April–A Look Ahead

Do you realize that one-fourth of the year is now ka-put? I can’t believe how fast time is flying by me right now. And I know that this month will be gone in a blink of an eye as well. But hubby and I are going to have another adventure trip soon, so at least I’ll have a bevy of photographs to record what I see and experience this month!

We’ll be flying out to New Mexico later on to explore the natural country, parks, and architecture! The camera gear will be in tow, and I am going to try to stretch a bit on my creative eye. This trip will be on our own rather than a tour, so we’ll have lots of unhurried time. We’ll be out there for a week and a half, with our stay divided between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. We’ll explore some of the picturesque parts of those cities and also use them as our home bases for jaunts to historical and natural features. We are crossing our fingers that the national parks will not be closed because of the politicians in Washington. (They should have passed this year’s budget no later than six months ago, the idiots!) If the national parks aren’t open, we may have to console ourselves with extra pitchers of margaritas!

I have gotten into the groove okay with the consulting job. The work is challenging at times, but I’ve been able to tackle it. It consumes a great deal of my time, needless to say. Unfortunately, I have not yet found my groove with what little free time remains. After experiencing the freedom of retirement, it is very confining (and confusing) to have that freedom now gone! I have to confess that keeping up with the blog has been a bit daunting. Less frequent and shorter posts may have to be the answer. There just aren’t enough hours in the day! Hubby has been quite a sweetie, taking care of shopping errands, doing chores around the house, and making sure that I am regularly fed. I would be really frazzled without all of his much appreciated work!

Since we have Photoshop CS5, we were recently offered a good deal from Adobe on Lightroom 3, a companion digital image program. So we ordered it! I am anxious to try it out this month and see if it will help me speed up my current snail-pace of photo image processing. We just got it in the mail yesterday and it’s already on my computer, ready for my initial learning frustrations, LOL. I plan to immerse myself in study this weekend with some online videos.

The back and side yard projects finally started earlier this week. We were getting concerned over the continued delays and were ready to find another company to get the job done. The brush clearing in the woods has been accomplished, much to the chagrin of our resident squirrel population. They only got one day of work accomplished before a rainy weather front appeared. So now we are faced with more delays. Drats!

Thanks to hubby, the grass in our yard is looking quite respectable after he applied fertilizer and weed killer. We’re declaring war on weeds this year, and it will be a continuing battle since there are still dozens of empty home lots in our villa section. New daffodils are blooming every day, it seems. I am so happy with the varieties that we planted, and I squeal every time I see them! Yeah, I’m funny like that. My lavender plants are doing splendidly and I’ll plant a few more when we return from our travels. We’re also going to pot up some herb plants soon. April is always a busy time for gardening!

Last, but not least, I anticipate hitting my 500th blog post toward the end of the month! It’s incredible to think that milestone is now almost here. Of course, I will have a special bloggy giveaway and celebration for my dear blog friends. You won’t want to miss signing up for it!