El Niño

Well, we came home yesterday after experiencing a balmy 40s & 50s Christmas season in Wisconsin and Illinois, only to find our apartment's tennis court flooded and a very cool and windy temperature in this "hot" state of California - a product of the El Niño season I guess. Kind of crazy, all the extreme weather occurrences this past week or so - from Texas snow to Wisconsin sunshine to a 150,000-fatality tsunami caused by an earthquake beneath the ocean. Craziness! And too terrible to even be able to react appropriately other than a dazed, "Wow, that's sad."

Anyway, we had a nice time with our families. We saw our new nephew Seth for the first time, and we'll have another nephew and a neice due within a few months. Yay! My sister, mom and I saw Spanglish (we all agreed it's a very good movie) and we all went to Ocean's Twelve on New Year's Eve after a delicious Infusino's pizza run (pretty good as well, though not as intriguing for me as Ocean's Eleven).

I have my first day of work tomorrow, and my main orientation is Wednesday with the county itself. I'll have to drive a county car out to Santa Barbara to turn in all my forms and discuss benefits, etc. I'm not as excited as I'd hoped to be about my first day, but I do hope it turns out well and that it doesn't seem to last forever!