I might be back

Hey, it's nice to see you again... I'm feeling much more relaxed and I'm not feeling the need to take copious amounts of my anti-anxiety medication. For those of you who emailed and asked, it wasn't anything to do with family, or illness, or accidents. Because of what I do for a living, I really can't say exactly what happened to send me close to a nervous breakdown, but I think we are now in a place where we can start behaving normally. If nothing else, the most obvious thing learned from this is that I have got to get out of banking.

The main reason to break the blog silence is that after complaining for at least a year about my lack of a laptop computer, I now have a laptop computer! There's nothing like an anxiety attack to send a girl right out to spend too much money, is there? I'm completely and totally in love with this thing. I got a Toshiba Satellite on sale last weekend and so far, I'm really very impressed. Now I can sit on the couch and blog and surf aimlessly while watching Alton Brown on the Food Network. It doesn't get much better than that, now does it? I'm also pleased that I'm not hating Windows Vista as much as I had been warned. I am afraid that I will end up bankrupting myself buying new games to play on it, since it seems that many things I already have are not willing to play nicely with Vista.

Another reason to blog is that we had a little bit of a scare the other night. Right around 8:45 Monday night, I heard some strange sounds and went out on the deck. It was dark and quiet and at first nothing seemed wrong. Then I heard and saw what looked like fireworks, which might be unusual this time of year, but there are quite a few college age people around here who like fireworks, so I didn't think much of it. Then I heard someone yelling and suddenly there were sparks in the air, and smoke billowing from a building about five houses away from us. I ran back inside and went to the front window for a better view, and there were flames shooting up the entire front of the building. I don't think I realized just how fast fire moves. I ran upstairs to get Mark, and by the time I got back downstairs, it was really bad. Bad enough that the sparks (Who am I kidding? These were big flaming chucks of wood flying through the air) drifting over our roof made me start looking for the cat carrier, and deciding what to do and if we should be getting ready to leave. I like to be prepared, you know. We were also a little concerned because from what we could tell at the time, the building on fire was right next to the building that Mark's cousin lives in. It was a while before anyone felt like relaxing and going to bed. Fortunately no one was hurt, mostly because no one was home, and a neighbor even got the dog and two cats from the house out. It certainly made me think about our own fire safety plan. You never think it will happen to you, but it can. Sometimes being overly anxious and extra prepared can pay off.