Odds & ends

• It's February!  My least favourite month (although November usually runs a close second).  February 8th will mark 19 years (!) since Day One of the cycle that resulted in my pregnancy with Katie (my LMP date). And there's also "Family Day" (gag) to (not) look forward to. :p  Not to mention the continuing chaotic barrage of bad news from south of the border. :(  At least: (a) the sun was out yesterday (makes a HUGE difference -- it went back into hiding today, though... :p );  (b) there's Valentine's Day to look forward to (not if you're dh!! lol);  and (c) it's a short month...  
• Yesterday (Feb. 1st) marked one full year that I've been officially retired (after losing my job 18 months earlier, in July 2014). Things have changed so much since then, I still sometimes find it hard to believe that this is my life now. Not that it's a bad life (not at all!) -- just very different from the way I imagined it would be, and certainly different from this same time last year (although we were already beginning to look at condos then).
• Sometimes I feel too young to be retired. Sometimes I do get a little bored/stir crazy (especially at this time of year). But it's a good life overall, and I feel very fortunate that I was in the position to do this now.  I never got to be a SAHM (or a mom, period -- the stay-at-home part was probably just a pipe dream, finances & mortgages being what they were/are...);  why can't I enjoy some time as a homemaker a little later on in my life? 
• Our front hall closet is still dry (knocking wood!). I still check several times a day. The drywall/ceiling still needs to be repaired, though. So the stuff from the closet remains in the spare bedroom/office for the time being.
• Construction work on the townhouse site behind our condo building resumed yesterday, and they're back at it again today. I don't know anything about construction, but it looks to me like they are still working on sewer installation & road building. They started clearing the site around the same time we bought the condo last spring, and there are still no foundations dug let alone any actual building construction underway. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the schedule -- they have been gone for up to several weeks at a time, and then they'll show up & there will be a flurry of activity. If there's rain or snow, there's no point in them working;  the site becomes a muddy mess.
• In some ways, it's a pain in the you-know-where... they start work precisely at 7 a.m. (& often arrive earlier) so the noise usually wakes us up. And if the noise doesn't wake us up, the vibrations will -- it's like a mini-earthquake sometimes! Sometimes I think it's no coincidence that we had a leak;  I often hear things rattling around when there's a big "BOOM!"  :p  I have to admit, though, it's been fascinating to watch the process unfold.  I've been taking photos regularly of the progress (or lack thereof, lol) and sharing them in their own photo album on Facebook.  I'm not sure anyone else finds it as interesting as we do, but hey, my page... ;) 
• I found some pretty new placemats today that go well with our décor. Some supermarkets in Ontario have just (finally!) started selling beer & wine (previously, you had to go to a government-controlled liquor or beer store) and we each bought a bottle to be opened for dinner tonight (red for him, white for me). We'll use my crystal wine glasses that sat packed up in our basement for so many years and are now displayed in the beautiful china cabinet we had custom-built last summer. So even though it's February ;)  life is good. :)