Humble as it is, I guess it has to start somewhere.  I've lived in Houston for eleven years this October, working for Bellaire United Methodist Church as Director of Music Ministries.  The picture you see is my partner Shannon and me. We've been together for almost 6 years, and he's lived here in Houston with me since January 31, 2003.  Together, we've been through tons, and it seems like we've known each other and been together for a lifetime, we've crammed so much living into life.  In October of 2005 we went through that most nerve-wracking, exciting, terrifying, gratifying of things - we bought a house.  Much as we would have liked to buy in Houston, we simply couldn't afford anything that we would have wanted, so we bought in Missouri City, a suburb southwest of Houston.  It is a beautiful house to which we're constantly doing things - you know, things like painting, making drapes and window treatments, organizing, decorating, planning the next big project.  Lots of people talk about buying a home and planning to live there 5 or 6 years and then move up.  Not us.  This is our home.  We plan on living here the rest of our lives, or until we simply can't anymore. We bought this house because it was the perfect layout for us.  Great flow for entertaining friends, a great kitchen, 4 bedrooms, one of which is a craft/hobby/activity room still in the working stages, a library which will eventually be a "man-den" of the English Gentleman's Lounge type.  Friends never fail to say "Oh WOW!" the first time they see our master bath.  It's huge. It echoes it's so huge.  It also had just about the most hideous wallpaper I've ever seen in the watercloset when we moved in.  Can you imagine sitting in a small room with large, blue, white, red and yellow plaid wallpaper surrounding you?  Yeah, us neither.

I've had a battle all my life with my weight, and I'm now back in Weight Watchers for the third time.  I'm determined, at 44 (well, next week) that I"m going to get it under control and take charge of my health.  My good friend Drew (bootedintexas) and I go on Fridays to weigh in, strengthen each other and try to keep each other sane as we do this together.  I've found that I'm much more successful with a WW buddy than without.  To date, 24.6 pounds gone, and only 66 more to go.

I'm very much a novice to blogging, so don't expect me to burn up the bandwidth with an absolutely amazing LJ page, but I'll work at it!