Taxes Are Done, the Christmas Lights Are Down, and Allysen Landed a Job!

Yes, I finished the taxes over the weekend! What a relief. And today it was so gorgeous out that I finally rousted myself to do what I couldn't face all winter—I took the blue LED Christmas lights off the tall evergreen tree in front of our house. Yes, I got them down before Easter. (They were somewhat the worse for wear from the hard winter. Two of the six strings broke in the middle; the wires apparently just snapped and came apart.) I also went rollerblading and saw the sun go down over Spy Pond. It was beautiful.

That was after putting my wife Allysen on a plane to Ponce to visit her mom for a couple of weeks. Allysen's just been hired as a technical editor at a company called ab initio, and is quite excited about it. This is kind of a last-chance-to-travel for a while; she'll start after she gets back from Puerto Rico.

In other news, our daughter Julia decided to withdraw from high school and pursue other means to getting a degree-equivalent. She home-schooled for a number of years, so this isn't completely out of the blue. She had entered the high school to try to deal with some special circumstances, but for a variety of reasons, that wasn't working out for her. It was a bit of a jolt to us, but we support her in taking an alternate path, if that's what it takes. She looks happier than I've seen her in long time.