Prepare for a boring, state-of-the-Krissie-union blog. You may just want to skip it.

It’s Monday night. I should be cleaning my apartment and preparing for my family’s arrival this weekend for Easter. Instead, I’ve been working on updating this blog and getting caught up on all things internet. It’s been a busy month…and I’m ready for things to slow down. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be happening anytime soon!

So yes, the family is coming down this weekend. I’m usually the one to travel, so it’s nice to be staying put for once. Not sure what I’m going to do to entertain everyone for three days, but I can pretty much guarantee that there will be a lot of Scrabble action.

I’m also less than two weeks away from Charlotte Racefest. This will be my third half-marathon in as many years. I have to admit – I have not trained as well as I should have for this one. A little overly confident going in, but now that it’s getting close, I’m really getting anxious. This is going to be a tough course, I think, more like Nashville than Virginia Beach (in other words, not as flat). I’m shooting for a goal time of 2:15 to finish. That would be a 13 minute improvement over my time for VA Beach last year. Ambitious, I know…and I’m going to feel super disappointed in myself if I don’t make it, but I have to push myself!

Work is quite busy right now and we’re coming up on three conferences in a row. Needless to say, once my race is wrapped up, I’ll be in a work zone until mid-May.

And, of course, I will have a few musical distractions to keep me singing happy songs…Tim Brantley, Will Hoge, Bruce, Amos Lee.

It will be Memorial Day before I know it…

And then, summer is here. I haven’t really decided what I’m going to do this summer for a vacation, if I take one at all. I do have one 3-day weekend that I’ve scheduled to go down to Isle of Palms for the weekend…Tonic and Green River Ordinance playing at The Windjammer. Want a combination that can’t be beat…give me the beach and two great bands, plus, good friends coming along for the journey (and hopefully, some Feil brothers in attendance to put the icing on the proverbial cake).

Speaking of friends, I’ve had a lot of solid “friend” time over the past four weeks. That makes me happy…I’m also surprised at how some of my friendships are changing. There’s a few that have been really “in flux” lately. Some of that is good, some of it is sad and hard to swallow. I hate watching friendships fade, but I guess it happens as life moves on. People get to different places in their lives and don’t understand what the other one is going through, despite their best attempts to do so. Yes, sometimes there are circumstances that lead to the closure of friendships, but more often than not, it seems to be just a gradual distancing. The time between phone calls gets longer, visits get shorter, your views diverge radically where they once were very similar, tempers flare, feelings get hurt and not discussed because it seems like too much effort…and before you know it, the friendship is gone. *sigh* Like I said, sad. But sometimes, it happens and you just have to think upon your once friend with fond memories and move on…No hard feelings, lots of love, and a wish for them to be happy.

2009 seems to be a year in flux for me. Moving. Friendships changing. The job becoming something entirely different than it once was. Despite the roller coaster up and down of it all, I feel surprisingly at peace. I’m trying to be more open minded about things. Trying to let the little things go. Meeting new people. Challenging myself. Setting new goals. A veritable laundry list of self-improvement items is getting checked off and tallied.

It feels good.