Hey, an update on US!

OK, the blog title says you can keep up with the Joneses but I haven't said much about us recently. Well, not much at all since my dad died in January. Here's a nutshell catch-up post. It's probably gonna be a bit rambly.

Cathy and I are both in decent health, and the kitties are doing good. Oliver is his usual self, and Cathy's mom, Rhonda, still lives with us.

We're rather settled in our church now and I really love our neighbors who also go to church with us; their son is great and I love watching their family grow. We have seen our own family rather more this year and I have appreciated that a great deal. I think they will be OK on housing, so I'm not worried about them.

My mother is still somewhat depressed, which is understandable. She still lives in Taiwan as we cannot afford to bring her here due to the medical and living expenses. *sigh* But, at least calling her is pretty cheap. I am still working on getting some survivor benefits for her, but an Army Colonel that attends our church tells me I will never hear from the military retirement and benefits people because they tend to get very backlogged in wartime. He's going to try to get me some face time with someone local, though.

Having to kick out one of the tenants sucked. I learned a lot, mostly about how I really am a sucker at heart; that is good, I suppose, for a pastor-wannabe, but not good thing for a guy who wants to work with people who are coming off substance addictions (or is it?....).

Cathy is working as a temp and currently assigned to Yamaha, but we're reasonably certain that job will end September 30th. In fact, we're certain of it.

The short sale of the apartments is so uncertain! We're still not in escrow, and our 2nd (CitiMortgage) promised to block the sale as they won't get much of the settlement. *sigh* Oh well. The other uncertain part of the short sale is whether the forgiven amount will show up as "income" for tax purposes. If that is the case, we might as well just sit through foreclosure!

I'll be looking for a way to get transferred to Georgia so Cathy can be near her dad. It's been over a week since that big scare and Al is still in physical therapy. Thank God for that. But, I want Cathy to be near him (she wants this, of course) so I'm going to move to Georgia, one way or another, but hopefully with my employer.