It's been almost seven years since I last posted. Let's do a blitz through the highlights and see if there's anything that warrants further discussion later.

We celebrated our 25th anniversary with a trip to Aruba. With the global pandemic story all around, we got lucky. We were able to go the summer of 2021 and spent a week doing pretty much nothing. It was AWESMOME! I'll see if I can find some pictures to share.

The Boy graduated HS as Spring Break Champion of the World! (In other words, class of 2020.) Then he turned around and got married last fall. That might merit a deeper post on its own.

Ladybug graduated HS in 2022. She tried out for the dance team at college, but didn't make it past the first round of cuts and has since "sworn off" dancing. But to tie these two points together, she did coordinate a father/son dance for the wedding reception. It went pretty well and seemed to be well received.

My bride no longer works at the church. One can only put up with toxic leadership for so long before realizing that in the grand scheme of things, she's worth way more than the pittance she was being paid, and no one deserves that kind of abuse from people who are supposed to be humble servants of God. Anyway, after a brief whirlwind, she's landed a nice job in apartment management accounting and is crushing it right now. She really likes the job, but does find it mentally exhausting at the same time. Guess it's a good thing I'm available to take some of the home stress off of her shoulders.

I recently got promoted at my job again. I'm now a team lead, so that's exciting. People come to me for answers and I (usually) have the right one. When the pandemic started, we were all sent to work from home for "a few weeks" until things return to normal. That was over two years ago. I am NOT complaining. I put way less wear and tear on the car by not having to drive over 30 miles each way. Then there's the mental health aspect of not having to fight traffic 10 times a week just for the privilege of working in a cubicle farm when it's been soundly demonstrated that at least most of us are more than capable of doing the job from home.

Let's see, what else? I've become a painter. I had another torn rotator cuff. We're rearranging the rooms on 2nd floor as far as guest room/son's room. Our friends moved to the mountains due to a SNAFU with county government and a dramatic situation they found themselves in. We cut cable and watch Netflix and Amazon Prime a lot. I've tried and failed school a couple of times. I'm not sure if any of this is exciting, but at least it's now recorded, so I can come back some day and read how exciting my life is.

Peace out, y'all!