2009 Recap

Hard to believe that I made only one entry in 2009, on New Year's Day. But I was usually too preoccupied to write. The first six months of the year SUCKED - big-time. I almost lost my house, but thank goodness Suntrust Mortgage saved the day - all it took was a little communication from me. I watched the Inauguration with tears in my eyes (on the internet, because my cable was off at the time, though it turned out through no fault of mine!) because only the day before Suntrust had told me all was well, they were going to re-do my loan.

Then it turned out I hadn't cashed a number of paychecks from a temp agency I'd done some work for - I didn't know that they'd suspended my Direct Deposits (a normal procedure if you have too long a break between assignments), and since I only opened the pay envelopes when I needed a timesheet, the unopened envelopes just got tossed onto one of the many piles of unopened mail around my living-room and kitchen. The agency's accounting department contacted me about a couple of checks, and I soon found several more, all of which they replaced. It was a nice little temporary 'windfall' that helped me through a couple of months.

Sorting through all that mail was quite a project . . .

The second half of 2009 was much better - things had eased up financially, and in November I was able to make a five-day trip to Colorado, where I saw an old friend I hadn't seen in about a dozen years, and also got to meet my favorite author in the universe, Ruth Rendell, who traveled all the way from London to meet me. Okay, she didn't travel all that way just to meet me - she was making appearances to promote her newest book, and the last stop on the tour was Denver because her son lives near there. Because my friend Vicki in New York was going to be out of town, going to Colorado, where my friend Salha lives, turned out to be more practical. So Colorado it was. I'm so glad this came up when it did, because had Ruth Rendell made those appearances in the first half of the year, I simply wouldn't have been able to attend. She signed over 50 books for me, mostly her works from 1965 through the mid-80s, and with the signed copies I already had of her output since the mid-80s, my total of signed Ruth Rendell books is now at something like one hundred.