PIFFFF…I’m as bad at blogging as I am at WRITING in a journal. I did think that perhaps the opportunity to have people “hear” what I have to say would make me more motivated. Apparently not!

I got an email for the 10 year reunion of Class of 1997, recently (actually…I got 14 emails from Classmates.com about this announcement-slightly excessive). I have mixed feelings about a reunion. For the most part, I’ve remained in contact with the people I was friends with in HS. And, honestly, there were a great many people I went to school with that I had no opinion of. Frankly, I wish them well…but don’t really have any burning desire to see them. I don’t seem to have that curiosity to know. Though…I do admit to enjoying the occasional bit of salacious or spicy gossip! ;-)

Several other things of late: Though Norm was told verbally he was eligible for 179 days per diem for each location he works, it turns out the contract is only written for 30 days per diem. This is NOT so good. Fortunately, we don’t own a house that we would have to be maintaining at the same time as we were living in some hinterland. So, for now, we’ve decided that we really can’t afford to lose my salary. That makes me uneasy, since we’re trying to have a baby, and I am NOT working to have my entire income eaten up by day-care and someone else raising my child to boot. I have pretty firm opinions about my first responsibility being to raising my children.

However, there are any number of times when I find it very difficult to LIKE what I am doing. Not the tasks themselves. They’re rather soothing in a somewhat fussy OCD way. What gets to me is I don’t have an overwhelming belief in the pharmaceutical industry. I can’t read a non-clinical report without being struck first and foremost that 34 beagle dogs were delivered to the lab at about 4 months of age, and after 12 weeks of study, they were all killed… “sacrificed by exanguination under anesthesia”…dope ‘em up and let ‘em bleed to death. Maybe if I BELIEVED that the drug in question would have major breakthrough benefit I could reconcile myself to the “necessity”. Truth is, I don’t, and I can’t. How long do I keep selling my soul? “You dance with the Devil, the Devil doesn’t change; the Devil changes you.”

I will descend from my soapbox. For now.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I have much to be thankful for. Norman and I are both healthy, we have families that love both of us, and we have friends who will always always be there supporting our dreams and offering rational counsel and sometimes giving a swift kick in the rear. Of course, I never need the latter. ;-)

I hope everyone reading has a wonderful holiday, surrounded by love and good fellowship. The greatest sin in our country is that there are people who will not have these things. Please keep them in your thoughts and pray that the coming year will be as rich with blessings for them as the past year has been rich with blessings for you.