Sheepish happy holidays to all! Hope all is well for you as 2008 begins. (Sheepish because we've received wonderful paper-mail greetings from so many. But {insert the excuse that will be most likely to get your sympathy here} so for better or worse, this is our holiday note.)
Short story on us: doing fine, no trips out of the northwest this year but had very welcome visits from many -Thanks to those who honored us with a visit or otherwise kept in touch! Ishan from Indonesia, who is now an exchange student in Minnesota, started his experience with us in August.
Leah met us in Boise in January and went with us to Olympia in September. We'll see her in Eugene in Jan. 08 too. Our annual reading of the Grinch will have to wait til then.
We're so grateful to her for the trips.
After 2+ years of working in a law firm, Leah just finished her first semester of graduate school at George Washington in DC. She's majoring in Accounancy and has an internship at Deloitte set for the summer. She and Alex celebrated their first anniversary with a fancy dinner out in May.
In Eugene, Beth enters her 30th year teaching at LCC. More and more of her teaching is either on TV or on-line. For this term she is putting video of parts of her lectures into her on-line courses- a time-consuming and techie process for which so much memory is needed that she has a new terrabyte!! hard drive. Beth's bus trips to and from work took a dark turn when a sudden stop on a steep hill sent her flying out of her scooter, injuring her knee. Happily the knee is slowly getting better and we now know that the buses have shoulder and lap belts in addition to tie-downs for the scooter. So a repeat accident is unlikely.
I (Jim) am doing contract work for the school district (currently a technology audit) and volunteering time to train school staffs in preventing and responding to child abuse. Eugene will be hosting the 08 Olympic Track and Field Trials starting June 27 and, as I've worked on the timing crew for several years, I'm hoping to get a volunteer slot for that exciting event.
Kahlua survived a series of foxtails that had to work their way all the way through her paws. The vet is impressed with how well our "little old lady of 90" is doing. She turned 15 in April.On the home front we put a patio in the front yard (Beth lost the battle to call it a veranda) and we spent most every summer and fall afternoon on it for Beth's wine time. For before-bed TV our favorite continues to be West Wing. We watch one episode a week and are now in the 4th year. I may vote for starting over when we're done. Speaking of favorites, we were able to take advantage of several live performances of favorite groups this year: Pink Martini, Jessie Marquez and Mike Denny, and Shelly James and Cal Coleman (also of the Satin Love Orchestra). All highly recommended!
We wish you a wonderful 2008 and that we are able to stay in touch!
Love,
Beth and Jim
