I am so sorry about the spam!

I am completely ashamed. Yesterday, in a misguided attempt to get organized, I changed my email address and set up an auto-reply to the old one, which was supposed to answer only new emails, politely giving the new address.

Instead I committed a horrible act, inadvertently replying to every single email in my inbox - thus the more correspondence I've had with people in the last three years, the worse they got socked.

To make matters worse, a lot of people had their own auto-responses set up because they were away for the holidays and it looped back and forth so that by the time I realized what happened, I (and they) were getting emails addressed re: re: re: re: re: re:etc. until the re:s took up three lines.

I had nightmares about it last night (poor Young!)

Anyway, I apologize from the bottom of my heart and wish everyone a very

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Ann

Catch Up

Going all the way back to last summer -

I finally got to see the gorgeous house that Betty and Mike built in Port Townsend:



And Mike's Shed!


Jacob, covered with silly string as his official welcome to Zazzle as an intern:

Such a baaaad blogger!

Remiss as all get out, and I don't know where to start.

Here is a quote from Ellie's facebook page anyway:

"Eleanor defended her dissertation proposal! It emerged slightly bloody but alive."

From the same source, some Halloween pix - Ellie was Sarah Palin, and Jacob was a moose:

Happy Thanksgiving!

have a wonderful day!

Phone Changes

Young and I have swapped phones temporarily, to see how I like the iPhone.



We're not going to switch the numbers, so call me at his number and him on mine.

Got that?

Indoor Skydiving

We went indoor skydiving for Blue's Birthday!

Halloween is coming

Happy Birthday Blue

Sixteen Years - can you believe it?

Then:


Now:

photo by Tammy Trejo

The Return

Blue went back to school on Wednesday. He wasn't thrilled about showing up with his recent pox still visible, so Young ordered a Mexican Wrestling mask online. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) the package didn't arrive until yesterday, when it was too late.



By today the pox are practically gone.

Vote NO on Proposition 8

We finally got our yard sign posted:



Proposition 8 would deny same sex couples the right to marry. Why people want to do this, I can't figure out, but the Mormon church has evidently put up huge sums to pass it. They know people aren't going to vote for it if they actually realize what it's about, so they are funding ads that claim that if 8 isn't passed, the "homosexual agenda" will be taught in kindergarten.

This one is going to be close, and it is important - so if you are a California voter, for god's sake vote no on 8. And where ever you are, consider contributing to the No on 8 campaign to counter the lies.

More 'struction

The wall slowly disappears...





You can see from the living room into the kitchen now.




and we finally discovered what was in that mysterious beam across the dining room:

Congratulations Leanne and Moya

Photos by Richard Watson



It was a beautiful wedding, with two beautiful brides!

Holy moly! It's always something

Jacob mentioned yesterday evening that he was getting some itchy bumps. One look and my heart sank. After hours of calls to and from the advice nurse, doctor on call, oncologist on call, they prescribed antivirals and I drove around until one in the morning finding a 24 hour pharmacy that actually had them in stock. This morning he is covered with polka dots.

On the plus side, he does not have a fever - so it doesn't look like it's going to be serious (knock on wood when you read this please) - and it's chicken pox, NOT shingles - crumby but not horrible, I hope.

Pictures to follow if I am permitted.

Great Photos

Another great picture from Reuters:



Performers dressed as tigers take part in Pulikali, or tiger dance, during festivities in Trichur city, in the southern Indian state of Kerala, September 15, 2008. The ceremony was organized to mark the end of the annual harvest festival, "Onam".  REUTERS/Sivaram V (INDIA)

And from the New York Times, a slideshow from “The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss” by Claire Nouvian/Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Here's one picture, but you have to see them all!

Goodbye Kevin

Kevin Brennan and his wife Leigh are returning to Ireland. There was a great farewell concert at the San Gregorio Store where he's played every 3rd Saturday for twenty some odd years (some odder than others.) Musicians who played with Kevin over all the years showed up and sat in with Claddagh.



I got exactly one picture in focus - after that the joint was rocking too hard - here's Grant wailing on the harmonica...

Further (de)Struction

Happy Birthday, Ellie!

And Allegra - It was yesterday really!

Blue's Toast

I promised a couple of people that I would post Blue's toast from the wedding. It isn't the same in writing, but it might give you an idea....

Yes, yes this is a wonderful wedding, but I am not up here to talk about how good the wedding was. No, no I’m up here for a relatively simple job, which is to tell a nice story about Ellie. Now I like this job so I’m not going to tell not one story but four.

The first goes a little something like this: Ellie has been known by many names, such as: Ellie, Eleanor, the Nor, and little electric head. But there is one shrouded in mystery this name will be reveled later. When Ellie was little she would go around asking every person she saw questions like are you married, why not, or even what is the approximate size of China. So my parents called her the baby congressional-sub-committee.

Ellie has always been several things like interesting, smart and cocky. This is a story about and her cocky ways. Hopefully you’ve all met Zena; she is my and Ellie’s cousin she is nice like Ellie, but in other ways a polar opposite to her. Well when they were both two, Ellie decided that since she was so much older she should change Zena’s diaper. Three minutes later my parent walk in to find Ellie covered in baby powder.

