autumn feels spectacular

autumn is a spectacular time of year. i've never been a huge fan of the way i look in shorts so i always get excited when it's time for pants and long sleeves and jackets.

jen, ani and i have been in transit for the past 4 months or so and it's surprising what it's done to my world view. we moved out of our house in june and rented it to some wonderful people who are here in the area on extended business. the initial goal of this was to make some extra money so that we could outfit jen with the necessary equipment to turn her photography hobby into a sideline. 4 months later she's got a laptop, a canon 30d and a couple paying jobs under her belt. i couldn't be more proud. she's really got a great eye.

the ancillary effects of being homeless have been challenging, but in a way that fits us well. since we knew we weren't gonna have a permanent home for at least a year, we had a garage sale and got rid of a bunch of stuff. at the end of our first house sitting gig we had another yard sale and got rid of a bunch more stuff. we kept only the necessities and those things we absolutely couldn't part with yet, which has left us leaner and nearer the ground than we've been our whole life together. it's a good feeling. it's sort of the opposite of the feeling you get when you realize that while you're pretty happy where you are, you could never change anything anyway because there's just too much at stake. the way i, and i think i can safely say we, feel now is that it would take an awful lot to rock us. our expenses are lower than they've ever been. our only debt is our house. we're loving life as a family and getting used to ( not completely of course) being outside the beautiful den of comfort we'd worked so hard to build.

so now as autumn begins to pick up speed rolling down the steep hill toward winter, i feel pretty safe. there's plenty of stuff that can go wrong. i don't doubt that plenty of stuff will. but if i'd made a list of the things i had to concern myself with last year at this time, and then compared it with a list i made today, today's list would be much shorter. for a guy like me, that's a very, very nice feeling.