17 January, 2017

2017. It keeps occurring to me that the 90s were quite a long time ago. They were formative years for me and now I now sort of understand those old guys who listen to ‘old’ music and seem stuck in a specifc timeframe. Stick with a good thing I say. A colleague from my early days of web design passed away under fairly tragic circumstances recently. We had not really talked in the last few years as our personalities moved further apart but it has been a striking reminder that people are not around forever. I have also had some reflection about mental health and how important it becomes to balance all of the, often conflicting, obligations and responsibilities that acrue over a lifetime.

I have finally managed to recover these paid end-of-year school holidays and have been making the most of it. A lot of time and energy has gone into learning how to use the CNC router and I got to a point I wanted to order one for myself. It is interesting that ZYPE is now about CNC work like 3D printing and routing and the web and graphic design work has almost completely disappeared. I like that it has been able to change to meet our needs and interests.

The house has taken another step towards our final goal these holidays with paving down, gates installed, the workshop cleaned up a bit, grass sown and old parts of the garden sorted out. I took out a large flax bush that we originally put in to solve a flooding problem and now have a large area of the garden accessible again.

A new kitten has joined the family and our wee girl is starting to get her head around the reality of, not just a pet, but a cat … with all of their idiosyncrasies. It is nice to have an animal back in the house and he seems to have settled in well. The robot vacuum cleaner doesn’t seem to phase him and he has been exploring the house with gusto.