Per Ardua, Per Aspera

"Through Adversity, Through Hardships" would be one translation, but I prefer to draw on the derivatives for direction - Ardua; Arduous; Strenuous or Hard Work and Aspera; Aspirations or Hope.  That's the direction of my hobby right now, through hard work and hope.  I hope, very soon, to begin model building again, and I know it will take much hard work to get there.

In a nutshell, Kristi took a call to serve a congregation in Ukiah, California, I resigned my call after seven years of service at Bethany in Spanaway, Washington, and we have moved.  We are currently living in the parsonage.

To define the scope of the situation, here's a look at my workbench area:

I know it will be a great place to work, eventually, but for now all I can do is hope and work hard on dealing with the boxes of stuff and the piles of clutter (and not just in this photo, but scattered all around the house...and that's not even considering the garage!)

And here's the kicker - the previous tenants had a cat.  More likely multiple cats, based solely on the smell.  Even if I had all the stuff unpacked and put where it belongs, I can't sit in that corner without making a face (you know the one).  Cat urine has got to be one of the worst aromas ever, and this corner of the carpet is saturated.  Fortunately the other end of the large living area, to the left of the images, is pretty clean. 

We live with pets.   I've dealt with cat pee before - we use a great enzymatic cleaner that works wonders.  Our cats don't get to this room so there's no danger there of the smell getting worse.  We also have dogs.  The dogs really need a bath and consequently so does the couch.  But to just let it go and ignore the problem, especially as a renter, is irresponsible.  I don't want this to seem like a rant against the church - on the contrary, they went over and above to fix up the house, painting all the walls, cleaning, etc.  We are very happy with them and this house.  I am especially thankful that they are going to replace the entire living room carpet (sometime next week as of this writing).

Anyway, enough venting.  Big picture - I will be able now, thanks to my new job description (Dad/Husband/Son/Son-in-law/etc.), to model more regularly and that means blogging more often.  I have all I need to be able to relax and work on a model without spending much at all (see this blog post).  However, in order to fund a layout construction project, I may need to add a part time job eventually, but that's a topic for another post...