1995 Christmas Letter |
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Dear All,
as I’m writing this, the sun is shining, it’s a balmy 55 or so, and the ducks are splashing around in the
swamp outside. Doesn’t sound much like a Minnesota Xmas? Well, its not. It’s October and I’m writing this a little early, as we take off for Australia in a few days, and won’t be back in time to get this off for Xmas.
We had no big trip this summer, so we had time to enjoy Minnesota’s weather. We had a mild winter, with hardly any snow for the skiers, and then a long, cold spring that lasted into June. Then we went from snow to 100º in a weekend, and there it stayed, mainly in the 90s, until it dropped from there to a frost, all in one night in September. That kind of change is tough on people, but even worse on roads, with lots of concrete either exploding or splitting. Although it was a hot summer, we had inches of rain every few days, so everything stayed green, but it felt like a steamy August in Florida. In retrospect, this was not the year to save money by not getting the air conditioning fixed!
So what’s everyone been doing? Karen is back home again. She has her degree in Archaeology and Anthropology, but has 
decided she’d rather work with small animals than people, and she’s now studying to be a vet technician. She’s wearing out one of the cars, commuting to the Minn Institute of Medicine every day, on the other side of Minneapolis. The class isn’t too challenging after the U of M, but she’s enjoying it. The cats, on the other hand, are tired of playing hospitals when she has homework to do. She took the load off them a little by adding Orvy, a house-trained rabbit, who hops around happily, if precariously, amongst the cats. (I suppose we should be grateful she’s not working with large animals.) She still works a few days a month at the U of M hospital serving food on the psych wards.
Joanna is 17 and in her final year at high school. She has decided to go for an art career, so she has loaded up on those classes and is looking for an art college for next year. She picked up a first prize at the State Fair, plus a couple of thirds, so people do like her pictures. There’s one on the next page. She also has a talented teacher, who painted some of our Xmas cards this year. Last April, she went with the school orchestra to play in a 
competition in Toronto. They won, but mainly because the Canadian schools didn’t show up! Her music teacher recently moved her classes to the other side of town, and that finally persuaded her to get her driving licence. She’s been working part time at the K-Mart next door for the past few months and seems to enjoy it except when she comes home frazzled after being supervisor for the day. In between all this, she also has a very active social life and always has friends wandering through the house. Last year’s boyfriend was recently traded in for a new model (Mike) who’s a lot more sociable.
Michael’s still a hockey and baseball player. The hockey team were quite good, and they picked up trophies at all their 
tournaments. The baseball team were just like last year, even though fast-pitch is a very different game. They won almost all their games and then fell apart in the championship at the end. They did their best when it was 90-100º, a tough bunch. Michael’s now 12, and in 6th grade at Middle School. He’s tutoring other kids in maths after school, so he seems to be doing OK.
He and Christina spent a week at Circle R Ranch this August, thundering around the woods and prairies. They had a good time, with good horses, and they picked up some ribbons at the rodeo. We also found another stables in Wisconsin, not too far from where we camp at Voyager Village. We expected to just plod around but soon we were cantering through the woods, weaving through trees, up and down hills, and across streams. Christina’s “awesome!” just about sums it up. I didn’t have any breath left to argue. She’s still ice skating, and desperately trying to get one reversal to work so that she can move up to the next grade. She’s almost 10, still at Willow, in 4th grade, and seems to be participating a lot more and enjoying it as a result. At home, she still enjoys the dolls, and is in charge of dressing the cats. Luckily for her, Puddy likes the attention and even seems to enjoy being driven around in the pram. She and Ginger are now full-grown and overweight and rush around like two elephants playing tag, but Lisa’s only half their size and keeps out of their way. Mr Turtle now has a 60 gallon tank and can happily chase his fishy lunch around his home.
Sandie and I have much simpler lives than the kids. We just work and feed money into the system! The highspot for us was selling our duplex this spring, after having it on the market for 18 months. At the closing, we were a few signatures from completion when we realized we were also selling a piece of the land for the second time! It took a lot of frantic work with the township and the county and the buyers to straighten out the lawyer’s errors of 13 years ago. Without the duplex to maintain, I had time to tackle some of our own landscaping problems. The land between us and the swamp had become an eyesore, full of fallen trees and piles of sand and earth, so the big project this summer was to clear it out and extend the existing lawn down to the water’s edge. With all that rain, it wasn’t clear whether to plant grass or rice! There was enough water back there for us to go canoeing, and we even had great white herons fishing under the swing set one day. Now that it’s done we can watch the ducks from the kitchen. It’ll look even more open next year as the willow trees are rotten and have to come down. The biggest one dropped a large, waterlogged limb on an absolutely calm 
day, crushing the kids’ slide, and other pieces fall off every week. I’m just waiting for the water to freeze and make the job easier.
Sandie is still working nights at Woodbury care center, though she’s fed up with their incompetent management. She did interview elsewhere, but the state sharply reduced its payments for care, and most centers are now going with fewer and less qualified staff, so she decided to stay put until after the holiday. We all enjoyed having her Mum here this summer. We think she had a good time, even if it was a bit hot and humid. It was also a great excuse for us to go visit lots of places with her.
Unisys is still thrashing and reorganizing. I’ve split my time between leading task forces and creating and 
teaching classes, mainly at work, but one at the U of Minnesota. Either way, its a lot of talking and standing, and it’s taken over a year for my heel to recover enough for running. I used a ski machine to exercise it, so that the rest of me didn’t decay completely. No running in races this year, but I’m OK for a slow ten miles or so now.
Not much traveling for work this year either, just down to even steamier Virginia to give a paper. We were hoping that Mum and Samantha would make it out to see us this year, but Sam’s asthma was too much a problem. At the moment, we’re in the middle of packing and Karen’s in the middle of organizing what everyone’s going to do while we’re gone. We fly to Sydney, rent a camper van and head up the east coast for a couple of weeks, and then fly over to Alice and Ayers Rock, take the bus down to Adelaide, and drive over to Melbourne to see all the family and celebrate Auntie’s 80th birthday. We also plan to celebrate our silver wedding, but quietly, as I think we’re in a Queensland mangrove swamp that day. Coming back to Minnesota in December is likely to be a shock to the system, but at least it’ll be real Xmas with ice and snow and frozen batteries and shovelling and scraping, instead of Santa in shorts barbecuing on the beach.
So, whether you’re frozen, sunburnt, or merely damp, here’s wishing you all a Beary Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
| This was our first Christmas letter to include colour pictures. In 1995 we scanned photos into the computer using a hand-operated scanner, being careful not to be too fast for the computer as we dragged the scanner across the photo. The quality of the resultant images was not good,.so I will update them when I locate the original negatives. |