Hi.........

It has been A LONG couple of months, and I'm not sure I'm getting ahead of it all, or just keep trying to crawl out from under....... at some points I was just hoping the light at the other end of the tunnel isn't a train. LOL.

Without getting into details, there's been: family things, housing things, job things, pet things, weather things, internet/phone things, neighbor things and car things, and I almost forget..........computer things! Needless to say. I need a vacation! LOL, but all things considered, we're doing good.

I DID take my exam, finally, and when I started building my first website (my own) I realized that the course had in no way prepared me for what I was attempting to do. I know I missed a switch somewhere, but I have pieces that won't go together into a cohesive, and potentially VERY cool website, so I hit the books some more :-)  Well, let me rephrase that... I downloaded the books I could, while I had internet, and read them when I didn't have internet. But no internet does hamper the checking and testing what I learned.... You kinda need internet to upload to the server, or so I'm told...... Internet has been humming away for the last week or so, and I'm getting thru emails, banking, catching up with people (by phone or email) and hope to be into a schedule of sorts by next week. PFFOEI!

Because of the internet thing (6 weeks without is like a lifetime of missed things to look up!) I haven't posted my Point in Time challenge, haven't played with any of Boo's kits (Haven't even been able to catch them come by!) and because of the EU-VAT rule on top of that, I haven't been able to play with any of the beautiful kits from Carena or Monja either, missed a couple of very interesting webinars over at LegacyFamilyTree and I'm sure I missed some stuff I'll find out about later, but what can you do?!

I haven't scrapped at all except for making birthday cards, no genealogy either, just study. Poor me, huh.....? LOL. LOVE to learn, so that's not the problem, its the fact that everything else in life just keeps going, while I'm trying to concentrate that just plain drives me batty at times, but that's a personal problem I think. LOL.

Even so, I'm looking forward to calmer waters, I can tell you that :-) and to start that process off right.... Friday night the zoo will be open till 9PM, and guess who's going..... We'll run errands as early as we can, and than Mike will drop me off, and pick me up at 9..... HEAVEN!  I'll bet it will be busy, but I'm hoping to catch the wolves out this time around.... My niece went a couple of weeks ago, and she said she sat in front of the area for half hour, and never saw them, so I'm not sure what is going on there. I haven't seen them but once in the time they've been here, and that was the first night their enclosure was open to the public.  Keep your fingers crossed for me:-)

I DID start a new thing... Tourguide at the castle I've been trying to get a 4 season photo shoot of. SO COOL! There is so much history in that place I had no idea of! And I get to tell people about it. Last Sunday was my first official work day..... and it was great. Kinda busy, but not so busy you don't have time to enjoy. People walking away with a smile on their face, and a promise that they'll be back to keep track of the changes....... No better way to advocate a new project. There's a long way to go yet (only 30 years or so) but it will be so neat when it gets there.....

My plans for the near future are to get a job, so we can keep eating (always a good idea) and on Sunday, when Mike works anyway, spend my time at the castle, learning and teaching. This will cut down my "down time" to just Saturdays, but it will work out better in the long run. It will force me to speed up my "me time" or at least streamline, and it will show me what is important to me, and what I'm hanging on to, because I have nothing else to do.... So it will be good!  For the first time, in a long time, I'm actually believing that change can be good..... Such a wonderous feeling :-)

This is it for me, for now. If the internet and my schedule keep playing nice, I'll be back in a couple of days, so in the meantime, don't forget to hug a loved one, stay cool (It's going up to mid to high 90's here) and enjoy life.... It's too short as it is!

Love and hugs,
Pauli