Holidays are done, and 2008 is now a bunch of memories.

2008 was a heck of a year for almost everyone I know. Of course my wife and I have a Josie now. She's sleeping in her room at the moment after a VERY brief tour of the Ubuntu bootup sequence and desktop. I couldn't help it, she was in my lap while I was restarting the system... Her arrival is definitely the biggest change of my year, but other big events made '08 very memorable around here.

My eldest stepdaughter got married this year. That'll make ya feel old fast. My youngest stepdaughter seems to have stabilized her life. I finally accepted their sister's passing late 2007 and the biggest most crazy emotions around that.

I've reconnected with my father and his family as well as with a few old friends. Fan-frickin'-tastic.

My workplace had some monumental changes including schedules, who I'm working with, fundamental process changes, some major workflow alterations, and my physical location at the site. I'm evidently a shift lead now, too. My wife has dropped to 3/4 time to be at home more. With her work changes and my work changes, we're not going to see much of each other in the coming months. It'll be very weird. Heck, it's already very weird.

The upstairs floors got redone and an enormous amount of home refurb work has completed up there, especially the now-fantastic upstairs bathroom. We still have the kitchen and front door as big things to do upstairs, but they can wait. Right now the upstairs actually looks, and more importantly feels, like a home. One of our friends said the upstairs bathroom was almost hotel-like, the kind of comfy place you don't want to leave. Quite a compliment.

Still no word on my hernia surgery scheduling, though they wanted to schedule it for the 23rd or 24th of December, which I couldn't do thanks to work scheduling at the end of the year. So I've been living with this last unrepaired hernia for way longer than I should have. Bugging the scheduling people is high on my list of to-dos for this coming Monday.

I think we gained a cat this year, but I don't recall exactly when Cosmo came home with my wife. He's ended up being an excellent addition to the place, a little feisty, but fundamentally no problem. Casey seems to have a lipoma under one of her armpits (arms in in front on dogs, and no, that's not technical terminology) that we're worriedly watching. Squishy started wearing a diaper in the haus and has most of the behavioral symptoms of getting old. Diamond hasn't slowed down like we thought she would this year. The other cats and dogs and chickens are good.

Much more has happened this year that I know I've missed. It's been one of the busiest of my life.

Looking forward, our family financial position is better, with much less debt and more of the things we've needed out of the way. We have many excellent friends and family that we didn't really have contact with before. The terrible trauma of Josie's impending mobility looms mightily. I'm going to guess that Squishy's not going to last too much longer, and Casey may have some special needs coming up in the next year. My workplace is going to get a bit more challenging, I think, but it's going to end up being ok.

Should be a good one. Hope yours are too.

Update: Can't believe I forgot to mention my former father-in-law's passing last year and some terrible issues surrounding being able to go to his service. I miss the guy. Every time I see paprika I think of him. Anyway... Life's what happens when you expect something else, right?