A Week Late and a Row Short

I am finishing the third week of Row80, but I entirely missed checking in for Week 2. I did have most of a post done last week, but apparently, I didn’t save it.  It’s odd, because I’m good about having several posts in progress, but my update wasn’t there. Even after I checked three times, it still wouldn’t magically materialize. I started to re-do it, but time got away, and I had a insane week. However, the insane week resulted in some good progress, so here we go.

I’ve already decided that I have to focus on one check-in a week, or I’ll drive myself batty. Plus, as one of my goals is to figure out what I’m doing with my blog, I’ve discovered that I will probably be posting only two to three times a week for a while. So once for ROW80 will work. I know myself well enough to know that if I check in every week, I’ll be just fine. (And even though I missed last week, just being aware I was missing check-in helped keep me focused.)

So that being said, I will report on what has been happening (or not happening) with my goals. Then I will list the goals that have emerged during the past two weeks that need to be added to Round 1.

Finish Accreditation Editing  (DEADLINE: January 30)
This project is going well. Ten of 15 chapters pretty much finished. The other five are well under-way. I have a meeting next week to finalize the recommendations. Then I can finish.

• I had the meeting, and that is what made last week so crazy. In addition to finishing the editing project, another short-term project was added. It had very high priority, and it required reviewing files, creating a summary, requesting supporting documents and three additional meetings. However, the good news is that the secondary project has been completed, and I am happy to report that just today, I finished the main editing for the accreditation. There may be minor adjustments after the 120 pages are read, but it’s mostly done. I do have to write an executive summary since that was overlooked by the committee that put the document together, but I have a few days to do that.
  
• GOAL: FINISH THIS WEEK

Finish Co-Authored Paper  (DEADLINE: January 11)
I’m waiting for my co-author to respond to my last take on the revision. This is relatively low-stress at this point, since we are largely in agreement about how to incorporate recommended revisions.

• After finding out about the missed deadline, we haven’t heard about ths status of our late submission. So this is on hold.

Finish planning courses and upload materials to website
I have to update my assignments and projects for Intro to Criminal Justice, but the Intro to Sociology will take a little more effort. I haven’t taught this course in a few years, and it’s a hybrid course (a few in-person meetings and the rest online).

• Criminal Justice is going well, and I did some brainstorming with the students in the Sociology course, and we have a plan. I am now in the middle of uploading several different types of resources, using the module function of Canvas, so I have high hopes of getting everything under control this week. The syllabus will definitely be done, which means the main assignments will also be finished.

Post on blog 25 days in January
I hope to publish something on my blog every day, but it’s better for me to exceed the goal than to miss it by one or two days. The January posts do not fit a specific theme. In fact, there is no real plan other than to experiment with all kinds of things, and see if anything sticks. Which leads to the next goal.

• This one was going great until six days ago when I was working on the ROW80 update. Luckily, I had put up a few extra ones early in the month. This post is number 22, and I am glad I revised my original idea of posting every day in January to posting 25 times. I MIGHT make that one.

Create a Blogging Plan
I am not talking about looking for a niche. I’ve made peace with the fact I don’t have to write about one or two topics and leave out things that don’t fit those topics. I admire people who have niche blogs, but as long as my life remains as eclectic as it is, I can’t expect my blog to be different. I’ll be looking for a couple of focal points for my life, but not necessarily for my blog. Still, I want to have a plan for publishing with a list of possible post topics and a rough schedule for doing so.

• As mentioned above, I think I need to set up a schedule that includes posting two to three times a week, reading other blogs, and responding to comments. It’s too easy to spend time here without a focus, and I want to make sure that my time here is productive and not just an escape from other things I should be doing. What that will look like should emerge over the next week or two.

Read Draft Novels (TBA)

• Nothing on this yet. As a move to another house is now part of my current life, the reading will have to wait a week or two. I’m keeping it here as a placeholder so it doesn’t get lost.
  

Work Out a Weekly Schedule
With all the various activities I need to do in a week, I need to schedule routine activities like grading, course prep, tutoring review, writing, and personal time. No reason to waste thinking time on remembering and scheduling these activities over and over.

• I had hoped to start the semester with a plan in place, but it hasn’t happened. I will try to form a draft plan this week based on the way classes and other commitments go.

Finish Jack’s Quilt
This is frustrating me the most, but two more weeks at the most. Finish the editing, get moved. Start quilting. REALLY, it’s going to happen.

