SURPRISE!!!!

Is he really posting something for the first time in over a year-and-a-half???

In fact, the last time I posted something, people actually still said O-M-G!!!

I'm going to try to recap the major events of the past 20 months in a couple minutes or less. Ok, here it goes...

Home: We hired an architect/designer and a contractor and began a MAJOR home renovation in September 2011. What started as an idea to tweak our house basically turned into a complete gut. The final inspection for Phase I will finally happen this week, and then we'll begin Phase II which will be much less involved (basically remodeling). The renovation involved not being able to live in our house for about 5 months, lots of stress, and LOTS of money!! We're happy with the results, but I'll be ecstatic when "The Beast" (that's what I call our house now) is finally done. I won't bore your with a zillion before, during, and after pictures. Here are a couple of pictures of The Beast as it looked yesterday, the day after a major snowstorm.

Mrs. TBF: Healthy, happy, beautiful, and working hard. Her job - while managing to be stressful, aggravating, and rewarding at the same time - is going well. She's in London on business through Wednesday. Hmmmmmmmm... maybe I'm blogging because she's not here, there's no more football on TV, and there's not much else for me to do right now? We celebrated 25 years of marriage with a trip to Barbados this past November. The traveling has definitely slowed down since moving back to the U.S. 2.5 years ago, but it'll pick up again after we're done with the house.

Family: My parents are doing well living in Florida full-time. They are warm, tan, healthy, and happy. Jo Mama - Mrs. TBF's mom - is feisty as ever in Chicago, and doing well. My sister, brother-in-law, and their four kids moved to New Jersey for his job last year. They live about a 90-minute drive from us now, which is nice.


Me: Other than the all-consuming renovation of The Beast, my day-to-day life is pretty much the same as it was in Switzerland. OK, minus the German lessons, taking public transportation everywhere, being treated as "the foreigner", not being able to make any noise after 10 p.m. Ummmm.... OK.... I take it back. My life is nothing like it was in Switzerland. I turned the big 5-0 last September. What else? Nothing much, I guess. I'm still retired (4,525 days, and counting) other than my "job" making sure that all Mrs. TBF does is work and relax, and that's about it.

I'm not going to make any promises about blogging in the future (you see how well that has gone over the past couple of years), but I may surprise you.

I pretty much did this one because I wanted to see if I still knew how to access my blog.

Is anybody still out there? Let me know if you are.