2008 in review
The good...
Bought our 1981 S2 9.2A the end of May. A beautiful boat in good shape that is well equipped. It was life goal achieved, as was making the three day trip to Boston, my first real voyage on a boat.
Rescued an injured kitten when driving during the trip to move the boat up. She was dragging herself across a road in the pouring rain with a head injury. I saw some cars stopped...she was in the road in front of them...and I stopped and took her to a vet and gave her a good home.
$4 a gallon gas and heating oil gave way to sub $2 a gallon gas and heating oil.
The bad...
Losing half our net worth in lost 401K and home equity due what is perhaps the worst economic down turn since the great depression. Luckily we are still young enough to recover.
Soon after finally getting the boat to Boston (the end of July) I came down with flu which became six weeks of walking pneumonia and three rounds of antibiotics. So, very little sailing this summer.
I got my oil changed and they left the drain plug loose. It fell out destroying the engine in my 2000 Tundra (67K miles). They put a junkyard motor in which runs will. However the frame in the Tundra is rusting like mad (ala Tacoma) and Toyota refused to do anything about it.
Lost my only direct report in spring, a temporary employee, to a full time job elsewhere. Hired a replacement who proved to be incompetent and finally let him go, after I finally had gotten over my pneumonia in early October.
Way behind at work, I received another blow, as my Father was hospitalized with double pneumonia. It was brought on by a resistant staph infection, which on top of Parkinson's, kidney failure and a heart transplant seven years ago, ended his life on Oct. 27th. I spent two weeks in Florida during and after his passing.
My Mother has been diagnosed with pre-cancerous cells in her duodenum. We don't know how serious it is, as she had to put her own health concerns on hold for awhile.
The recent ice storm devastated the trees on our property. Luckily we only ended up with one medium sized branch on the roof. So far I have spent about 16 hours with my chain saw, but efforts were slowed by back to back snowstorms which dumped 18 inches of snow on us.
I raked off as much snow as I could, but still ended up with water coming in from ice dams and melting snow, as the storms were promptly followed by a freeze then three days of 40 degree weather and rain. I thought I had it pretty under control, but recently found water damage in a downstairs bedroom ceiling, indicating water ran down the wall doing as yet unknown damage.
My company delayed raises and bonuses by a quarter...but I still have a good job.
So...
my Wife and I will go to bed early tomorrow night and board a plane for three nights in Cancun. We both burned all our vacation time with my Father's illness, but haven't gotten away since May and want to kick off 2009 in a positive fashion.
