Spring is Here?

Welcome to the first day of Spring 2009 at Maison DaYouthGuy. Yes, that's snow you see. Freshly fallen snow. The pile in front of the house is leftovers from the 275+ inches we received this winter. That's from the official total kept by our local village utility corporation. You can see the remnants running down the right hand side of the picture too in front of the fence.

Also note the flower boxes on the front of the porch. Oops you can only see the right hand one clearly. The left hand one is the black oblong behind the snow and next to the shrub. The weight of snow this year tore it off the side of the house, breaking the metal bracket holding it up along the way.

Such is spring in the W-N-Y.

In happier news I await with great anticipation the arrival of this little number and it's brother in brown. This is the Swift River Jeans belt from L.L. Bean, quite simply the best belt I've ever owned. My first one suffered a stitching failure after a good many years. The folks at Bean refunded the cost of the belt even though I couldn't remember how long I'd owned it or had any purchase paperwork. Since they're on sale (the cost of 2 is now only about $9 more than the original cost of 1) I'm getting a couple. They should be wrapped around my somewhat skinnier waist as early as tomorrow!

Meanwhile I'm without much of a voice at the moment (the peanut gallery will keep the celebrating to a minimum!). I've been lurking along the edges of a cold and doing a presentation Weds night followed by singing Irish folks songs just did me in. So I need to keep the talking to a minimum. Yeah, that'll work.

I think I've mentioned before that I'm headed to CREDO later this year. CREDO is a great program offered through the retirement fund of TEC to help clergy and lay employees of the church get healthier physically, mentally and spiritually. I know that it's a little controversial in some corners but it couldn't come at a better time for me. In preparation for the retreat you have to fill out a lot of forms so they know where you are (or think you are) right now. Last night my lady wife and I did the financial report. Which is LONG! The good news is that we aren't any worse off than I feared (in fact we're better off than she thought) but we're a long way off from being in good shape. Sigh.

But at least the paperwork is done.

Peace