Time

It's definitely time to post something here. It's been far too long and all I can say is that it hasn't been a good time to write about anything here for one reason or another. Initially it was because I had a couple of job interviews I was excited about, but I didn't want to talk about them here until they happened. Then when they did happen, I didn't want to post about them until I heard back. Then when I heard back, I was very sad because I didn't get either of the jobs. I was more upset about one of them, because it was such a good fit for me, but either of them would have gotten me back to Seattle, which would have been great. That was all resolved last week, so I was in a pretty foul mood for a few days. So, no posts for awhile now. Sorry about that.

I'm looking for work again in the Seattle area and I'm basically starting from scratch again, so I'll let you know how that goes. Julia and I have discussed some other options as well, but we haven't made any decisions yet.

Since the last time I wrote here, I think I've gone home three times, maybe four. The first of those weekends Julia and I built a very cool little herb garden right outside our back door. We're both very happy with how it turned out.

The image above is the space before we got started. We'd talked about getting some pavers and extending the patio a bit, but then Julia thought it might be a nice space to have an herb garden with easy access from the kitchen door. We talked a bit and decided to use the leftover rectangular stones you can see lining the path to make a wall and we got to work.

The above image is after we'd broken up the dirt with a pick-ax (what fun!), laid down some rocks to help with drainage, covered it up with some compost and topsoil, and were about half-way done with making the garden's wall. Having the edge of the patio to line them against made it pretty easy and we had just a few more stones than we needed, which was great!

Here's the end result. More dirt has been added, the wall it finished on three sides and abuts the grass on the back. We transplanted a few things from elsewhere in the garden, mostly herbs (hence the name!), added some stepping stones, and picked up a few more plants to green it up a bit. It looks great and we're both very impressed with out couple days of work. Which is why I'm writing about it.

One of my trips home was for the company I do a bunch of freelance work for, Green Ronin. We have a yearly summit at which we discuss the next year's schedule and try to get everything in order. We currently have the DC Comics license, so that's been the big time sink for me this year. I love working on it, but wow, there's a lot to do. That's another reason why I've been so lax on posting here; most of my free time is taken up with DC work.

Our cat, Coco, who was so sick, has pretty much made a full recovery. Julia babied her for a good month or two and just this week she's been back to her normal self. She was very touch-and-go for awhile there and I honestly think she might have starved herself to death if not for Julia's attention. We're both very happy Coco's feeling good again.

I forgot to post my annual recap of my move out to Seattle at the end of September/beginning of October, but this was my 9th anniversary. And yes, that's still hard to believe.

Julia's birthday was the beginning of September and I was home for that. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's the weekend we built the herb garden. We also had a nice date or two in the last month, which has been very nice and I think we'll continue that little tradition.

I'm all over the place in this post, but that's because I'm playing catch-up. Sorry about that. Hopefully things are a bit more normal now, so I'll post with some regularity. I know of a few people who will appreciate that.