Piece the back of Kate’s quilt
My daughter has given me until her 30th birthday to finish it, but I’m going to see how many months ahead I can manage to beat that deadline. (She’ll be 29 the lst of March.)

• This will be on hold until Jack’s quilt is done. But Kate’s is next before any new projects.

Get back into regular music activities
I got a call about scheduling some dates to play at a church nearby, and once I get back into it by working with them, I can be on a wider sub-list. this is one of those two-birds-with-one-stone kind of things. I want to brush up on my skills, and earning a little extra money will be good. Who knows, I may even pick up a couple of piano students.

• I’ve done the observation. I’ve done one practice session. I have an additional service for Tuesday. Going tomorrow to rehearse with them, and then make the big debut on Tuesday. I’ve gone over the music for next weekend. Will do some more practice tomorrow after the rehearsal. I’m also going to call to see about having my piano moved from my brother’s house into the new place.
  

Determine longer range goals
I want to make this year really focused toward specific goals, but I haven’t yet really defined what those will be. The first half of Row 1 is going to be focused on creating a plan that will carry me through the year.

• No real progress yet, but this is something I will grow into over Round 1. Not expecting any big shift here until mid-February or so.

ADDITIONAL ROUND 1 GOALS

The following items have emerged as active goals for the first round.

1. Move into new home. Immediate goals involve setting up utilities in my name. Start packing. Look into internet service.
   1. Water is switched over; as is electric and gas.
   2. Dave is taking care of Internet.
   3. Look into getting piano moved.
   4. Pick up rest of bedding that was ordered.
   5. Visit a couple of stores to look into a mattress and box springs.
   6. Pay first rent!  🙂
   7. Take a few things over to the house en route to other appointments and events.
   8. Look into address labels and business cards.
2. Get car serviced. Oil change. Other issues.
   1. Oil has been changed.
   2. Transmission will be serviced in February.
   3. Decide about windshield wiper switch; investigate further to see if it can be done less expensively.
3. Create rough outline of book based on student response to ESL writing course.  (on hold till after move)
4. Work out schedule to incorporate new student for tutoring.
5. Keep practicing music for upcoming events.

Whew! Wishing everyone a productive week!

 

 

Collection: JusJoJan #17

Since I contributed the prompt for Day 17, it’s only fair I participate right?

I love collections. Luckily, I mostly admire them from afar. I love to go to museums and exhibits because they hold collections of all kinds of things. Photos work, too. A couple weeks ago, I saw a photo of a teapot collection, and it reminded me of the time when I was hunting for a temporary teapot collection. I wanted to have a tea party for a group of friends before leaving South Bend, and as part of the fun, I wanted to give each guest a teapot to take away as a souvenir of our time together.

And of course, I love any collection of quilts. It makes me happy to wander among those amazing creations, looking at the stitching, the blocks, and the arrangement of fabric. Which brings me to my current collection.

Fabric. It’s not what I intended to write about when I suggested collection as a prompt, but then I don’t know what I was thinking to be honest. I just wanted to come up with a prompt and make it into the list. Which I did, but I didn’t even remember what my prompt was until I went back to look it up.  😉

But back to my fabric collection. Luckily (mostly), I’m a quilter, and I stick to cotton fabric. I have colors I favor (teals, greens, purples, and neutrals), but I find myself expanding more and more into new color territory. More than that, I just find myself expanding the collection. I love fabric. I love the color. I love the feel. I like putting it together into patterns and possibilities.

Several years ago, I gave up my collection. We were moving so I could go to grad school, and we were having a garage sale, and I figured that I wouldn’t have time for quilting anyway, so why keep hauling the stuff along. I hadn’t actually done THAT much quilting. It seemed to be more about the fabric than the quilting. And I didn’t need to hold on fabric just to hang on to it.

I still found myself pulled to quilts and fabric, but I could largely resist the bug until I was in Taiwan. Part-way into my second year there, I had to make a decision about whether to return to the US at the end of that year or make a commitment to make it more long-term. But I knew that if I stayed, I needed to have a hobby because it was way too easy to just fall into working most of the time. (For those of you who don’t know, my husband was still in the States during my first two years in Taiwan.) With no family and no hobbies, it was easy to get caught up in work stuff. I enjoyed the things I got involved in, especially the extracurricular things with students, but it was time to focus on something for me.

