I really do exist

Hi. Yeah, so I know it's been over 2 years. There really is no excuse for my lapse other than my own depression and/or laziness. Mostly laziness. Things are way better now and I feel compelled to write again.

Trying to recollect where I left off in my life...rebooting...I'm just going to start spewing out things as they come to me, ok?

Well, we're back up to 7 cats again.  My sister adopted Toothless in early 2012 and now he's livin' large in an upscale apartment in Hoboken, NJ.  A few months after, we took in my parents' 10-year-old black cat (in the summer of 2012). His name is Rudy. Rudy was always a standoffish kind of cat when he lived with my parents. Not so with us. He adores me. He follows me like a puppy and sits on my chest at night. He drools on me. He licks my nose and cheeks. It's awesome. Fi-Fi hates him. Not so awesome. After 2+ years, she will still awaken from a sound sleep in her kitty bed and wander upstairs with what seems like the sole purpose of attacking him for no reason. She succeeds more often than we'd like. It has gotten better, but I don't like my babies hatin' on each other.

Herc is enormous -- 22+ pounds. Orson has arthritis in his silly toes. :-( Titus was very ill last year right around Thanksgiving. I was a wreck. But he's perfectly fine now. His birthday is actually tomorrow. He's 10. They're all getting older and knowing they won't go on forever makes me very sad. I try not to dwell on it.

All other cats are present and accounted for.

Probably the biggest news is that in March 2013 I started a new job. Todd also got a new job just about the same time. There is no other way to say it: it has changed my life. For the first time in I-don't-know-how-many-years I really have NO complaints. Sure, I still have the daily frustrations that come with any job. For instance, I just spent most of the day in what can only be described as an email exercise in tooth extraction with Dell over a missing monitor stand. I still don't think they know what the hell I'm talking about. But the people in my immediate group of co-workers and my boss are all wonderful. No weird egos. No jealous backstabbing. No soul destroying lies. Everyone treats me with respect and my contributions are valued. It's a nice feeling.

Still knitting. I've knit a lot of stuff since I last posted. Too much to mention everything. I will post some things soon. I've taken to lace knitting.  I love that wow factor that you get when you take a pile of knitted fabric that looks like nothing more than a giant wad of knots and then spread it out for blocking and you see this amazing landscape of delicate intricacy. Here are a few examples:

More to come....