A New Year!

So my Year of Adventure kind of petered out last year, didn’t it. All I did was go skydiving. However, this year I’ll be going skydiving again AND going on a hot air balloon ride, so I’m doubling my adventure already!

In other news, my Year of Volunteerism sadly also petered out. I did volunteer at the hospital where I work for about 7-8 months, but then when school started up in the fall, and CB’s Cub Scouts, and piano lessons, and soccer practices/games for CG – well, I just found that I had very little time to just relax. So I put myself on hiatus. I do hope to start it up again in 2012 though, because it was fun.

My Giving Campaign fared a bit better. I made a few trips to the local food bank this year, and I also continue to sponsor two children via World Vision and Compassion International. Not only that, but I donated money throughout the year to smaller projects – the coolest one being to two adoptive parents who needed $$ to buy 2 round trip and 5 one-way trips from Ethiopia to America. Once they come home with those five lucky kids (they raised the $$ they needed in a single day), they will have a total of 12 children – four homegrown and eight chosen. Very cool story.

So what does 2012 have in store? Well, hopefully lots of good things. We finished 2011 by becoming debt-free, and so 2012 will be focused on getting the house ready to put it on the market. If we can sell it, we’ll begin building our dream house on the land we bought back in 2005. Very excited about that bit.

2012 will also be the year I do no freelance unless it’s a really interesting project. I have attempted to pass along all my transcription clients to other people who need the income. Not always successfully, but at some point I need to wash my hands of it and force my clients to find a replacement on their own rather than asking me for referrals. I don’t know that many transcriptionists! And the 2-3 I recommended were trying to break into the biz and had no idea what kind of work really went into it. So they bailed. Blerg.

Work ended on a high note just before Christmas. I found out that I was given yet another promotion with a tidy little raise. Not only that, but the company I work for gave out a higher year-end bonus than they did last year (that gets paid out next Friday). The promotion was very unexpected since my boss told me last year that with that promotion I couldn’t really go any higher on the ladder. But apparently that wasn’t the case, and so when she found out I could move up again she immediately put in for it and go it passed through the system before year-end. So that makes for two promotions in two years and a total of 14% increase in pay during that time as well. Amazing. I love my job, as well as my boss. They take care of me, and I love that.

The house is adjusting to having one less kitty. Ginger the Cat has kind of glommed onto CB recently. She sleeps with him at night, and when he’s on the sofa watching TV she’ll come and lay down next to him (and sometimes even on him). He has gone from ignoring the cats to adoring her. To that end, it’s a shame that her hyperthyroidism will likely be her downfall this year, and I predict we’ll be losing her within a year.

In TV news, my latest obsession is a British comedy called “The IT Crowd.” I discovered it on Netflix streaming and it is laugh-out-loud funny. Maurice Moss is one of the funniest characters to ever appear on TV, I think. Everything he says/does is hilarious.

Oh Moss, so glad I’ve found you!

Not much else going on lately. I’m doing a couple things with CB’s Cub Scout pack in the next couple of weeks. Their annual “Mother/Son” dance is this weekend, and then next weekend I’m taking him for an overnight trip to the Charleston Aquarium – all the Cub Scouts going, and their parent chaperones, are actually spending the night IN the aquarium, which should be a lot of fun!

I did so well posting every other day in December and hope I can continue more of the same in 2012.

For now, belated happy new year!