So I bought fabric to make Logan’s quilt. I ordered it from the US from fabric.com. They were awesome to deal with. (You can see the quilt in the photo above.) I also bought a few other things and began to build my fabric stash. Then I found out about a fabric district in Taipei. It took some doing, but I found someone to go with me, and it was an awesome place. The photo here just shows a very small section of a huge second floor of a building that housed all kinds of fabric, batting, sewing items of all kinds. I couldn’t help myself. My collecting itch was triggered.

I pieced two quilts while in Taiwan and got the one for Logan quilted. So when it was time to come back to the States, I worked to bring much of my collection back with me. However, bringing stuff back isn’t easy, so I chose the things I loved the most, and gave the rest of my collection (along with my sewing machine) to the mother of a friend who was thrilled to give them a new home.

I’ve collected a bit more since coming back to the US in July, most significantly, the fabric for Jack’s (my new grandson) quilt. I worked on piecing it in my mother’s sewing area. I practiced quilting for it in the basement room while I was in Iowa. So when I move into our own home (FINALLY!) in February, I will have a real sewing room whre I can give my collection the space it deserves, and I can actually start creating again. I’m past the phase of having a collection for its own sake. Now I’m looking forward to having a working collection that leads to finished projects I can share with family and friends.

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This post is part of JusJoJan, Day #17.

 

What Happened? SoCS 1/16/16

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “what.”  Start your post with the word “What.” Bonus points if the final word of your post starts with a “w.”  Have fun!

“What happened?” is the question I’ve been greeted with most often over the last four days. It turns out that when your hand is all bandaged up, it tends to be quite the conversation starter. The question was asked when I got to my tutoring appointment on Wednesday afternoon. It was asked three times on Thursday when I taught my three classes. It happened at the coffee shop and the pet store. So yeah, I have a little experience with this story. Also, I hope you appreciate the photo. I’m right handed, and I had to take this photo one-handed using my left-hand.

On Wednesday, I had the van serviced. I had found a highly-recommended service center that isn’t too far from where I do the majority of my tutoring. Even though my tutoring wasn’t until 4:30, I took a 9:00 appointment for the van and headed out with a bunch of projects that I needed to work on. I often bring my netbook with me when I have lots to get done, and Wednesday was no exception.

There is a great restaurant not too far away from the repair shop (and my tutoring location), so I decided to stop in for a late breakfast and some coffee, while I worked on a couple of my most projects that have the quickest upcoming deadlines. Breakfast was good, coffee was awesome, and my work was going well (in spite of the guy behind me who was talking someone’s ear off on the phone for nearly an hour).

I could feel myself hurling toward a possible fall. You know that moment when you know it’s going to happen, and there’s not a whole lot you can do. Still, the good news is I didn’t fall. There was a counter with a cash register on my flight path, so I hoped to be able to catch myself without falling. It worked, but the bad news is that when I hit, it was with the right sight of my body, leading with my right hand. I hurt my left hand, too, but not to the same extent.

The other frustrating thing is that no one saw it. I mean if you’re going to do this amazing dance where you save yourself from falling, you want someone to notice your valiant efforts. (Or you want to act like nothing happened, so I guess I got that one.) 😉

Anyway, I was determined NOT to go to the doctor or the hospital, or anything related. But within an hour, it was clear that the pain was a little out of the ordinary to just let it go without at least getting it checked. So I headed to walk-in clinic — a whole other story, I won’t put you through, but let’s just say, it involved four attempts. Anyway, the x-rays showed nothing broken, but some significant soft-tissue damage. And the news held even when the radiologist reviewed the x-rays the next morning. Good news.

So while it’s a bit inconvenient, I get to make this cute fashion statement for a week while I take pain meds (which  I haven’t needed to the full extent of the prescription, thankfully). And in the meantime, I am involved in a few more conversations than might otherwise be the case. A couple more days, and I can take the ace bandage off and start using two hands again.

What a week!

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This post is part of SoCS and JusJoJan Day #16

My First “Weekly Smile”

Trent has started a feature this year known as the Weekly Smile. I thought I’d join in, but I wanted to keep it separate from other happiness and gratitude blogs, and make this a little different. So I decide to make my weekly smile about something that may not be as significant in the overall scheme of things as the items I post about what’s going on in my life. Rather, I will select things that bring an unexpected smile just because they are unexpected. They don’t have to have a long ranging effect on my life. They just have to be.

