Emily and I are getting along just fine since she's come up here. There hasn't been as much time as I'd thought to give her the tourist view of northeast Indiana, especially with the weather being so lousy, but little by little I'm introducing her to my home town and the wierd and wonderful people who zoom in and out of my life. We've spent a great deal of time arranging the home, surfing the internet, reading Buffy and Sandman comics, and basically being two geeks in love.
Here's even bigger news: I'm going to be a grandfather. My oldest daughter, Charis, is pregnant and expecting sometime in late July. On the bad side, due to shenanigans on the part of his family, Charis' boyfriend Vinny has lost his home. In her condition I'm kind of happy to have them living with me, where I can do the concerned dad thing and not worry about them so much. On the bad side, I've lost my office again!
I haven't written anything about this because I haven't really been able to deal with it. Vinny lost his job, they lost their house, and they're having a baby -- we're not starting well from the gate, are we? More to the point, I am so not ready to start dealing with babies again, especially when this one is living proof that I'm old enough for my babies to have babies.
This is the largest amount of warm bodies that has inhabited my home since I bought it in 1988: Five humans (on days when my youngest is here), a chocolate lab dog, and four cats. Sadly, I'm allergic to cats, but I'm not about to kick them out when their owners have lost their home. So far it hasn't been too bad -- not as much nose blowing as I expected, but the cough is bugging the heck out of me.
There's also the hamster, but he's very sick and by the time you read this will probably no longer be one of the warm bodies. It's okay -- he lived a long and wheel-filled life.
The other thing of interest going on is that in a few weeks I'm going to be teaching an instructor's course to 7 members of my fire department. I'm the only certified instructor on the Albion Fire Department, and frankly, I'm way too busy and want to step away from it a bit. So I'm going to certify a bunch of the guys as Instructor I (basic teaching), then follow it up with Instructor II/III, making them advanced instructors who can create their own lesson plans and then certify others.
The idea is that when that's done, someone else can do the training officer gig and spread the work out a bit. I will remain a volunteer firefighter and our department's safety officer, but time's a'wasting and if I'm going to ever publish a novel, I need to put more time into it. Besides, I miss reading! I haven't touched a fanfic in weeks, it seems, and I have a stack of books waiting for me. After 27 years on the AFD, I feel I've earned the right to slow down a bit.
So if you're not hearing as much from me as you used to -- I'm teaching, loving, and doing the family thing. But as I've said before, even if I don't comment as much on my flist, I'll always be following your posts! Meanwhile, wish me luck getting through all these challenges ... have I mentioned I'm terrified of public speaking? (i.e., teaching!)