Getting by

I went to Helena Saturday through Sunday for a dear friend's baby shower. It was a nice 180 mile round trip drive; an opportunity to get out of Bozeman and have fun with Ali before she delivers in 6 weeks or so.

It helped pull me out of the funk I've been in since Christmas. I swear, last week was the longest four day week possible! Late meetings, high stress, low motivation.

Bah. At the end of the week we received our W-2's to be able to do our taxes. You might remember that we're looking forward to a big tax refund to pay off our wedding and give us room in our budget to do fun stuff. DJ came home on Friday and immediately fired up Turbo Tax; the number on Friday night was about half of what we were hoping for. By Sunday night he'd entered my student loan information, car tabs (which are tax deductable) and home mortgage information and the number had gotten better, but still not as much as we'd hoped for.

Sigh. Damn it's expensive to be grown ups. We'll deal, and it doesn't really set us back, but I'd really like to get this wedding monkey off our backs.

Anyway. The next few months have more to look forward to. My birthday is a week from today. We're hosting the annual Superbowl Party; this year's theme is "Gravies of the World". Then we're headed to Big Sky for Moonlight weekend part deux. We're considering a trip down to Pocatello to see my parents in February. I might head to Eastern Washington for a long weekend in March. We'll head to Portland in April so DJ can be the best man in a friend's wedding.

And then it's spring!

All of that travel and events every two weeks will hopefully keep me from getting stuck in a winter funk again.