So here is my first weekly smile.

It might be unexpected, but for me, this week’s smile is about Christmas lights. I know, I know, you all think I’m crazy. Christmas has been over for a few weeks, and even if you celebrate the entire Christmas season, Epiphany is also in the past. And if you go in the stores, Valentine’s Day rules the roost. But hear me out!

Three things:

1. After six years in Taiwan, the Christmas lights here in Michigan were magical. Yes, I know that many people had them out way too early. Though, aside from the commercial aspect, there is something about having a holiday season, particularly if your family is more likely to be together for Thanksgiving than for Christmas, so I’m a little more tolerant of early decorators than I used to be: IN HOMES. So seeing lights this year was part of feeling like I really am back home.
2. I had an exchange student from Japan visiting for a week at Thanksgiving. (NOTE TO SELF: put together a post about Yumi’s visit.) She was totally taken by our evening drives through the neighborhoods as more and more lights kept popping up each night. I realized, seeing things through her eyes, that with the amount of work people put in with their lights and outdoor decorations, no wonder they do it early. Let’s share this light for a while. Which brings me to three.
3. Last night, I was driving home, and several people still have Christmas lights out. It made me smile. I was grateful to these people for having their lights out. I don’t care if it’s intentional, or they are just waiting for things to warm up before taking them down, or they haven’t had time to do it yet. I don’t care. What I do care about is that in this wintery season of snow, wind, and not much to look forward to, these lights warm me. I can feel them push away the edges of my depression and moodiness that can threaten at this time of year. I can imagine the people in those houses holding on to a little holiday togetherness, even if it’s only in my own mind. Those lights give me a sense of hope. And I like that. It makes me smile.

 

 

This post is also part of JusJoJan, for day #15.

Three Things Thursday: Also a Day Late! (BUT definitely worth it!)

This week has had a couple frustrations and minor setbacks, but I’m getting back into the swing of things, even if I still have to keep my hand bandaged for another few days, but that’s a story for tomorrow.  🙂

This post is about three great things that have happened this week, in spite of the other stuff. And these things are helping me move in the right direction for 2016, so it’s turning out to be a good month overall.  So here are my three things for this Thursday (even though it’s late).  🙂

First up: I got the lease for the house so that I could start putting things in my name. I also was able to set up a time to view it and take pictures later in the week (see #3). Having the official paperwork set up for February 1 is quite exciting. We will soon be in a home where we can settle in and get back into building a life together. And it’s only a ten minute drive to the university — WITH traffic.  😉

And then Dave decided to wait on the moving van until spring weather and decided that he really needed to be here with some of the other things that are going on. Plus, it will be great to move into the house together. SO he investigated bus schedules, and three weeks from today, I will travel about 40 miles to pick him up from a bus station. He has to transfer in Chicago and in Detroit, but he’s doing it because — did I mention — he’s all kinds of awesome. He bought the ticket last night. To say I’m excited would be a huge understatement!

And last: today was the long awaited viewing of the house. It’s got all kinds of space and levels, and you’ll have to wait to see pictures when I have better lighting and more time, but let’s just say, it’s a Thursday thing for sure! I’ve picked out my office/sewing area, and I am looking forward to moving in and living and getting to work. And of course, we will finally be able to give my piano a home again!

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If you’d like to join in Three Things Thursday, check it out over at Nerd in the Brain. This post is also part of JusJoJan for January 14. I WILL catch up.  🙂

One Liner Wednesday: A Day Late

Wednesday was kind of a lost cause, more to follow on that, but today (the second day of my Intro to Criminal Justice courses, I had a student come up to me to say:

“Thank you for being a not-boring teacher.”

I’ll take it.  😀

 

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This post is part of One-Liner Wednesday and JusJoJan (Day 13)

 

More Good News! Not all Meetings are Bad

Today was the first day of the new semester. I had all three of my classes today, so it was a busy day. The hybrid class meets five times in person before moving to online, so this week and next, I have three classes a day. It is a little draining, but I do really like teaching, so I eventually recuperate. Plus, in a couple of weeks, I will only teach two classes those two days, and will do the online course mostly . . . well, online. But I can do it on other days. For now, it makes sense to have all three on the same day, but yeah, I’m feeling it.

