2007 annual letter

                                                                        December 2007

Dear Family & Friends,

            Happy holidays!

            This year, only a few notes on family and events.

            Krystin is working on her bachelor's degree on the Twin Cities campus of the University.  After 2½ years at the Morris campus, she went with us to Scotland for spring semester 2005 and then spent a year in treatment programs for dealing with her diabetes, so her cohort at Morris had mostly graduated and there was no reason for her to return.  She thus picked up on the Twin Cities campus and is doing very well.  And enjoying it.  We ride to and from the campus every day and even have reasonably decent conversations, given that she's mostly a grump when she has to get up early in the morning.  As is the case with reasonably serious college students, Krystin's primary activity is reading and studying.  After a summer job in the animal resources facility at the University (assembling mice cages), she got a job in the campus bookstore in Coffman Union.  She likes being a cashier at the bookstore more than she did cleaning mice cages.

            Elliott is a junior at South High School.  Some times he does well academically and other times he sort of slacks off.  To his father's chagrin.  But he's doing OK and he remains a very nice kid to have around the house.  His primary activity outside school is video and computer games (and they are the primary social activity of the guys who are his friends).  But he and I often discuss the news, his school subjects, and a variety of other things, so I know he doesn't have a completely one-track mind.  It has been instructive for me to watch him operate his Wii (a Nintendo game system) by wireless connection to my home computer; on the Wii, in addition to his games, he gets the news, global weather, and a variety of other bits of information, some useful and some only worthwhile if playing "Trivial Pursuit."

            As I believe most of you know, Pat & I got divorced in March of this year.  I wasn't expecting it, I didn't want it, and I wasn't happy about it (to put it mildly), but I made it as amicable and quick as possible, under the circumstances.  I won't say more about the event other than to comment that it isn't a "growth experience" I recommend.  I stayed in the house; Krystin and Elliott live with me, although they visit and see Pat quite regularly.  The laundry gets done, the floors get vacuumed, the dishes get washed, but somehow the house just isn't as clean and neat as it always was before.  (Because of the events surrounding the divorce, I was not in the mood during 2007 to work on a cheery, long-winded letter on whatever topics struck my fancy.  So you get a break.)

            I have been seeing a therapist since last summer, and she has helped to keep me on an even keel and to be thoughtful about what happened.  I did do some dating last summer (largely courtesy of match.com plus friends who introduced me to women), but I discovered that my heart wasn't in it.  At least not yet, although at some point soon I am sure it will be.  In the meantime I enjoy the company of friends and of the kids when they're around.  My friends, I am glad to say, have been very, very supportive during a period that has been extremely troublesome for me.

            The dog went with Pat and the two cats stayed with me.  It didn't really matter to the cats; they and the dog didn't pay any attention to each other anyway, except when I had odds and ends of food in the kitchen that they both liked.  Elliott has concluded, by analogy, that people have a brain with many gears going at once, dogs have brains with a couple of gears, and cats have one rusty gear that doesn't go around very much.

            This December will mark 20 years in my current position.  At least in the eyes of some, I've become an institution, much to my surprise (and dismay, since I can't be old enough to be "an institution").  But I still enjoy myself and my work with the extremely interesting people who are the faculty of the University.  Some of those faculty, I point out to them on occasion, sometimes with some glee, have been at the University as employed adults a lot longer than I have.

            Elliott and I went back to Scotland for two weeks in June, just to get away.  (Krystin was away at a treatment center in Arizona until March 30, which is when Pat moved into her own house.)  Going from Minneapolis, our flight to Newark was cancelled, but they got us on a later flight (after 4 hours).  Then the flights were all messed up in Newark, so we sat there for six hours—and learned when we got to the desk that our seats to Scotland had been cancelled when our original flight from Minneapolis was cancelled.  They got us on, however, and the only 2 seats they had left were first class.  Might have been nice, but it was 3:00 in the morning and we were exhausted—but we did at least get to sleep comfortably.  While we were in Scotland it was overcast, drizzly, and windy every day but one, with the temperatures in the 40s.  Besides that, I misread our itinerary for the return home so we arrived at the Edinburgh airport just as our plane was taking off.  We got (very expensive) tickets home but ended up having to take a bus into Edinburgh, a train to London, stay overnight in a hotel outside London, and then fly to Chicago.  There were no flights available from Chicago, so I rented a car and we drove home.  We have never been so glad to get home.  Despite it all, we actually did have a good time, and explored a few places we hadn't been before.

            So it's on to another year.  Hope things have gone well for you this year and that they continue to do so in 2008.