Yes, I am still breathing...

It's been a hectice July this year. Our office is hiring a new administrator and I was put in charge of doing the travel arrangements, meeting schedule and playing hostess during the visit. It's something I've done before but not in awhile and I had forgotten how time consuming it can be! I also was preparing for our bi-annual orientation event for new staff at the same time so...needless to say I couldn't have told you my name by the end of the day!

Finally relief came at the end of the month and I can take more time to work on projects now. I have one more candidate for the administrator position coming at the end of August and our next orientation isn't until February so all is well. In fact, I suspect that September will be a "dead" month for me, but that's okay. I have archived meeting minutes to continue working on (scanning for electronic storage).

On the house front, we've taken a break from finishing the roof. It's been too hot to do shingling and I suspect it'll be September or possibly October before we get back to it. Inside I've been organizing, purging and making large piles of stuff for Goodwill. I've had it with the clutter. I've also started cooking again, trying out new recipes. Miracles never cease!

On other fronts, the mysterious stomach illness that has been coming and going since December finally has a diagnosis. I was angry enough about not getting answers from my primary physician to see a different physician last week and a simple 5-minute blood test revealed a bacterial infection, H pylori. I can't believe the GI specialist I saw in July didn't test for that but oh well. I'll still have to deal with GI since the only way to test for a reinfection or even to see if treatment worked is to do a specialized breath test. Apparently once you have this stuff, it leaves markers in your body that will always result in a positive test. Treatment involves a combination of heavy-duty antibiotics and stomach acid reducers for several weeks. You can imagine the fun I'm having but at least I feel better and have been more energized. There's always a bright side of the issue, right?

I've decided to become known at my local grocery store as "that woman who brings her own grocery bags". The more I read my environmental magazines, the more determined I am to reduce the personal impact I have on the environment. I despise all those plastic bags so I'm trying to use either a canvas tote for groceries or reuse paper bags that I have in the pantry. Also, another blogger had mentioned unplugging rarely used appliances since they use electricity just by being plugged in, unused. I unplugged my occasional appliances at the beginning of July and did you know that my recent electric bill was lower? Wow! Gotta love it. :)