January 18, 2006
New Year Greetings, January 2006
[Note: All pics taken with the Canon 10D.]
Another year has come and gone so quickly I can hardly believe it’s over. We spent a quiet Christmas and New Year’s at home reading, cooking, watching movies, playing scrabble, and playing computer games (Dave) and doing crossword puzzles (me). Like most of you, we were very busy in 2005. I finished up some projects at Sybase then retired from the computer software industry in early May. I decided to do nothing at first so that I could get my bearings. This didn’t work too well because, as you may know, I have a million ideas of projects to do even while I have several projects already going.
However, I’ve managed to do things I never took the time to do before, such as eating breakfast in the garden while birds sing and flit from tree to tree and enjoying the flowers which are emerging regularly throughout the year in my maturing garden. When I first retired, I did all the cooking and gained confidence in the kitchen, following Alton Brown’s instructions. He’s a geek, but he takes the mystery out of a lot of dishes. I am very proud of my cheese soufflé now!
I have also been doing a good bit of writing. I wrote a novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again, and have been reworking a novel I wrote two years ago. You can see an excerpt from the latest novel on our web site. I also wrote a couple short stories and essays and have been submitting them for publication and contests, but no bites yet. This is the part of writing where you just keep putting it out and writing new stuff and don’t worry too much about it. I am lucky that I am not trying to earn my living this way, albeit I am not yet working at publishing very hard right now. Maybe next year! I still plan to finish my research on the Mary Chase Project and write her biography, but I wanted to take a vacation first.
I am still singing and have even more allusions of grandeur now that Dave bought me a voice trainer for Christmas. (It actually came from Eva, Dave tells me, because she thought I could use some help singing when she joins me at karaoke, which she does quite frequently. Funny, she never really sings on key – any key -- but she sure does wail confidently.) The trainer allows you to play any CD and mostly cancel out the lead vocal. This means you can attach a mike and sing the lead yourself with the original band! You can create a “loop” of one song phrase and play it over and over and sing along until you’ve got it right. I hope to be singing like Nora Jones at the next Girls’ Night Out at our local karaoke bar! See my Diva II photo album for pictures of my last Diva Party!
Dave still works at Emulex in Longmont and is enjoying defining his job as he goes. He is still lead test engineer, but he keeps his hands dirty in many aspects of the hardware networking business. Dave has a new manager who he’s now trained to completely respect and kowtow to him: Dave recently wowed him by working a couple of weekends to design and implement a solution to a tricky and continual problem the company is battling. Dave continues to expand his cooking talents, doing everything from baby back ribs to Burger of the Gods to Bagna Cauda to Bananas Foster. He also re-did the shelving in the utility room/extended pantry so that we can stack a lot more stuff in there, get to it more easily, and enjoy its clean good looks because he whitewashed it to match the walls!
In May, we traveled to Atlanta to attend the wedding of a friend, as well as visit Dave’s brother, sister-in-law, and niece. The wedding was a dual Christian and Hindu ceremony with beautiful western and eastern costumes. The couple knelt during most of the Hindu ceremony and, because we were in the back, we didn’t get to see the details, but what we did see of the exchange of gifts was quite stirring. We had fun hiking around the hills outside of Atlanta with Dave’s brother and family and identifying wildflowers and birds. We also stayed in a lovely bed and breakfast off of Ponce de Leon which sits on two lots leading up a hill with mature trees that hide many birds. We enjoyed eating our breakfast in the garden and looking up through the heavy branches for a glimpse of the noisy birds above.
In July, I joined my family at Republican Island in the middle of Charleston Lake in Ontario, Canada. (Dave had to stay back home because of work commitments and cat duties.)
The island, which is approximately a half mile long and 800 feet wide, is owned by my brother Paul’s in-laws. We had total run of their villa for 5 days. It has vaulted ceilings and wood surfaces everywhere. The great room has a 270 degree view of the lake. The kitchen was completely open and had every modern convenience.
Plus there were plenty of bedrooms and bathrooms. We had enough food and booze to really party down and gorgeous weather, except for one night when a storm knocked out the generator.
The next day we had to “rough it” by carting water, eating and drinking only the food and beverages set out from the fridge, and not taking showers. We were about to cook dinner on the gas grill when the power went back on. We were relieved, although we had been feeling a bit spoiled and were reminded how generous my sister-in-law Julie’s family was to let us stay in such a resort.
