Catching Up - No Excuses

Greetings, book people!

I seem to have taken an unplanned hiatus from blogging and nearly all social media.  Life happens, and sometimes the fun stuff takes a back seat for awhile.  I have followed a few of the industry dust-ups from a distance but have avoided getting too emotionally invested, just for the sake of my blood pressure.

So what have I been doing in the meantime?

A few years ago when I decided to change jobs, I posted that job hunting and then the learning curve at the new place seemed to occupy the same brain space as blogging -- or at least, it crowded out what capacity I had for blogging.  I have confirmed that this is a repeatable phenomenon.  I changed jobs again this past September, and part of me thinks I was crazy to do it.  My old job was kind of cushy, with lots of people I really enjoy.  The new job is far more challenging, and the environment is super corporate and formal by comparison.  I'm not totally comfortable.  But at the old job, I was a big (ish) fish in a small pond, and there was nowhere really to go.  I get nervous if I plateau for more than a couple of years; IME that is not good for a career in tech.  So, onward I go!

Another thing that happened this fall was that I signed my daughter up for a First Lego League team.  This has been an incredible experience for her, but wow, is it a lot of work and a lot of time.  We lucked into a really great coach but this activity has literally soaked up 80% of my weekend days for the last three months.  I'm not very productive in the evenings after a workday, so it's been hard to get my normal stuff done.

On top of that, I had a couple of quilting projects that I had been putting off that needed to be done in time for Christmas.  I've pieced several quilt tops and I really enjoy that, but I've never actually quilted the layers together before (I hired that part to be done on the previous projects) and was more than a bit intimidated by the process.  The good news is, both quilts were completed and made the recipients very happy.  I'm divided on whether I would do it again or not.  It's definitely not my favorite part of the process, but I'm the kind of person who dislikes things that I'm not good at.  I was enjoying it more toward the end when I was getting better, but the time crunch made it really stressful.  Ahh well.  Live and learn.

Oh, and we have a new bathroom!  We have been without a tub for longer than I like to admit, with all of us using a small shower stall in the basement 3/4 bathroom.  I was brushing my teeth one day and the heavy soapdish tile just fell right off into the tub.  The tile had allowed moisture behind it, causing the backerboard to become wet and moldy.  So anyway, the tl;dr version is that we finally pulled together the resources to remodel the bathroom and I'm so very pleased with the result.  It took longer than it should have -- as these things always seem to do-- but we have a pretty shiny new tub & shower with beautiful tile work.  And it's not like I did any particular work on it, but it was somehow exhausting anyway.

No excuses, no apologies, just a chat to catch you up on the doings around here.  My reading has been somewhat curtailed too, but since it's been so long, I still have a long list that I could review or at least gab about a bit.

Hope you've all been well and enjoying your various winter (or summer, for those Down Under) end of year holidays!