The After Christmas Wrap Up

Christmas 2007 has come and went, all the gifts are unwrapped, holiday treats all eaten and out of view and stress levels slowly coming back to manageable. Billy and I spent the better part of last week getting out last minute gifts, standing in lines, making personal appearances and trying to share as much holiday cheer with friends and family as possible. The rest of this week was the holiday hangover cringing at the thought of going in one more department store.

I decided to break down and get myself a big gift this year and bought a 2007 Saturn Vue SUV. I haven't bought a vehicle for myself in over 10 years and my 1986 BMW while fun to drive still, doesn't offer the creature comforts I desire while navigating traffic. I went for bust and picked a fully loaded black SUV with leather interior, On Star and the larger V-6 engine. With the larger engine I still get around 20 miles per gallon in the city and not sure about the highway but GM claims it gets 22 mpg on the open road. If anyone wants to buy a nice 22 year old red BMW with new paint drop me an email.

My partner and I decided for 2008 we are going to scale down and reorganize our lives. What does that mean for us? It means scaling back to a smaller house with half the mortgage and almost half the utilities. I say almost because while the new house is a one story we now have a pool in the back yard to care for year around. Pictures coming this summer of us and our friends pool side! Lowe's of all places has a really good web site for pool care and general maintenance to easily save money by doing stuff yourself.

We also are getting one credit card to pay all of our monthly household expenses. At the end of the month we divide everything and pay our amount out of separate accounts and hopefully find a card with airline miles or some type of compensation for our monthly utilities and expenses. Working on detangling ten years worth of intertwined finances have left us both wondering who is paying what monthly and where some of our money goes. We both have savings plans and have already found more to invest but that's not enough when you work with and run a business with a spouse/significant other regardless of the particular situation. So we are now tracking everything personal with Quicken Home and Business with each of us responsible for our own bank accounts and budgeting on our own computers.

As for the blog in 08' it's getting streamlined too. Soon you will be seeing some changes reflecting content on my site and a new more content rich layout. A new color scheme will also be decided on probably with my readers input. Both gay and current news event stories will be posted somewhere on a larger side bar. It will be stories I would love to comment about but don't have the time for the research and writing. I also plan on offering some video soon. I have been researching some video publishing tools and am open to suggestions for some cheap tools for video podcast or internet players that play well with Typepad.

While I love each and every site I have listed in my blog roll over the last couple of years it has gotten a bit too long. So reluctantly I will be only listing blogs that are willing to do a link swap or has been cool enough to link to me already and non-profit organizations for the LGBT community. If you're a blogger and want to be in my blog roll and don't have a link to me set one up and I will happily link back regardless of political content as some conservative bloggers and I have already demonstrated.

I now have three months worth of hospital visits and surgeries behind me, our natural disaster is being cleaned up and very soon the house move and everything it entails will be done. I can soon get back to some kind of normal, simpler, and cheaper lifestyle. I still have some physical therapy coming up soon to get my abs and cardio back to where things where before this medical ordeal started. However with a pool to hang out by now I have extra incentive to work hard with rehab.

For me chaos is not conducive to my creativity, it merely hinders its flow. I know many creative people who thrive on chaos or thrive regardless of any of the stresses of modern day life. However I suppose I am not wired that way. My site has kind of shown that these last few months but it could not really be avoided. I suppose for a New Year's resolution to add to the one shared with my partner it would be once this more desirable lifestyle gets rolling not to waste it.

2008 looks like it's going to be a fun ride with the Presidential election coming up, a Congress everyone hates, Pakistan coming unglued after Benazir Bhutto got herself killed. All the while George W. Bush and Condi Rice are manning the helm …alone, heading straight towards the sun. The truth will always be stranger than fiction and blogs will be here to tell about it.