hello? hello, are you there?

Well I've done it again. It's been 3 weeks since I posted and people are wondering where I am. It's nice to know that people read this. My apologies for the delay -- I have truly been swamped.

What's new? Well after an emergency meeting in December, then a follow up meeting the first week of '05, I have become the assistant director of the artist cooperative that I belong to, CoCoA. All this means, really, is that now if the things that I was doing before don't get done, people can justifiably be upset with me.

I don't want to minimize this too much, though. It is cool, and an honor, to be on the board of directors of something as cool as CoCoA.

My official duties are to monitor the drawing class [that I already attend], coordinate the models [which I had recently begun doing], and update the website [which I built and update regularly]. My new added responsibility is to attend Board Meetings and review the budget annually.

This could be short-lived though. I am only on temporary assignment as CoCoa goes through some restructuring. We'll have regular elections sometime in the summer, then I could be OUT! We'll see.

The only other events since I last posted have been Christmas and New Years, both of which were great. Christmas we got up and opened gifts with the kids. After that we went to a nursing home with our church and had a small service then handed out gifts. I think having our little ones there was a treat for folks. After the nursing home visit, we went to Nancy's folks' house and spent the afternoon with her parents, my parents and my sister Rachel. It was a fun day.

Our New Years' celebration was pretty low key, but fun. We went to our friends' house (Todd and Missy) and spent the evening with them and some of their friends. The kids were able to sleep in the upstairs bedrooms while we played games around the dining room table. We played Cranium and Taboo, both "boys vs girls," and both won by the boys, which made my New Years' celebration truly sweet. We stayed until midnight, yelled "Happy New Year!" gave our spouses the requisite kiss, then headed home in fairly short order. We're lame like that any more.

We have some fun things coming up here in the near future. Emma's birthday is this coming week and she will be turning 5! (HOLY COW, ALREADY!) The next several days we'll have my sister Kim coming into town, as well as my brother David and his wife Becky and their kids. I'm looking forward to a fun week.

On the Thursday following their arrival, some of our dearest friends, Kathy and Jill will be coming for a ski trip, and we should be able to do some serious hanging out for the weekend of their visit. I haven't skied in a few years, but it always comes back so I'm not too worried. What I am concerned a bit about is my physical preparedness to ski for potentially 3 solid days.

Due to a combination of age and absolutely no exercize, I have been increasingly prone to more and more painful injuries. My back goes out pretty easily, and increasing trouble from arthritis in some joints causes pain more easily than in the past. We'll just see what happens, I guess.

Oh and I had a birthday, too. December 27 I turned 31. "Low-key" seems to be my theme these days. We went to lunch as a family to Lone Star, a family favorite. After dinner, Nancy and I went to see "The Aviator" which was an enjoyable movie.

Well all this jabbering didn't amount to much, but at least folks know now what has been happening in my life.

Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, play nice.