to them? Most of the links don't work and a lot of the blogs haven't been active for years. Guess people are using easier forms of social media nowadays.
Signing off for now!
I thought they were being cute - Daisy looks pretty annoyed at me!
