A Table, A Wedding and Surgery for the Kitten

March has been beautiful here in Central California. The weather has been so pleasant that we only close up and need our heater at night. We spend most of the day with our car and house windows open. The blossoms are blooming and the grass is looking green and vibrant. I was enjoying all of this quite a lot until a few days ago when my allergies started to flair up and make life miserable. Fortunately for me, Dad should be able to take care of those so I will be going in to see him tomorrow. I am looking forward to enjoying the spring again.

We noticed a lump on our kitten’s stomach a few weeks ago and took her in to see a veterinarian. Curiously, it was a cist that had burst and hardened in between the muscles. The vet gave us a fair price for treating her, which included surgery. She had a tube stuck through the cist to let it drain so for a week we had to hold her down and clean her three times a day as well as administer antibiotics daily. The tube has been removed but she still has to wear a cone so she won’t bite the stitches. As happy as we are that her stitches will be taken out tomorrow we are happier still that she did not have to be euthanized.

Nothing has really happened much lately with my Human Resources training and career switch. I am seriously contemplating getting a masters degree at the local state college. I’m going to talk with mentor, Greg Billikopf, about it and see how beneficial it would be for me. I looks like I might be able to do it in a year if I work full time and go to school full time, which is nice. If it will make me considerably more marketable and increase my earning potential as I believe then it will be a year well spent. I hope to do some good networking that year and be gainfully employed in Ag. Labor and HR by the end of it.

Becca has been quite the traveler lately. She spent a week in Upstate New York helping her friend Cassondra with wedding preparations. She loved seeing old friends but was grateful to come home to the mild California winter. She will soon be travelling to Huston to visit our friends the Cranes and help Sophia as she prepares to have her second child. While Becca was away for that week different friends and family members were very gracious and invited me over to save me from solitude. We’ll see if I’m so lucky while she spends two weeks in Texas.

I am ecstatic about a language course I’ve discovered. It was made by a Jewish man who was a concentration camp survivor, resistance fighter and counterintelligence agent during WWII. His CDs have helped my German a TON. I’ve had rather basic conversations (online) with native German speakers that lasted as long as half an hour. That’s after about twenty hours of working with the CDs. By the end of the year I expect to be fairly fluent. This method would be perfect for teaching missionaries languages before they went out to go preaching.

Thanks for your letters, phone calls and visits. We went to my cousin Brittan’s wedding on Friday night and it was great (Becca hasn’t downloaded the pictures yet). I am a little embarrassed to say that Mom, Becca and I were rather cynically talking about how weddings have gotten so far away from their purpose and have just become an excuse to play dress up and have a big party. I was proud of my cousin on Friday, not only for nabbing a great guy, but also for having a wedding that was about her union being based on faith in Christ. We are happy to have Joey in the family and wish the two of them our best.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Becca’s last Craig’s List purchase. She got an oak dinning room table for an amazing price from a guy in Salida. Our little SUV has come in really handy for things like this.