First, my thank you's to several of you who have sent your mailing address for Holiday notes from me. It was lovely to hear from you! [And this is a hint to those of you who haven't emailed yet. I'd like to hear from you.]

Wed Dec 7 - My heavy work project had infiltrated more parts of my life for two weeks than I noticed, and while I spent catch-up on my laundry & the mess throughout my room on Monday night, I still had to spend catch-up on my checkbook and bills last night before leaving the office. I wonder sometimes how people normally keep up on mundane tasks like this. No one ever seems to talk about "so I balanced my checkbook and paid my bills" as their evening or their weekend, and I know people must be getting things like this done. Sure, it's boring, but I sometimes wonder why it's so completely hidden from sight. Weird. Huh. I'm starting to think if I just set aside 5-15 minutes every morning, it might never really be all that big of a task. *shrug*

The Dyestuffs group meeting was much fun, including two people knitting, one person relaxing, one person embroidering, and one person on a laptop taking notes [that would be me *grin*]. And as much as our primary focus will be on Dyestuffs, it does seem very likely that we'll be putting together an uber-cool master list of resources for all things fiber related: Modern guilds and organizations and clubs, yarn/knitting stores, other merchants for dyestuffs or fiber crafts, historical research, articles on fiber arts, information about Crafts Fairs and local County Fairs, classes on how-to, demos, retreats, workshops, etc. I like these folks! This is going to be fun!

The meeting was held at 8 pm, and we broke a little before 10. So I went ahead and drove straight home, diving straight away into bed. Somehow things have been finally catching up with me, and I was exhausted.

Thu Dec 8 - I tried applying my idea of "5-15 minutes every morning, keep the checkbook/bills always up to date" and it seemed pretty easy. *grin* I even took a moment to finally got a new sense of what my new debt-to-credit ratio is, and it's nice to have the math done now. [I love Excel spreadsheets. I'm such a geek.]

I need to finish my set-list flip book for Saturday, which is just a little cheat sheet to tell me which songs we're playing, in what order, and what all the keyboard settings are. Besides changing the keyboard for myself, I'm also changing the bass player's settings since we won't be stopping completely between each song. Sometimes he just can't get to the keyboard fast enough, whereas I can set it easily for him.

I'd like to eventually stop having a full-lyrics book, but the less we play a song in rehearsal, the more likely I am to have forgotten how a line or two goes. Ah, the perils of trying to be a successful musician, hmm? Even outside the band, I want to have more and more lyrics memorized for the chorus, for the SCA bardic arts, etc. and some days I feel like I'm on memorization overload.

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Recent Achievements Toward: My Dreams. Money tasks worked on, side-bag organized again: Personal Development. Blue Nails Guild: Fiber Artisan.

Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: Larry and Becky, Charlotte and Cameron. Again, I've been blessed with wonderful aunties, uncles, and cousins. I'm continually thankful for having grown up in a good family. I'm astonished, sometimes, how lucky I am to have a family like this.