Personally...

It's time to turn this blog back into a place to share some thoughts, pictures and more from me and not necessarily about being a librarian. Of course, that means spending more time on my home computer. As more family members have joined Facebook, I find myself heading there to check out pictures and miniature update messages. The pictures make it more entertaining than Twitter. I don't want to forget some of the interesting You-tube movies that have been posted. I just looked at a great one on money issues that was actually in my RSS feeds I have in my outlook mail. I think I will add that to a Facebook msg. as more people follow that. We'll see.

I hadn't realized how fast time has flown in 2009-maybe anticipating Craig and Jen's wedding made the time seem to go slower since we really couldn't wait for the event to happen. We came back from the wedding with two letters waiting for us-neither made us very happy. First, Tim didn't get hired for the full-time job he had interviewed for and second, the Nebraska Dept. of Revenue thought we owed more taxes than we do. The latter just made us mad. We embraced the technology of doing our taxes online using the state of Nebraska's website and it let us file even though the printed copy indicated we needed to submit a copy of our federal return-but nowhere on the site did it say "don't use this if...." Anyway, a phone call to the dept. gave us the satisfaction of telling them that their website needed to be improved and confirmed that we were right-we should get a refund but we had to mail in copies of both of our returns with a letter of explanation. Hopefully they get it right this time.

As far as the job, when Tim later visited with the head of the FSA office (he does some part-time work for them already), Bruce said that he got beat out by someone who had worked in another FSA office for 23 years but the interviewers really debated quite awhile in making their decision. So, Tim isn't really disappointed-he still has quite a few projects to complete on the farm. The old barn is ready for replacement siding in the areas that had been part of the loafing shed. Tim replaced sill plates, and reinforced studs that had rotted from exposure to manure over the years. Then, we need to get chipped paint off, which we hope we can do with the high-pressure washer. A friend agreed to bring his big spraying equipment over to do the actually painting. We plan to paint it red, the original color before it was changed to its current white. We'll still keep an eye on the classifieds for the "perfect job" but my job having benefits lets Tim be patient. We had a nice hay crop last year and sold alot of heifers. Now we only have about 5 heifers to sell. We're toying with getting some other livestock. Tim said today that he likes ruminants so no pigs or poultry! Any suggestions?