Oops!

Time is rushing by so fast. I guess that's what comes of getting older (as we all are), having busy children, and having a lot on one's plate. That's my round-about way of apologizing for not keeping up on the Picasaweb galleries of our daily pictures (and missing a couple of the pictures, too). I have most of them up there, but there's a week or so of early March that didn't get to the gallery before disappearing from the daily pictures.

Don't worry, the original pictures are safely on my own hard drive (with backup); it's just the cropped and resized versions I post online that are lost, and the captions. I will try to re-create them later. They may not be the exact pictures or captions, but it should still capture some of the flavor of life at the Brooks household.

I've been working on getting healthier over the last few weeks, as have other members of the family. No one has been terribly ill, but we've all had a lingering cough at some point during the Spring, along with about half the people we know in the area. The biggest side-effects of the cough for me have been the difficulty of narrating Karen's videos (as talking makes me cough) and the loss of my singing voice. I'm happy to say that the cough is subsiding, and the singing voice is returning.

Good thing, too, because I make a goal that this year that I would learn one musical piece for each of the instruments that I own. Stupidly, I did this before actually counting the number of instruments that I own. In addition to a couple of guitars (well, four, actually), a six-string banjo, a five-string banjo, a piano, a synthesizer, and my new ukulele, I have a larger-than-I-remembered collection of flute-like instruments. It will be a challenge. Anyway, some of these pieces include singing, and it's been little hard to work them out without actually being able to sing.

Work at Measured Progress is in full swing, which is another good thing, because as boring as the work is when it's going full tilt, it's absolutely excruciating when it's slow. Thomas is attending orientation for a new job next week, which I'll write more about when he's starting working. We don't know if this is a permanent job yet or not, but it's a start.

I feel for Tom; looking for work is very frustrating right now. Not only are the jobs hard to find, but the process has become maddeningly impersonal in recent years. You don't even get to meet people face-to-face most of the time. I've even been turned down several times by a computer program. That's why, although it hasn't produced any income, I'm excited about starting the craft business with Karen. It's going to be slow to get started, but it's something we can do that doesn't rely on some nameless, faceless company.

So no big news, no breakthroughs, just slow and steady.

Hope Aesop was right.

Back To the Old Grind

Tuesday I will return to Measured Progress, perhaps the most boring, certainly the worst paying job I've had in a very long time. But it's just enough to hold our budget together—while it lasts. Meanwhile we are putting up another video, getting some people to come visit our site, and so a few sales here and there can't be far behind.

Spring has come early to New Hampshire. I say this with confidence in spite of the fact that we had an inch or so of fresh snow last night, because in truth that is a pretty typical Spring pattern around here. With a week of temperature in the 50s and 60s coming up this week, and some rain showers, and even some clear water showing on the shore of the pond, I think I can confidently say that the Winter is behind us. Until, of course, it is ahead of us again, but I have about seven months to worry about that.

William is officially no longer a Cub Scout, having received his Arrow of Light and crossed the ceremonial bridge to be welcomed by the Troop as a Boy Scout. His last official act as a Cub was to represent his Pack in the Pinewood Derby District Races. He and his fellow Pack members lost handily. But they had a good time and took it very well.

Danny graduates to the rank of Weblos this summer, which is convenient because he can inherit William's uniform shirt. The downside is that now their respective meetings are on the same night, at possibly overlapping times, and sometimes in different places. Makes life, uh, interesting.

Spring also brings the birth months of two of our family members: Thomas and, well, me. Birthdays are fun, and I don't actually mind growing older (and I won't balk at getting senior discounts at selected stores), but in New Hampshire it is also the time for the expense of registering cars and the nail-biting anticipation of annual inspections. When both of the cars on the spring schedule were made in the late 90s, there is always the questions of whether each car will be worth the cost of repairing it to the state's standards.

Ah, adventure.

Otherwise it is pretty much business as usual at The Brooks Bunch: work, school, and trying to figure out how to survive in whatever this new economy decides it's going to be.

And having some fun, with lots of love, along the way.