Christmas 2019

Merry Christmas from the Deep South!

We have had another busy year, mostly because of numerous trips. Even though it has been a very odd year for weather, we were fortunate not to have had weather problems when we were in Asia, NE Alabama, Savannah, Fairfax and Hilton Head. For the first half of the year we had excessive rain. There was a real concern that GA’s numerous lakes and rivers were ready to spill their banks and cause widespread flooding. We were well into the summer before things started to dry out. Then the rain stopped altogether. That continued into September when we had almost a month of temperatures at 90 degrees or higher. 2019 is officially the hottest year on record in the Atlanta metro area, moving 2011 and 1980 to the second and third hottest years. We have lived here for all three of these record breaking hot years. The first few days of October broke records for the hottest day ever in October. Last year my birthday was 93 degrees and this year it was 97 degrees the day before it. With all of the summer and September heat, we spent a lot of time at our club’s pool. The very rainy first part of the year and the recent heat put quite a dent in Mike’s fly fishing. He has done a few woodworking projects, mostly making toys for the grandkids.

It was a great year to be a Braves fan until Game 5 of the NLDS. In forty years of living in the Atlanta metro area, we cannot recall such a monumental collapse in post season play – by any team. Oh, well – spring training is only four months away!

Jim, Kristin and the grandgirls were here for Easter. Alexis, Keira and Lily are at great ages for Easter egg hunting. We have the perfect backyard for it. It is heavily wooded, so there are endless places for the Easter Bunny to hide the eggs. Luckily we had great weather and the Easter dinner turned out well. The girls had their fishing poles with them, so they spent all afternoon fishing in the lake behind our house. Mike and I celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary on May 11th . Despite advancing age, we are in good shape. I continue to be an active participant in Silver Sneakers. Two or three times per week I attend the cardio and stretch classes. Now that the temperatures have cooled off, I have resumed walking in the neighborhood, typically a mile out (optional) and a mile back (required). I had two eye surgeries. The first was in May and second was in August. Each was a form of laser trabeculoplasty which is designed to lower eye pressure. Each was done in the office under local anesthesia. Luckily, there is not too much “down time”. After three days my vision cleared enough to allow me to resume normal activities. Each surgery was successful. The pressure in each eye is back into the normal range.

The biggest trip was the one to Asia between mid-March and mid-April. We began in Bali with a few days at the Oberoi Resort. The beach property is beautiful, exactly as we pictured Bali would look like before we got there. After over 30 hours on the plane to get there (Atlanta-Detroit/Detroit-Inchon(Seoul)/Inchon-Denpasar, Bali) we were ready to be at a place where we could totally relax, have gourmet food and get the worst of the jetlag behind us before we boarded the Viking Orion. After we checked out of the Oberoi, we still had two more nights in Bali that we spent on the Orion. Then it was on to Java for three stops; Semarang, Jakarta and Surabaya. Jakarta is the world’s second largest city trailing only Tokyo. From there it was on to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The final stop was Bangkok. There were a few sea days when a lot of distance had to be covered making the cruise just under two weeks. Our favorites were Bali and Kuala Lumpur. We wish that we had more time in Kuala Lumpur. As it was, we saw the Old Railway Station, the Anglican Church and the Petronas Twin Towers. They are the tallest twin towers in the world at 1724 feet each, including the pinnacle. They are connected at the 41st and 42nd floors with a double-decker sky bridge. In general, we were disappointed in the ports of call mainly because there was not that much interesting to see and because they are (surprisingly) not setup for tourism. There is no infrastructure. Traffic is paralyzing; it can take a few hours to go a few miles. We spent a lot of time on buses. The local guides on the shore excursions were awful. They could barely speak English. Luckily, Viking participates in the Scholars at Sea lecture program. The day before each stop the lecturers presented information about the history, geography, and culture and provided detailed descriptions of all of the shore excursions. When we disembarked in Bangkok, we checked into the Bangkok Shangri-La Hotel so we could extend the trip by three nights. There is so much to see and do in Bangkok that we were happy to have had the extra time to see more than what we were able to do with the Viking excursions. The biggest draw back to Bangkok was the extreme heat and humidity. We were constantly drinking water. It was tiring to be sightseeing, but we are glad that we did as much as we did. The temples in Bangkok are very different from the ones in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The Shangri-La is located on the Chao Phraya River. Almost everything we wanted to see was accessible by water taxi from our hotel. We visited the Grand Palace. In 1782, Rama I established Bangkok as Siam’s (Thailand’s) capital and built Wat Phra Kaeo to house the country’s most precious Buddha, the Emerald Buddha. This Buddha is made of jadeite, which is green, like emeralds. In 1784, he had the Grand Palace built, which became the home of the royal family. No king has resided there since the early 20th century. We saw most of the ten major features, including the Inner Palace and Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles. Not far from the Grand Palace is Wat Pho, Bangkok’s oldest and largest temple. It contains the Reclining Buddha, which symbolizes his arrival at Nirvana, a state of true all-knowing awareness. The last temple we visited was Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn. Its five towers are encrusted with porcelain which gives it a very distinctive look.

