The We-Wu for November 2025

It has been a hot minute-and-a-half, hasn’t it?

Let’s catch up.

First, there were a lot of animals.

A few were new to me. For example, I’ve never had to care for a bearded dragon before. They are pretty easy, as it turns out.

The cats I’ve had for going on three months now. It was an emergency situation for friends, so I get my daily snuggles.

Then, I built a table.

I have been slowly working on reorganizing my apartment. Part of that is replacing my old kitchen table. I bought it at a garage sale before I moved to Greenwood 15 years ago, and it served me well, but it was a bit large for the space. (You know, since I keep adding bookshelves.) And since I don’t sleep well, I used a few of my late evenings to put the new table together. Fortunately, it was all hex key construction, so I don’t think I bothered my neighbors too much.

I finally made my end-of-year list. I don’t know why I insist on fooling myself every year that I won’t need one. I will absolutely forget something if I don’t make my lists. I’m fairly certain I’ve forgotten to add something to my list. But right now there are 10 things on it, and I’ve only crossed off one.

So, what work have I been doing? Lots of meetings, of course. It wouldn’t be OMS if there wasn’t a meeting. I think most of them have been useful. I must admit it is hard to pay attention as much as I should in meetings because I’m usually trying to multitask. And I may be relying a bit on the AI summary of the meeting to catch me up to speed. This is a dark path I’m going down.

I did finally finish my editing for the two weekly guides in Phase 2 of VCP. That’s two 16-week courses on spiritual formation and the life and ministry of Jesus. Plus a preface and an implementation manual. I haven’t done the IM yet. I’m really hoping there won’t be any more.

I did put together the Hausa Implementation Manual for Edition 2. Hausa is a fairly easy language to work with, though there are a few special characters that make it interesting. I did have to release a particularly virulent aaarrgh when I was still dealing with font issues.

Sometimes you just have to argh.

This was the last week of our holiness seminar. I’m ashamed to admit that these also suffered a bit from my divided attention. I did find it interesting, and I’ll have to go back through all of the notes. There were some things I noted simply because of how it dovetailed with my Dad’s book. (That I’m editing when I get a spare moment.)

One thing I was finally able to make some significant progress on was my Christmas cards.

If you know me at all, you know I put a significant amount of work into this project at the end of the year. Everyone on my supporter list gets a card, and donors get a gift. There may even be a secret tier that get a mostly-unfiltered breakdown of my year. Everyone gets a semi-filtered view of me through the blog, but I remain convinced that not everyone can handle me at full snark.

Here we see the Jessica in her native habitat, hard at work. We can’t get too close because she might snap. Later, we’ll visit Bellevue and meet the last person who startled the Jessica. He just keeps repeating ‘No touchy!’ over and over again.

On Thursday, we had our OMS Thanksgiving, and I did my best impression of a courtier in King Henry VIII’s court.

And Christmas has indeed arrived in Greenwood. We decorated our office space, and the lobby halls have been decked. I LOVE the fan tree this year!

I admire anyone with a talent for decorating. Even if I did think of something like this, it would never turn out so well.

Anyway, this will indeed be it for November. Next week, I’ll be doing my best to eat my weight in turkey and all the fixings. I do still have to work on Monday and Tuesday, which is good, because I still have so much to do! Here’s hoping we check a few things off that list.

Indulge in some small stuff.

Bye!