Merry Christmas from the Deep South!
We had a very rainy spring, followed by the rainiest summer on record, which was followed by the second driest September on record. The summer was so wet in large part “thanks” to tropical weather from Cindy and Dennis. Between the two storms there was a lot of wind damage on Atlanta’s south side and flooding all over the metro area. Even the infamous Katrina left her mark in nearby Carroll County with tornadoes that turned the area upside down. October was very summer like which kept the leaves green until Halloween. Typically, that is when the leaves are at their peak for color. On November 7th and 9th the temperature reached 78 degrees which broke existing records for those days. Thanksgiving was a warm and sunny day with temperatures in the mid 60s.
Once again we are disappointed Braves fans. We went to Turner Field a few times during the regular season and watched most of the rest of the games on TV. I was practically in tears on October 9th when I watched all six hours of the eighteen inning game between the Braves and Astros, only to see the Braves come up short after having a five run lead in the first nine innings.
Kristin is 24 and has completed one year of graduate school at SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her major is Industrial Design. So far she has earned As in all of her course work. On her academic breaks Kristin continues to work at Walt Disney World as a seasonal employee, doing the same types of performance roles that she did during her intern year. She has no classes between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, so she will spend three of the six weeks off from school working in Orlando around the holidays.
We saw quite a bit of Eric this year. He lived at home for the spring semester because he was at his co-op assignment at nearby Ciba Vision. He worked there over the summer as well, so he continued to live at home. All in all, he was living here for eight months. Now that he is a senior, he is back on campus completing his course work for a degree in Computer Science. He feels that graduate school is in his future, but he would also like to rejoin the workforce as he enjoyed his co-op experience at Ciba. Eric remains on the Dean’s List and still benefits from GA’s HOPE Scholarship.
For the most part, Mike and I are still quite healthy. Mike has written and submitted another patent, preliminary number 11/115,755, entitled, “Method and System for Increasing Voice Calling Throughput over Broadband Access”. An earlier patent submission was approved as US Patent Number US 6,760,520 B1, entitled “System and Method for Passively Aligning and Coupling Optical Devices”. Mike is a co-author of this patent. I am waging the never ending battle of conquering household clutter. This can be quite a daunting task when you have been in the same house for 25 years! Mike recently upgraded our patio by enlarging it and re-doing the surface in brick. We also got a Weber gas grill for the patio and will replace our 31 year old charcoal grill with a Weber kettle style grill.
In April we made a trip to Savannah to visit Kristin. We went to a SCAD production of West Side Story. I saw the play years ago when it was on Broadway. We also went to Forsyth Park to see an outdoor art show. Great as the cultural activities are, we equally enjoy dining out in Savannah.
In June we made a driving trip to Norfolk, VA to attend a wedding. Enroute we stopped in the Wilmington, NC and Cape Fear River area, Nags Head and then Norfolk. In addition to attending the wedding and reception, we re-visited Colonial Williamsburg. Our hotel in Norfolk was the Marriott Waterside which was also the location for Norfolk’s Harborfest which coincided with our visit to the area. We left Norfolk via the twenty mile long Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. You resume driving on land at Virginia’s eastern shore at Kiptopeke. This was a surprisingly scenic drive through VA’s two counties, Northampton and Accomack, which adjoin MD’s eastern shore. At the northern end of the VA portion, we made a side trip to Chincoteague and Assateague Islands. I didn’t expect Chincoteague to be so built up and to look so much like New England. For the most part, Assateague is a wildlife preserve and cars are restricted from the roadways until late in the day. The next stop was in Washington, DC. We made a long day of it at the Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Art. The National Gallery had the Gilbert Stuart exhibit of the George Washington official portraits. We took a guided tour at the Air and Space Museum. I went into the First Ladies Gallery at the Smithsonian, but more than that, I was glad to see the re-creation of Julia Child’s kitchen from her home and TV set from her public television days at WGBH. The final museum visit was at Natural History. There was a new pearl exhibit in the same gallery as the Hope diamond. I wish we had another full day to spend in the gem and jewelry galleries at Natural History. We were able to get together with my cousin, Paul, and his wife, Karen, who live in suburban MD. After we left the DC area we drove inland and returned home via the Blue Ridge Parkway. We spent one night in Mount Airy, NC, the home of Andy Griffith and the inspiration for Mayberry.
In August we spent a week at the beach at Tybee Island, GA, followed by three days at the Marriott Sawgrass Resort in Ponte Vedra Beach near Jacksonville, FL. In this rainiest of summers, miraculously, we had only one hour of rain in ten days – two twenty minute showers on Tybee and one twenty minute shower at Sawgrass. Savannah is only twenty miles west of Tybee, so we were able to spend some time with Kristin. The only thing that was difficult to work in was getting to see some minor league baseball. The Savannah Sandgnats were on the road for most of the time that we were in the area.
The four of us were together for Thanksgiving. It was the usual busy weekend with baking, frying turkeys and getting our Christmas tree up and decorated. For the first time in many years we put up our artificial tree. In view of our travel plans in December, a live tree would not get watered for the time we are in FL. We will be at Disney World at the same time that Kristin is working there.
We hope that all is well with you. Happy Holidays
Sunday, December 25, 2005
2005 in Pictorial Review
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)