Chinese New Year (1/28/06) Almost

This year Chinese New Year Falls on my birthday. I never really paid any attention to when Chinese New Year was in the past. Now, though, I have family (sister-in-law) and friends who do. It is something that I should have known more about, as I love to follow the changing of the moon, but never knew about.

So my birthday, a start of a new year in my life, and Chinese New Year, a start of a new lunar year, are starting at the same time. A time to clean up the house you live in and a time to settle old debts. I'm trying to clean up my live (house) by getting back in shape and using the gifts given me from God. I'm also trying to settle old debts. The ones that I'm working on right now, I did not get in the first place, but when you marry what is yours is his and what is his is yours.

I've been looking up information about the Chinese New Year and something that I found funny is that "The Seventh Day of the New Year was called "everybody’s birthday" as everyone was considered one year older as of that date. (In traditional China, individual birthdays were not considered as important as the New Year’s date. Everyone added a year to his age at New Year’s time rather than at his birthday.) "

So in China, one way or another I would be a year older. :)

This year, I'm getting a mountain bike. We are picking it up today. YEAH! I can't wait. My old bike had rusted out and had been thrown in the trash over a year ago. I also am getting books from my mom. I have two gifts from my in-laws that I have yet to open. Also I'm getting together with some friends tomorrow. That makes my day great.

Another week is done (1/21/05)

Another week is done and yet I'm at work. Oh well. This morning there was alittle snow and a bit of ice. As I was driving into work I found some of that ice. I was trying to slow down and make a turn when I started to fish tail. Not what I needed this morning. After a few seconds of this I decided that I would go a different way to work. I knew that if I tried to make that turn that I would never have made it to work and right now I would be getting my car towed.

For your information, the date stuff on this has been off the last few weeks. I don't know why.

I'm hoping that in a few days to be able to post some of my notes from my writers group. It might be next week. When it does go up, I will have two meetings worth of notes. (I have yet to get the notes ready for Monday's meeting. I will be doing that after I go bike shopping this afternoon with my man.)

8 more days to my birthday. My man is making a big deal out of it. Growing up it was never a big thing for me. That was because every year my family would be up in the Pocanos for a church winter retreat the weekend closest to my birthday. He, on the other hand, likes to do stuff for his birthday for the whole month. So this year we are going bowling with some friends and are getting me a bike. (Mine died after years of college and rusting out.)

Have a great weekend everyone.

Weekend with the Kids

Ok, most of you know that I don't have kids but this weekend my man and I were helping out with the Jr High kids. We went to a camp in Southern Michagian. It was alot of fun. Not much sleep but that is on par. We had about 12 kids that came with us from our church. There were over 100 kids together at the retreat. Since this is our first year with the kids we really did not know them very well when we started the weekend. By the end we knew alot more about them. We now know that one of the 8th graders should be a singer maybe even start a worship band. Another should play in the band. I also found out that one of the 8th graders is a writer. We are going to share our writings with each other. I had 3 7ths grades in the room I stayed in. They were alot of fun and very silly at times. That was the good part, bad part of the weekend was that my asthema acted up and I could not breathe, the food was not that great, and the lead singer in the worship band could not keep a tune.

It was fun going there and seeing that the program director was someone I went to college with at Hesston College. I also saw a couple that at one point had gond to thw same church as I did when I was growing up in PA.

Ok, I really should start working, I have a deadline that is luming in front of me.

I can't believe how tired I've been the last few days. I've been trying to get a few more hours of sleep at night but the cats hate me when I do that. At 6:30am or before they want fed, and they want fed NOW! Yesterday, instead of taking the nap I said I would I ended up cleaning and working on my writer's group information. For the next 4 months I have each meeting's topic already picked out. All I have to do is fill in the details. Tonight is the first meeting of the year, and I hope that it works out ok. I just need to get over the fact that I can't be everything to everyone in the group. With that being the case, I need to see what I need from the group and run with. I just hope that others will run with me.

OK, so its Saturday and where am I? Work. The beginning of a long tax session is on me and I already don't want to be here. It's great when you go in for an interview for a job and they tell you about how much you should make in a year and they include the overtime in the number. It's just expented of you to work every Saturday starting from the first in January to maybe middle of April if not more. (We do more than personal taxes.) What makes this even harder is that we had an extera person but her left after only 2 months (and that was this past summer). Now we are going to have to deal with out him. Grrr.
Another thing that is getting to me today is that, I think, my office is around 64 degrees today and I don't think the heater is working. I have my space warmer on and a blanket rapped around me. I hate being cold.

Let's Start the New Year

Ok, I have read these things for a while now. I don't know how often I will be able to update right now (tax session is full blow now and I'm stuck in the middle). I hope that this will help me write more often. Also I might be using this as away to give assingments to my writers group, Spilt Ink. If anyone else would like to do them, go right ahead. They are mostly going to be prompts to get people to write. Since it feels like I'm teaching a class, I have decided to teach it like a class. I hope this way I will not feel like I'm going crazy with work, writer's group, husband, old house, making food, lossing weight etc.