Score! Another Anniversary

I moved to Rocky 20 years ago today.
For the past two decades the mountain scene in this photo, or some version thereof, has been a common sight.
I'll post about this again, but for now I simply wanted to mark the day where I moved into my current life.

Big Month

Some green, some gold, some reflection. It's a good time of life.

November is a big month all around for me, this one especially.

Reason No. 4: As of the end of the month I'll have lived in Rocky Mountain House for 20 years. That's the longest I've stayed in one place. Ever.
Reporters move around a great deal. It's good for life experiences.
I found the love of my life here and thus found legitimate cause to stay.

Reason No.3: Within about two weeks I'll have been blogging for two years, and this marks my 444th post.

Reason No. 2: I'm unofficially Nanoing. I lacked the personal courage, and the plot, to sign up for NaNoWriMo, the national novel writing month. But then one fine night last week I got a brilliant idea in the bathtub. I realized I could combine an old, bad story that I never finished with a not-quite -as awful story that I'd barely started. Both had been around for years.
My fantasy novel opens somewhat like the bad story and I was able to use the bare bones of a few scenes. Somewhere along the line a plot fell into place. Who knows if it'll stay there.
The writing is fun. I haven't been this tickled about writing since my first manuscript.

Reason No. 1 for November being a big month: I turn 50 in just over two weeks.
I'm looking forward to it.

Now, how about you? What are your big months? Do you have any? Or is life one big, juicy celebration?

Gratitude Monday - Ten Years Later Edition

Ten years ago today Mike and I got married.
It was an outdoor ceremony on a warm, lovely late summer afternoon in Police Outpost Provincial Park in southern Alberta.
The woman in the far right background is my mother.

Chief Mountain in the background. The Park is one of my favourite spots. I went there in the fall of 1985 or 1986 and looked around. It was then I decided if I ever got married that would be the spot.


We were together for eight years before we got married.
I am grateful for each and every day.

Where Did The Week Go?

It seems I’ve lost my ability read and comprehend a simple calendar.

I wrote last Friday about the sixth anniversary of quitting my job to write full time. I was wrong.
I left on August 31 and until yesterday afternoon I’d thought last Friday was August 31. Turns out I was a week early.

In retrospect last week may as well have been the anniversary. I recall not doing very much in my final days at the newspaper. Hit the final Monday deadline, of course, and wrote a final column in which I admitted my goal in life was to be completely useless, but that’s about it.

Oh, I’ve mixed up days before. Since I’ve been working at home I find I sometimes have to concentrate to sort out what day it is. Is it Tuesday? Saturday? What did we watch on TV last night?

Good thing I subscribe to a daily newspaper.