Now Ellie has been and I think will continue to be one of the most caring people I know. When I was around she was, and is, so excited. I personally think she just loves most if not all Jacobs to distraction. She used to take me everywhere, like to her friends Kirsten Meeker’s house and we would swim in the pool. One time after taking me to her house she was driving over the speed limit on a small hill when a cop pulled us over after he gave her a ticket and walked away I start flipping out and crying saying “I don’t want you to go to jail.” To which she of course said “Shoot jacob why didn’t you do this in front of the cop” I think this shows good preservation instincts for both herself and me, I mean how would a young me do in jail.

As I have said before she likes me and this love is deeply rooted in the fact that Ellie still kind of thinks of me as her little baby, not to say I’m not though. She used to want to take me everywhere she went. I went to the renaissance fair every year and we would have a great time I would almost always dress as robin hood, in fact I still have the belt from that costume; it was way to big for me. Anyways one time I got lost at the Ren Faire ,just for a short time, and I thinking this lady was Ellie hugged her from behind I then found it wasn’t Ellie and scampered off to find her.

Jacob (Fenton) knew me immediately he said here’s a funny cool kid; I’ll help him build a potato cannon. Of course he did. It was my first potato cannon of many - well two really - but there are more to come. This was all in second grade.

The Wall

Anyone who has been to our house knows we have been on the verge of knocking down the wall between the kitchen and living room since we moved in in 2003. Well - we started!

'Struction Guys





Plastic


Studs

Honeymoon

Ellie was here (hooray), and brought the pictures from their honeymoon. I hope either she or Jacob will get in there and put in some descriptions.

Here are a couple sample ones:


With their pack horses, hiking up to Machu Picchu.


I think this is at the top...

Jessica

This picture of Jessica keeps not fitting into a narrative but I really like it.

First Day of School 2008

His eyes may not have been open, but he was nearly smiling.

Road trip

To inaugurate our new car, EZZ, Blue and I took a terrific road trip to Washington (State).

Blue wanted to check out Evergreen, as a possible future college, and he wanted to do it independent of his parents - the mistake we made taking Alex and Ellie was to see the college ourselves.

So, Blue stayed with Peter R. and Ruth H. our first night in Olympia, and I got to spend the afternoon with Cappy and the evening and night with Jean and Joel.

I totally fell down on job as far as photo-documention went for that first part of the trip. Since I didn't manage to take a picture of Peter, I've stuck in one I found on the web.



I couldn't find any pix of Ruth, and the best I could do for Cappy was an impossibly lit cell phone pic:



Likewise - no pix of Jean and Joel. Here is a tiny one of Jean from the Evergreen Faculty directory:



After that I got the picture situation in hand. Blue and I reunited for an assault on Colyar who led us on a crazy tour of Capitol Peak - a smallish, partially clear-cut mountain with a lot of radio towers on top. It shouldn't have surprised me - he once took my on a tour of the Redwood City storm sewers in a little zodiac inflatable boat.



Blue didn't actually ride this motorcycle, as it has neither brakes nor clutch - made for a racing oval only.



And here we are with the some of Welsh-Goltz crew. We were in a prenatal class with Mary (on the far right) and her husband before Ellie and their daughter Elizabeth was born. That's their youngest, Maureen and her friend Colleen.



The we headed up to Seattle, did a whirlwind tour of the high spots including the troll under the bridge and Archie McPhees,

Troll

and headed out on the ferry to Port Townsend to see the house that Mike and Betty built



More about Port Townsend next time...

The Data are coming, the data are coming

Ellie's application to use a restricted database for her dissertation has been, at long, long, last, approved! Called the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 , it includes in-depth questionnaires from high school students, parents, teachers and school administrators, along with transcripts over a significant period of time. It also appears to have tighter security than, say, Los Alamos Labs.

Yipee!

Visitors from far and near

July was a great month for visitors.

Letty came down and we took Sparky on a walk at the Beach:



There were huge Jelly fish all over the place. God knows how far they came from, but I haven't seen them again since.



Janet surprised us with a visit from Mexico.



and McKeever came through, He had been in Mexico as well.

New Car

Well, I really tried to buy a Prius - I plunked my deposit money down a couple of days after the accident that ended the career of my old foop.



But alas, after a few weeks of paying for a rental, I got an email from the dealer sayin, essentially, maybe, if you are lucky, in a week or two we will be able to tell you whether or not we'll be able to tell you how much longer the wait will be.

So, I bought a honda fit. Actually my dream car in a lot of ways.



And it's purple!

After considering naming it Fitts's law (that's a human factors joke), or the Little Easy (Blue's idea) I think I'm going to call it EZZ (Ezizi) after the first three letters on the license plate. I'm retiring the Foop plates, along with the Moop ones that came before.

Another great video

glumbert - Kinetic Sculpture

Thanks to Joel Greene and Thad Curtz!

Italian Television

Jessica and Alex were interviewed by Italian TV about Ratatouille last year:



How we do love YouTube.

More Wedding Pictures: the Reception

The reception was a blast.

Jacob gave an unbelievably great toast,



And Alex gave one that made me mad, but entertained everyone else (he told a bunch of cautionary tales on Ellie.)



There was a bluegrass band, and dancing, dancing, dancing - especially Katy and Dorothy, who monopolized Kara.



Everybody danced!



they had petit fours instead of wedding cake, made by Jacob and his posse.



More group shots:

Wedding gentlemen:


photo JGMcM

Wedding Ladies:



The Fenton-Harvill family:



The lasko-Harvill-Fenton family:



The newlyweds with the Economics Department:



Matt and the girls:



Betty and me;



Amy and Dan:



ARg - there is so much more - next time..