Happy New Year 2012!

2011 ended with a real shake up. Literally. Yesterday at a little after 3:00 p.m., a 4.0 magnitude earthquake hit our area. Its epicenter was about 40 miles east of here in a small hamlet called McDonald, very close to some fracking waste water injection wells. It's almost certain that the earthquake was caused by these wells, which were shut down effective 5:00 p.m. on Friday due to suspicions of causing earthquakes. In the past two years, eleven earthquakes have been recorded in that general vicinity and we aren't exactly the most seismically active area in the country. We've had some small quakes over the years, nothing major. We did have a 5+ magnitude earthquake in January of 1986 that shook things pretty hard here, but that was along a known fault line and wasn't blamed on unnatural causes like yesterday's may well have been. Fortunately, no damage was caused by the quake. It was just a very weird feeling, an initial sharp jolt followed by what felt like minor aftershocks for about 30 seconds to a minute. Quite a way to end a year that of it can truly be said, good riddance. It was a real train wreck of a year that will probably go down in history as one for the books, a bad year on many levels. Things can't get much worse than they were this past year and all I can hope for is that the year ahead will bring us some better news than that we just experienced.

My earnest hopes for the new year is that our President will be re-elected in November (please, please, please!), that the wars will end once and for all, that the economy will make some improvement, that my work situation will improve before the year is out, that my family will continue to enjoy good health and some time spent together with visits from distant siblings, and that this time next year, I will be able to look ahead to retirement and a new life doing....who knows what? I need to start planning for what life post-retirement is going to look like. I'm looking forward to having more time to do what I want but not looking forward to the loss of a third of my income and what that will mean for me financially. I'm already trying to make plans to deal with that so I don't find myself struggling to make ends meet once I do retire. I want to be able to do some things that right now, time just doesn't permit because of my work schedule. I can't get any real vacation time anymore because libraries are experiencing such hard times financially that downsized staffing means less ability to take off any kind of time for travel or vacation. I can take a day here, a day there, but not more than a few days max of vacation time. That's not long enough to take any kind of trip or do any kind of travel, so I am restricted to taking stay at home vacations a day here or a day there or a few days at most. It kind of puts the kibosh on any real chance to do anything or go anywhere. Given how little money I have right now, that's fine, but even taking a short trip that wouldn't cost a lot to take is out of the question due to my job. I'm 54 now and young enough to be able to do a lot of things while I still have my health. I can't look into a crystal ball and know how long that will last. Hopefully for decades to come. I just do hope that the economy makes at least some small recovery so that life will be better not just for me, but for everyone. 2012, may you be a far better year than the one we just left behind. We can only hope.