Except something good happened today that kind of ramped up the energy. If you have been keeping up on my insane schedule, you know that I’m working on a major editing project, and that it’s due at the end of the month. You may also remember that I said I had to meet with the VP of the organization before I could finish it. Well, I met with him before my classes today. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the meeting, because, well, . . . meeting.

But today’s meeting was different. It was full of good news. I’m on track with things the way I’m doing them. His request wasn’t about the material I was sending, but that he wanted me to do an additional project for him. That one gives me some additional money, but more importantly, he told me that he negotiated a significant increase in the stipend I am being paid for the big project. Enough to pay a couple months’ rent on the new place!

All sorts of awesome!

 

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This post is part of JusJoJan Day 12

ROW80: Sunday Check-in

Well, here it is: my initial check in for my first round of participation in Row80. This week had progress, but it is still an easing in process with the new year and all that stuff, but I’m pretty sure many people are in the same boat.

So that being said, I will report on what has been happening (or not happening) with my goals. Then I will list the goals that have emerged during the past week that need to be added to Round 1.

Finish Accreditation Editing  (DEADLINE: January 30)
This project is going well. Ten of 15 chapters pretty much finished. The other five are well under-way. I have a meeting next week to finalize the recommendations. Then I can finish.

• The meeting is Tuesday morning at 9:00. Then I will push to see how far I can get by the end of the week.

Finish Co-Authored Paper  (DEADLINE: January 11)
I’m waiting for my co-author to respond to my last take on the revision. This is relatively low-stress at this point, since we are largely in agreement about how to incorporate recommended revisions.

• Finished on time, except as many of you already know, I was given the wrong deadline, so we actually missed it. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that our apologetic submission at this late date (6 days past) will still be considered. If not, I will look for additional places to submit it.

Finish planning courses and upload materials to website
I have to update my assignments and projects for Intro to Criminal Justice, but the Intro to Sociology will take a little more effort. I haven’t taught this course in a few years, and it’s a hybrid course (a few in-person meetings and the rest online).

• Oh heck, what a pain in the *** this has been. It’s not that I haven’t done it, I just haven’t finished it. I did help a colleague get oriented to the system so that she can start her classes tomorrow. And I still have another day before mine start, so the initial stuff will be done in time, and I’ll continue to work to get the entire semester put up as this round goes forward.

Post on blog 25 days in January
I hope to publish something on my blog every day, but it’s better for me to exceed the goal than to miss it by one or two days. The January posts do not fit a specific theme. In fact, there is no real plan other than to experiment with all kinds of things, and see if anything sticks. Which leads to the next goal.

• This one is going very well. Since classes haven’t stated, and I had some momentum, I have gotten a bit ahead on this one. Here it is the tenth, and I’ve posted 14 times in January. I may make all 31 days at this rate, but I’m not going to stress. I’ll easily make my goal of 25 posts for the month.

Create a Blogging Plan
I am not talking about looking for a niche. I’ve made peace with the fact I don’t have to write about one or two topics and leave out things that don’t fit those topics. I admire people who have niche blogs, but as long as my life remains as eclectic as it is, I can’t expect my blog to be different. I’ll be looking for a couple of focal points for my life, but not necessarily for my blog. Still, I want to have a plan for publishing with a list of possible post topics and a rough schedule for doing so.

• I want to experiment another week or so before starting to construct a possible plan.

Read Draft Novels (TBA)

• Nothing on this yet.

Work Out a Weekly Schedule
With all the various activities I need to do in a week, I need to schedule routine activities like grading, course prep, tutoring review, writing, and personal time. No reason to waste thinking time on remembering and scheduling these activities over and over.

• I had hoped to start the semester with a plan in place, but it hasn’t happened. I will try to form a draft plan this week based on the way classes and other commitments go.

Finish Jack’s Quilt
I’m ready to start the machine quilting. I want to have the quilt delivered to my grandson and then post pictures online (my daughter-in-law wants to be surprised), so no posting until the quilt is delivered.  😉

• I arrived back in Michigan on Friday, and I unpacked the sewing machine today. By the end of this week, I will at least get started on this. My goal is to finish it by the end of the month. It might be ambitious, but I’d like to try.

Piece the back of Kate’s quilt
My daughter has given me until her 30th birthday to finish it, but I’m going to see how many months ahead I can manage to beat that deadline. (She’ll be 29 the lst of March.)

