how I'm holdin' up

The email from Laura OLPH had a subject line of "Hey, Grumpy", and said, simply, "How ya holdin' up?"

My reply:

Surprisingly well, given the infernal weather, the forced isolation, and the fact that my weight appears to have developed the curious property of moving solely in a single direction (which is not down). I spent two days this week at a training, required by my supervisors, with four other staff members from my region. Not only was it a better training than I would have expected, but the coworkers and I got conversant (we had never been close, not due to dislike, but rather due to never having had reason to get close, or time to spend together). That was Tuesday/Wednesday; on Thursday we were closed for the snow, and on Friday we had a late open; despite that, I'm not swamped with work (although Monday is a holiday, and things may be difficult by Tuesday).

In other news, I've set myself a task of drawing for an hour a day (I'm using some of the photos I've put on my blog as models). Five years ago, I took a beginner drawing class, and started to get god, but then I put it down, and the two times I started since, I was so disappointed with how much progress I had lost that I stopped. Now I've set this resolution to do this for a year and we'll see; if i can stick to it, I should be satisfied with my progress by next mid-winter.

And I got an email that the Bike Exchange will be starting up again; there's a volunteers meeting Tuesday. They're looking for people to take on volunteer "apprentices" (mostly Rutgers students), and I'd love to do that (doesn't it sound neat?).

I'm also pleased that Ed C is thinking of leading some rides.

I'm ALSO also pleased because a particular bête noire, a harridan who is a fellow condo board member, will not be getting her way about a particular rule she'd like to see instituted, against a neighbor who keeps a kayak on a trailer in his side yard. Yes, it's ugly, but I'm not sure that it should be a rule that he has to get rid of it, and I don't like it that we have put so many new rules into place. In this country, condo and other neighborhood boards have become tyrannies from which there is no appeal (so courts have held), and there needs to be a balance between condo rules and freedoms.

This is turning into a blog post, and it may, in fact, become one. 

 And so it has.