January started great with my parents visiting and me on vacation. They were here for Christmas (‘08 along with Melanie & Co – but they had to leave before 2009) and stayed through New Years. I had fun showing them how a real winter looks like – a real San Antonio winter, that is:

In February (the 18th to be exact), my second grandson, Liam, was born. I’m still pretty sure I’m way too young to be a grandmother, but apparently, what I think here (or there, or anywhere) doesn’t matter all that much. And they are beautiful:

March 2009 was a fun month – Eric’s Mom and Dad and an uncle (MIL’s brother) and wife who live in Indiana and Minnesota, respectively, came to wait out their winter with us. It was great fun and great company, and they can winter with us any time they want to. Sadly, while they were here, we had to say ‘good-bye’ to Fred, our beautiful, strawberry-blond, long haired, haunted cat.

Early October, I had dinner with a friend and told her about a book I really liked. After I got home, I checked Amazon.com, found the book, ordered it to be shipped to her, and told her it was on its way. That was on October 6th.

I wondered why I didn’t hear from her about getting the book, but an email from Amazon on October 24th – that’s 18 days later, said:

Between Christmas and New Years 2008, Phillip signed up for the ‘College First’ program with the Army National Guard. That means he had to do his monthly drills starting in January, and after he graduated High School this June, he had to leave for Basic Training and AIT. We dropped him of at the hotel to leave for Basic on July 27th, and he went to Ft. Jackson, South Carolina.

Eric had been planning on flying out for the Graduation all along, I was going to stay home with the animals. My best excuse probably is that any graduation in Germany just doesn’t have the same extending significance it has here. One usually goes to one’s own graduation – if at all, and that’s it. So after Keesha died and there was only one dog to worry about, and we already had the hotel and car booked, it just struck me that what if…. What if I worked it out at work so I could work the weekend and would not have to use up vacation days I didn’t really have. And surely, there’s a way to take care of Leia without totally traumatizing her.

Every Comment that includes more than ZERO links is held for moderation – and then marked by me as SPAM. I don’t allow Spam comments to be published. So save yourself (and me) the time of trouble.

This is my personal blog and will NOT be used to advertise your cheap drugs, Russian brides, or other crap. Plus, any IP that shows up more than once gets banned altogether.

I suppose I could block Comments altogether, but I don’t want to – if friends or other legit readers want to leave one – I want to hear those.

I have turned on my spam filter – you don’t have a chance. So keep spamming away and waste your time – I’m NOT going to allow you to use my blog to advertise your crap. Anything that makes it through gets deleted as soon as I see it, as I’m continuously improving the spam trap.

Spam really pisses me off.

And I’m happy to report it’s working – the last 10 of your posts went straight into the spam trap.

I win, SUCKER!!!!