• This will be on hold until Jack’s quilt is done. But Kate’s is next before any new projects.

Get back into regular music activities
I got a call about scheduling some dates to play at a church nearby, and once I get back into it by working with them, I can be on a wider sub-list. this is one of those two-birds-with-one-stone kind of things. I want to brush up on my skills, and earning a little extra money will be good. Who knows, I may even pick up a couple of piano students.

• Good progress on this. I will do an observation on January 24. Then I will cover three weekends: the end of January, and the first two in February. Yay!

Determine longer range goals
I want to make this year really focused toward specific goals, but I haven’t yet really defined what those will be. The first half of Row 1 is going to be focused on creating a plan that will carry me through the year.

• No real progress yet, but this is something I will grow into over Round 1. Not expecting any big shift here until mid-February or so.

ADDITIONAL ROUND 1 GOALS

The following items have emerged as active goals for the first round.

1. Move into new home. Immediate goals involve setting up utilities in my name. Start packing. Look into internet service.
2. Get car serviced. Oil change. Other issues.
3. Create rough outline of book based on student response to ESL writing course.

 

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This post is also part of JusJoJan for Day 11.

Share Your World – 2016 Week 1

Since Cee will be posting the questions for week 2 of Share Your World tomorrow, I better answer the ones from week 1 before it’s too late. If you’d like to join in, check out  post. It’s a great place to learn all kinds of interesting things about the people who participate in this weekly event.

Here are the questions for week 1:

As a child, who was your favorite relative?

There are really two. My maternal grandmother and my sister, Cindy. But I’ll go with my sister, since I had less time with her than I did with my grandmother. I was older than Cindy by two years, and from the time I can remember, we shared a bedroom, right up until I went to college. She and I shared lots of cool things during our growing up years, and we spoke often during that year I was in college, but she was killed in a car accident at the end of my freshman year. She and I both kept diaries through junior high and high school, and we had a pact to grab the other’s diary if something happened. I have hers, and I often wonder what her life would be like if she were still here.

If you could be a tree or plant, what would you be?

I’d like to be some kind of climbing ivy, so I could spread out and see all different parts of my surroundings.

What would be your preference, awake before dawn or awake before noon?

It’s more like at dawn. I don’t always make it, but most of the time, it works out.

Would you like to sleep in a human size nest in a tree or be snuggled in a burrowed spot underground?

I’m assuming that the burrowed spot isn’t crawling with all kind of underground creatures. I am a big fan of building a burrow to sleep in. Bury me in blankets and stuff, so the burrowed spot appeals. But if the creepy critters are part of the deal, I’d take the nest. But I’d need a couple of blankets.  😉

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Thanks Cee for coming up with interesting questions and hosting this group each week. I am hoping to head over here more often in 2016.  🙂

Weekend Coffee Share: A New Semester

If we were having coffee,

I’d tell you that I can’t spend as much time as usual because I still have a few things to finish up for the start-up of my classes this week. I’m teaching Intro to Criminal Justice again (two sections) and a combination online/in-person (hybrid) Intro to Sociology course. This is my first hybrid course, and I just completed the training for it about ten days before Christmas. I’m looking forward to classes, but as always, I wouldn’t mind having a little more time before things started up. But I guess that’s always the way. But I’m going to head to a near-by coffee shop (3 1/2 miles away)  😉 to gather my focus.

If we were having coffee,

I’d tell you that I got my sewing machine set up this morning. Dave was so great about packing it up securely so that I could bring it back with me and not have to wait until he arrives in February. I’d also tell you that I think I’ve practiced the basic machine quilting enough while I was in Iowa that I can move onto the actual quilt, hopefully tomorrow.

If we were having coffee,

I’d tell you that I finished all the revisions and the report to the reviewers for the co-authored article only to find out that my co-author confused the deadline with one of his other deadlines. We have effectively missed the deadline. He thought it was tomorrow, but it was actually last Tuesday. If we’ve lost the chance to get it published with them, I will start targeting other journals to submit it to, but it was a big disappointment.

Still, I’m still feeling very good about the direction life has been taking over the past few days, and I’m looking forward to the coming weeks.

 If you’d like to join in and have coffee or tea and see what everyone else has been up to this week, you can head over to Diana’s page for the details and the Linky to lots of people who are making the weekly coffee share part of their weekends.

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This post is also part of JusJoJan, Day 10. Another great place to connect with other bloggers.