Three Weeks and Counting

It's been a nice week mostly off - though I did work a bit on Friday and a bit today...better to over-prep for the busy week ahead then to assume I will be OK this week and get it all done.  Sure, I will...but I prefer to skip all-nighters when possible.  It's a massive board prep week for me and it feels good to have spent some time getting some things off the list in advance. Also a week of many, many meetings - 1/2 day meetings three of the days and not things I can bump or skip.

Three work weeks ahead before Winter Break.  In my 3AM ruminations, I contemplate maybe taking off some time the third week to start the break early - but I know it's not likely.  I have a meeting on the last work day that I don't want to miss so....vacation days will have to wait.

We have no big trips planned - a trip to Disneyland in April is all that's on the agenda for the foreseeable future.  I've checked out airfares to Paris but haven't purchased yet.  All cash in reserve for the upcoming car deal - still in process.

B. called on Thanksgiving day and had no plans - not many folks on the base since most took time for Thanksgiving given that all have been told Christmas is a 'no'.  B. is still hopeful his 4 day pass will be approved - but it's still not official.  We asked if he would be OK with us transferring him some $ to host him and a friend going out for a nice dinner - he said he'd love that and then promptly apologized.  ??  He's trying so hard to not 'need' help from us - so we reminded him that we would really like to buy him dinner; that we offered - so no apology needed.

It's hard to shop for him when we aren't sure where he'll be - and we know he won't have a lot of room for 'stuff'.  H.'s big gift is purchased and that's pretty much 'it' for him this year - it's pricey.

We had a really nice week - yesterday, we gave some thought to going out and looking at houses.  As J. said 'it's getting us out of the house; it's something to do together; it will help us get ideas about how much space do we want in our retirement home'.  Ultimately, I had no inertia - mainly because looking at houses makes me covet something we don't want to spend money on at the moment.  We've decided to stay here absolutely as long as we can - it's the most financially responsible thing we can do.  So we didn't go look at other places to live since we don't plan to go anywhere else.

I've had a relaxing series of days off and it's been lovely -