Looking Ahead/Looking Back
Happy New Year!
Needless to say, most people will be hoping 2009 is a better year, overall, than 2008.
Personally, 2008 was a year I saw my real income (adjusted for inflation, the national debt, and all kinds of other crap totally out of my control) stay static or decrease for the first time in a long time. Hurricane Ike was a horror-fest of epic proportions in these parts, most people know the details by now, I won't bore anyone with my own. I lost three friends, to "natural causes" (at least partly caused, naturally enough, by years of youthful excess.) Those friends were all my age (and youthful excess was something I had more than a passing familiarity with), so that made me think a little.
On the other hand, I still have a decent job. A lot of people do not. The house is paid down so far that when we refinanced it early last year, the monthly note was less than I used to pay for rent on a one-bedroom apartment twenty years ago; so I am not too worried about foreclosure. Due to some personal financial machinations made prior to the current economic "downturn" (serendipitously made without any real inkling of what would soon come to pass), we are relatively sheltered from the current hard times.
Hurricane Ike was a lot worse for most other people around here than it was for me. I have my looks, and my health. God loves me. So does Mother Nature, apparently.
So I have a lot to be happy about, really. Happy New Year!
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