The time on the Orion was wonderful. The ship was not even a year old when we sailed. The maximum capacity on the Viking ocean ships is 900. The food was fabulous. Wine is included with lunch and dinner. A wide range of excursions was available at each port. For most of them, there was no charge. If an excursion took all day, required food off the ship, admissions, transportation, etc., there would be a charge for that. For the most part we enjoyed our fellow passengers and got to be friendly with a couple from eastern Canada and another one from the Chicago suburbs. Within the year the Chicago couple will relocate here to the east side of Cobb County, 10 miles from us, to be near their daughter and her family who moved to Marietta, 15 miles from us, over the summer. We have great memories of both of our trips to Asia. Even with tight flight connections to and from Asia, miraculously, there was no lost luggage!

In early May we went to Lake Weiss in northeast AL with friends of ours. Lake Weiss is due west of Rome, GA and about 100 miles from home. We made good use of the lake between fishing for Rick and Mike then all four of us went cruising around on a pontoon boat and we enjoyed daily dockside cocktails at sunset.At the end of May we went to Savannah to celebrate Kristin’s birthday. It was great to see her, Jim, Alexis (8), Keira (6) and Lily (4). The three girls participate in gymnastics. They were in the “end of the year” show – a recital of sorts – to showcase the many things that they learned during the year.

We were home for a short time before we were on the road again. This time it was to visit Eric, Amber and Ethan in Fairfax, VA over the Father’s Day weekend. We celebrated another birthday – Ethan turned 3 on June 7th. He is a very busy boy and a lot of fun to be around. I wanted to fly up and back, but Mike wanted to get some mileage on the Genesis, the car we bought a year ago. On the way up we drove along most of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Wonderful weather was with us. The parkway speed is not higher than 50 mph because of all of the twisting and turning on a two lane road.With the lower speeds we could ride comfortably with the moon roof open. We took three days for the drive up. We rode the interstates for the trip home and did the 600+miles in two days.

Most recently, we had a week at the end of September on Hilton Head Island,SC. We had perfect beach weather. It was sunny and in the mid to upper 80s each day with a light breeze. Two years ago when we were there, we were not so lucky. We had to cut our trip short due to mandatory evacuation orders because of hurricane Irma. We had a spacious two bedroom villa. Eric, Amber and Ethan joined us for the first part of the week. We spent the mornings on the beach and the afternoons at one of the pools. Ethan really enjoyed the time at the pools because it was easier for him to play with his water toys. One thing that I had wanted to do for a while was to have lunch at the locally famous Salty Dog Café. This year the five of us had lunch there and we got our Salty Dog ball caps and T-shirts.

There is good news to tell. Eric and Amber are expecting their second child, due to arrive late May or early June. Time to crochet another baby blanket!

We hope that all is well with you. Happy Holidays, and all the best in 2020.