Aries

I discovered Blue Man Group, and thought they were the best thing since sliced bread - instant fandom. This led me and Don to take an adventure out into Las Vegas in May - a most fantastic place! I quite fell in love with it. We hired a Mustang and went exploring the desert - wild and strange.

Taurus

Don's unemployment changed things, as he had time to move things around and organise them. We are still cramped, but it's better...

Our biggest purchase of this year was another DVD player, as the previous one died on us. Don got me a miniature food processor for Christmas and I got him a battery charger. Our material goods these days often seem to serve a purpose rather than just being frivolous.

Gemini

I learnt a lot about PHP and mySQL database programming this year, more than I would ever have deemed possible. And I learnt, starting in September, how fun and healing and tasty gardening could be.

I found myself writing a lot less letters, but trying to keep in better touch by email with those I still care about. I almost let a friendship go, but decided not to and wrote just before Christmas. Friendships are worth keeping.

Cancer

Just before the end of the year, I purchased a ticket to fly to Scotland at the end of January 2002.

I started doing once-a-month cooking, a technique whereby you cook vast amounts of simple recipes for freezing, saving both money and time. Don discovered a liking for making egg dishes, so that took care of lunch and dinner from about September onwards. Our home continues to be an overfull tip, something which probably won't change much. But my garden, from about September, has proven to be a very comfortable space for me.

Leo

Apart from that May trip to Vegas, though, Don and I didn't have much fun until he got laid off, after which we got to do stuff like play frisbee and tickle one another. We still love to watch films together - both at home and, on some rare occasions, at the cinema.

No motorcycles though :-( Too many repairs needed, too little time and money.

Virgo

I have had some dark moments of depression this year, up and down, up and down. The latter half of the year, after the utter disgust with Don's company laying him off, has been much more on an even keel though. I suspect having two people in the marriage instead of one is good for me too.

Don's health - well, he got more colds than me. The day before my birthday he broke his big toe running away from a marauding possum (it had many teeth). He still has kickback from last year's back injury, and he tried those smoking-quitting-pills but didn't get anywhere. He's a heavy smoker now - way too heavy. He had one lot of pinkeye that he waited so long until his colleagues insisted he see a doctor :-(

The worst health prize goes to our cats, though. Silver had a skin allergy to mites and fleas and then got herself a wicked respiratory infection. This she passed on to JR as a cold, who stopped eating, and developed a potentially fatal liver disease. It took us four months and a lot of time, emotion and money to cure the poor critter.

A lot of this year was pure habitual routine, and much of it sucked. Don would be working 60-80 hours a week and would never have any time for anything. I would do all the house stuff and Ravensmeet and we might coincide for half a day a week, if we were lucky. He would try to make up time on his projects by skimping on sleep, meaning we were seldom in bed at the same time either. I'm talking "Where were the snuggles?"

Come October, though, we are people of "leisure", that is to say, he has no job now, and is spending the time having fun. So our routine is settling into something new - including all the adjustments you make after a long spell of a different routine.

Libra

Since October, though, things have balanced out a lot more. I think if the layoff hadn't occurred, we would have been in serious trouble. I had been getting awfully angry and frustrated. Now, he does things like cook up wicked scrambled eggs for me in the morning. I finally remembered who it was I married... isn't that a funny thing to admit? There were times when I had forgotten... but it wasn't the fault of the people, it was the fault of the bondage they call work out here...

Scorpio

I have changed since then... I think there was something in the wind for me before, and others have said they thought so too. I felt as if I must change something, perhaps live more cheaply so that Don could retire more quickly, and started the gardening as a means to save money. Yet it has turned into a real sanity-saver... Things which were important before are no longer important. Goals were changed, shattered, and grieved over... and then re-chosen, more carefully, with more space for options.

Don, I think, nearly had some kind of collapse from work...

I came the nearest I ever have to broodiness this year, and it went away. No babies here, but all around me friends and acquaintances are making babies ready for 2002.

Sagittarius

My tightwad mindset has been interesting. Priorities change - one of them is needing to be on the same page as Don.

At the end of the year I decided to finally go home, and booked my ticket to Aberdeen via San Francisco.

Capricorn

Still, it's nice to own our Little Blue Moon, and we certainly learnt something about budgeting. :: sigh ::

Towards the end of Ravensmeet's second year, I came to the understanding that I was not going to make money from it anytime soon or unless it got a lot bigger. Time for an attitude readjustment and some thoughts about what to do next.

Aquarius

This was a year for gadgets. Don set up remote sensors outside that tell me when critters are marauding, particularly the obnoxious cat that once dug it up to use as a litter box. He tracked UPS shipments as the status changed, and a little voice would announce each new destination. It's the year I retired my laptop, which Don then stole away into his den. And it's the year that Janice donated her old computer, which is a Pentium 133 and was a distinct upgrade for my Linux system.

At the start of 2001 I lost a friend by a stupid misunderstanding that he didn't hang around long enough to sort out. At the end of 2001, I wrote to a friend I was thinking of dropping, because I felt that depression was the motivator for dropping the friendship and not the quality of the friendship. I'm glad I did it that way, as the wonderful response came just before the end of the year and cheered me up enormously.

Pisces

I built a Web site for Third Studio, my friend's theatre company. I saw several films, some of which were fantastic. The most outstanding, I think, was Lord of the Rings.