Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

It's been a few weeks since I last blogged. Sorry about that. Life has been pretty much a whirlwind since early December.

My oldest has been pulled over three times in the past two weeks by the local police. She's been driving the truck and doing a pretty good job, but the cops decided she needed to: do a better job of stopping at stop signs, make sure that she is doing her best to wear her safety belt, and to make sure her lights were on when driving at night. Fortunately, she received no tickets for these minor mishaps. The lesson was learned however. Still, she managed to bump into the back of a car just enough to dent the truck bumper, but not damage the other car. Weird.

Speaking of the truck, I spent three days trying to find two tires for it. Why so long you ask? Well, I purchased two tires back in September because the truck needed it. Why not four, Clark? Well, my pockets haven't been very deep lately, so I opted for two then and would pick up two more later. Well, the same tire shop, the local Super Wal Mart, was consulted on the latest tire purchase as they were the shop who did the tires in September. They have very good tire prices. However, this time I spoke with three different people who told me that the tires I purchased in September were suddenly not available there. I must order them from Wal Mart online. No problem, I said. Being Intertube savvy, I went to the site and tried to place my order. Tried. You see, the website said the matching tires were out of stock! I went back to the shop and explained my predicament and they said they would call around and get back to me the next day. The next day comes around and I get no phone call. Frustrated and concerned I would have to buy two other tires or FOUR new tires (that wasn't going to happen), I called and spoke with the assistant store manager. In five minutes he was able to determine that indeed the store did have the tires I was looking for (In fact, they had 8 of them). I was perturbed and happy all at once. Why didn't they bother to look in their inventory three days ago? The assistant manager was nice enough to discount some of the services to save me about 30 bucks overall.

I found out in December that I have diabetes. Not the really bad kind, but the kind that comes at you when you are too fat. I have to diet and exercise now. Blah. I have to give up tons of good stuff to eat and take meds. It was hard, but I'm doing OK. I've lost a little weight and have tried to step up my exercise. Since leaving my last job I've lost about 20 lbs. I think 15 of that came from having much less stress in my work life.

I've been working hard, but not too crazily. I am running around, but it's a good thing. My work stress level is near zero. I am working with nice folks who care for a change.

Christmas was pretty cool. It seemed to come and go pretty fast. The kids had a great time, too.

Clark