Mea Culpa

I'm not great in Latin, but I am sorry, folks. If you're like me and don't subscribe, but merely do the rounds of your favorite blogs, and have for over a month been checking in with me with nary a word of update... sorry! Know I was thinking of you!
A few things.
1) Work progresses. For Americorps grads, I am now out of the initial phase and into 'Phase II.' I have hopes that things will start moving more regularly soon.
2) It is definitely spring here in D.C. Some trees are blooming already! Tricksters...The last snowstorm has cleared and the rains are drizzling in with their reports of new life. And finally, we are all shedding our heavy coats, hats, gloves, scarves, and three layers of everything. Man, it was cold this year.
3) Balance update: have been going to the gym 2-3 times per week, and am struggling to keep it at 'more than 2,' since 2 doesn't seem to be enough, judging by the clothes-fitting metric. The current reigning activities are banghra on Mondays, vinyasa yoga on Thursdays, and hip-hop/ funk on Saturdays. I should commit to these 3 plus one just-gym day, maybe. But I don't want to be unrealistic, hmmm... what do you think?
4) Taxes annoy me, especially when I see that I, earning approximately $18,000 GROSS, am going to owe $2,000 to the IRS, and am in the 13% tax bracket. 1 job I already paid taxes on throughout the year, 1 wasn't enough to bear bothering with, 1 was substantial and needed to be taxed at 15%, and the last one, a similar situation. For some reason, the cognitive dissonance between "13%" and "$2,000" is very upsetting to me. Maybe there is still hope, though.
5) I was thinking yesterday of using this site as a depository of favorite recipes I've tried, and a place to display photos to show and to remind myself what it looked like, etc. Then I thought about the need for a tagging system, or system of indexing, and how I didn't know how to do that, but could ask a friend or just poke around blogger.... and then reflected that I hadn't entered a new post in over a month, but here I was, imagining all the work involved in keeping up this effort down the road! Ach, one day at a time, Margaret!

So, pics to come, recipes to entice, and I hope some more consistency to boot. Thanks for keeping up!

Oops

Is it really already January? Oyleme? Gosh.
I have been working away and enjoying it, trying to square away my new DC car situation, shopping with a purpose, decluttering, crepe party-planning, hosting visitors, exercising regularly, and in general trying to streamline my operation to get all my goals a-juggling in the right tempo. :-) That's why I haven't blogged in over a month. But man, you should see my catalogued magazine pile! Sa-weet!

2 weeks' notice

So now I can weigh in after almost 2 weeks at Keystone. The people there rock! They are truly awesome individuals, with humor, piercing intelligence, multitasking ability, friendliness, and drive to help people solve problems. And there are some funny quirks. They're like my dream co-workers, so that makes me pretty darn happy.
About the work. I have been mostly researching organizations, composing drafts for fact sheets (yay for fact sheet exercises in Climate Change class!), and learning the ropes of the conference call software and hardware. It's a wide variety of tasks, and an even wider variety of topics: electricity transmission, biofuel sustainability, clean energy technologies, and more! I am still digging into the thick of things, but at least feel like I can separate DoE from EPA projects now! lol...
In other news, I will be in Cali for Christmas, down with the OCers. Then, I take off for a cross-country rad road trip with Brian, from Pasadena to DC in 6 days. I am sure we will find plenty of funny and amusing things of which to snap pictures, so stay tuned! We're a couple of funny folks!