This and That

1. Old news but we survived hurricane Sandy. We were lucky, no power outage and no major wind gust as expected.    We live in a town-home and we have two trees in our backyard.  One of the trees is in our neighbor’s side but it is a huge tree.  It is a beautiful tree that I have admired from our bedroom window.  It is so nice to wake up in the morning and watch the colorful three.  Then came Sandy and I was terrified.  That night I opened the blinds and saw the tree dancing in the wind, and just imagined it falling on our bedroom.   So we slept in the basement the night of the storm.  Sandy took all the leaves off the trees.  I really like fall with all the color changes and the breezy air but I hate what it brings.   I hate winter, not so much the cold but the darkness.  It makes me depressed and now the time change has messed me up.    

Any how here is the tree, glad it is still standing but looking pitiful.   

  

2. I am so glad the election will be over soon.  I have avoided watching the news coverage as much as I could over the last few weeks.  I just don't enjoy all the drama, it is tiring and not very usefully.   I became a US citizen over 10 years ago.  This will be my third time voting and I am happy I am able to participate.   Voting is a joke in my home country, the last prime minster who just passed away was in power for the last 20 plus years.  So much for democracy.  

3.  My new hobby is reading up on DIY projects and home decorations.   I am in the process of making the basement a cozy space as well as creating a play space for MH on one side.  It is a finished basement and carpeted but it is cold.   I have been looking for a large wool area rug and also heavy curtains that will keep out the draft. I have a small budget for it so it has been challenging but will get done eventually.   

4. Staying at home has been a blessing.  I had lunch with my old coworkers a few weeks ago. It brought back what I miss and a lot of what I didn't miss.  Then just went through another reorganization and a lot of politics.  Listening to my co-workers complain makes me feel like I never left the place so I have been trying to have less conversations involving the situation.  I am still mad at what took place before I left so the less I hear about the place the better.  

5. Besides the people the only thing I miss about working is the money.  I never use to look at prices at the grocery store when I was working.   Now I actually am a lot aware of the cost of food.  We use to shop at an organic market for almost all food.  Not any more.  When I had the money I didn't have the time to spend it :).  Now that we have a home which needs stuff the money is not there.  I took a detailed look at our monthly budget and realized there is no way we can save much money on only DH's salary.  We have enough saved that we don't have to worry about it for now.  I really don't want to think about this now, I just want to enjoy my time with MH.  A friend of mine was working one day/week after she had her second child but after 10 month her hubby is nervous that they are not saving money so she went back to work full time last week.   She has two kids 11 month apart so it is going to be hard managing with work and kids. 

6.  Not much else to say.  Will be buying a laptop over the thanksgiving weekend, hopefully that will result in more blog posts.