I took lots of photos, and looking them over now still fills me with fond memories, especially meeting my new nephew, Paul’s son, Miles Benjamin Wilkin, for the first time. What a sweet, happy baby he is! (photo)
My sister, Wendy, and husband John are well. Their twins, Kate and James, are now in a whole day kindergarten, which they had to adjust to, but are now doing fine. Wendy and John insisted that they be in separate classes, and that seems to have worked out very well. Kevin and Ellen Faye bought a new house in Quartz Hill, California and moved in with their two rottweilers in September. The house is only a few years old and the yard is quite large. They seem happy. Paul and Julie are well and busy chasing after Miles, who just turned one in December. Chris knocked our socks off at Christmas by announcing his engagement to Deby, who Dave and I haven’t met yet. The rest of the family seems to love her. They plan a wedding in Maui in April and a reception back in L.A. in May, which we look forward to.
My parents are well. My Dad alarmed the doctors when he lost a bunch of weight. But he gained the weight back when he switched to his standard meat’n potatoes diet again after eating my Mom’s low-fat meals, which help her control her cholesterol. Dad keeps the house and automobiles in order, walks the stairs to keep in shape, and enjoys reading the biographies and memoirs of military figures and heads of state. Mom is now a 12-year breast cancer survivor. She continues to see an oncologist and in March received preventive treatment at an alternative medicine clinic in the L.A. area. Mom continues to hike along the Erie Canal and garden in the nice weather. She also has retained her title as the Best Well-Read Person I Know.
We spent a week at Thanksgiving in Topeka with Dave’s family, hosted by his sister Elizabeth and her husband Scott to celebrate Dave’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Dave’s brother, Jim, Jim’s wife Karen, and their daughter Alayna are also karaoke aficionados, so I brought my karaoke machine. We sang our favorite songs and discovered that Jim, Karen, and Alayna all have good voices. In fact, Alayna can belt ‘em out like she’s on “American Idol!” Maybe she will be one day. Even Dave did a couple of tunes. He discovered a new excuse, though, for not singing karaoke: not very many pop tunes are sung by basses. My machine can transpose the key on any tune, but distorts the music a bit. Guess I need a better karaoke machine! Oh, Eva! How much money do you have?
We were glad to spend some quality time with Dave’s parents. Dave’s Mom is doing great. She is very active and is able to walk for over 30 minutes at a stretch. She also has been stacking up on detective mysteries and reading them voraciously. Unfortunately, Dave’s Dad is not doing well. He has been diagnosed with Multiple System Atrophy (MSA). They do not know the cause, but his symptoms seem to continually worsen. He has been on several medications, and is actively seeking better treatment. He was, however, able to hold his own with Dave in a Trivial Pursuit tournament against the Terrible Three: me, Scott, and Mom. His knowledge of sports, history, and science is like no other.
Another sad bit of news this year is that Zsa Zsa, one of our 17-year-old kitties, passed away on November 1st. She was loved by most people who met her because she was so cute and gregarious. I nursed her for several months until she got so sick with kidney failure that we had to put her to sleep. I was glad that I had retired before this happened so that I could be with her and give her lots of attention. You can read a tribute to her in my blog.
With family events and kitty responsibilities we didn’t take a long vacation this year. We did manage an overnight getaway for our 15th anniversary at the new St. Julian Hotel and Spa in Boulder. It sits at the west end of town right under the Flatirons and most rooms have a view. After I had a massage and salt rub at the spa, we had a delicious meal at a restaurant across the street. The next morning’s breakfast at Jill’s, the hotel restaurant, was also yummy – eggs benedict. Ah!
Dave and I are in good health and physical shape. I battle allergies regularly, but it doesn’t stop me swimming, hiking, biking, and doing Pilates. Dave bikes regularly, too. We’ve learned that there’s nothing like aging to get you on that bicycle. And if that bicycle is electric, all the more power to you (pun intended)! Yes – Dave bought an electric bicycle and built another out of his old mountain bike. He is most proud, however, of his electric scooter. The bikes top out at about 15 mph unassisted. The scooter tops out at a whopping 35 mph. It only has a range of 30 miles, so he still has to use my “gasser” (read “Honda Accord sedan”) to get to Boulder for dentist appointments. But, he looks forward to his hair cut appointments in Niwot, only 4 miles away, so he can ride his scooter into town. Did I mention the scooter is red? You can read more about Dave’s EVs (electric vehicles) on his blog.
However, Dave did break his nose in December by walking into a door at work. Yup. Although his first reaction was to ignore it and make up a different story for each person who asked what happened, when he saw the look in their eyes, he decided he better go to the emergency room. It turned out that it was just a tiny fracture and cut at the bridge of his nose, which was not structurally unstable, so they just stitched him up. Today he looks pretty normal, except the bridge of his nose might be a bit broader, and that’s just a sign of increased manhood, right? Read his story on his blog.
This blog letter has gotten quite long, but there is so much to say about an entire year! Best wishes to you all and enjoy 2006!