Thoughts on the beginning of the new year

On NPR today they talked about a study of Facebook users, and how viewing other people's posts made them feel.  Apparently, seeing other people's vacation pictures caused folks to feel depressed and unsatisfied with their lives. I hope that hasn't been the effect of my blog entries on our travels!
So the following should bring a smile:

Alan showing off his new Christmas lumberjack hat and spade
(The hat has antlers with Christmas lights.)

As you can see, Christmas had the usual high-jinx and wacky gifts, along with a lot of fun with our extended family. There were 25 adults and four children at Bill and Anna's on Christmas Day for the Dirty Santa gift exchange. 

With the new year, I am making a couple big changes in my volunteer life:  

• I have stopped being a tutor and trainer at the Literacy Council.  Last year, Alan and I spent many hours putting together a series of ten training lessons on a DVD, so the Literacy Council could cut its face-to-face training time in half.  It involved me doing Powerpoints with sound and Alan doing technical work editing videos we incorporated into the presentations. Now, they still get me as a trainer, but I'm on a DVD to watch whenever they want to.  We are thinking of transferring the presentations to YouTube sometime in the future, so they can be used by other literacy groups, if desired.
• I will not be an officer with the Sullivan County Imagination Library in 2014, although I am still going to be very active with the board--writing grants, newsletters, and doing things that I can do on my own schedule. It will still take lots of time, but I won't have to be here in Kingsport to do it.  I can write grants in the trailer, too.

The whole idea of all this is to free up time, so we can be gone for extended periods with our trailer once the weather gets better.  (By the way, the polar vortex hit Kingsport, too.  We got down to zero one night, which has only happened one other time since I have lived in Tennessee.)