Tomorrow is the last serious working day of the year. Actually that was today. Tomorrow we finish up at around noon and there is a departmental morning tea in the morning as well so it really is just a couple of hours’ work.

It has been a tiring year. Work wise things have chugged along in a relatively relentless manner. Then there were a few things in church which also took a chunk of attention and energy. A healing seminar circus, kooky practices by some of the leaders, non-communicative eldership, stressed out, burned out and overloaded board members, all lead to a stressful second half of the year for me. I was on the verge of leaving. Tress and I had talked about it and had more or less decided that it is what we would do, before a number of development made me feel that if we left, we will be contributing to the sense of unsettledness. And so we stayed and copped the tumult as did a few others.

We continued to build our lives and did things to make life as normal as possible. We built a deck on the side lawn and I got a new car. Recently too, we got a puppy which has grown a little bit and has grown on us too. He is such an integral part of the family now.

Also, notwithstanding the events at the leadership side of things, the church has been relatively ok. The home group which meets in our home has grown and has become a close knit group. We lost a member through death earlier a few months ago but he has been ill for a long time. We had become closer to him in his final months and his death affected many of us, just as his life did.

Kiddo will be in Year 11 when school starts in January. She recently passed her Grade 8 piano exams so she may not be doing any music lessons next year, except maybe giving them.