Holiday Letter with Pictures from 2010

Happy Festivus!* Merry Christmas! Happy Hannuka! Happy Kwanza! God Jul!


Jack Runs the Trains

(*see wikipedia.com if you don't know what Festivus is)

I have already gotten out the aluminum pole and I have aired my grievances from 2010. I am going to skip the Festivus feats of strength and if you haven’t heard from me yet then I must not have any grievances with you. Of course you already knew that...

2010 has been a pretty eventful year for us. Ginny has just finished her presidency on the Board of Advisors for the Pacifica Resource Center. They have a new executive director this year and that has taken quite a bit of Ginny’s time. Luckily (or because of the hard work by the search committee), the new ED is really working out well. Ginny and I created a new company this year when I retired from Deloitte in July. It is called ProSigma Services. Ginny is the president and I am working for her now. I think we just formalized a reporting structure that has been in place since we got married. She is management and I am labor. My partners at Deloitte suggested that I still need adult supervision in my job, and Ginny is perfect for the job. She manages the company, the books, and signs all the contracts. My job is VP of Client Services. I am doing sales of our staffing solution services and our consulting services to law firms and corporate law departments. So far look promising for the new venture.

My recovery from partial knee replacement surgery in 2008 and neck surgery (four vertebrae fused) in 2009 continues swimmingly. Well I’m not really doing much swimming but my recovery is going very well. The doctor says it is a miraculous recovery (a Festivus Miracle!). For those of you betting on me losing weight in 2010, I have bad news… you lost more money then I lost weight. So with inevitable determination, I am stating for the record I will lose 20 pounds in 2011. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Amongst all the changes, we did manage some travel this year. A trip to Ireland was our overseas trip this year. Ginny worked out some “home exchanges” so we spent several days at the K-Club Golf Resort in Kildare Ireland and a few nights in a renovated farm house that was several hundred years old (still it had satellite and internet service) outside of Cork Ireland (really outside of Cork, the dirt driveway was about half a mile long and the dirt road that took you to the driveway was at least a mile long). The scenery, people and weather were all splendiferous (truly great). We drove over 600 miles during the week we were in Ireland. We also had a touching spreading of my sister Linda’s dad’s ashes at the Blarney Castle (please don’t ask how she got the ashes there). We also spent a week in Sedona Arizona with my sister and brother-in-law Linda and Bill. We saw the red rocks and took a helicopter ride out over the Grand Canyon – it was spectacular! Our summer vacation was in Ocean City, NJ. We managed to see almost everyone in the family. Also it coincided with the wedding of our good friends, Andrea and Sam. We attended Ginny’s 40^th high school reunion (it was sort of mine as well but I didn’t attend Upper Merion HS for my senior year). We spent thanksgiving at the in-laws, Joe and Lois’ place in Norristown PA. Ginny and I attended a Green Legal Matters conference in New Orleans where I spoke, and briefly met the mayor of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu. We also spent a few days ‘26 miles across the sea’ on the ‘Island of Romance’ in sunny Catalina, on our first Company retreat. Of course we spent a couple nights in Brooklyn NY with Kelly, Matt and Jack.

Kelly and Matt are doing very well. Matt popped the question the day after Christmas and they have become engaged to be married. We are so happy for them and very pleased to have Matt in the family. They are doing a splendid job of raising our grandson Jack, aka, the Tank. They are visiting here for Christmas (and Festivus) and we quite enjoy having them with us. Jack is a funny kid and very cute if I do say so myself. I call him little tank and he calls me big tank. He loves the Christmas train set we have here on Danmann Ave. Today we played with the radio-controlled helicopter and he seems to be better at it than I am…no surprise. Ginny, aka GG (short for Grandma Ginny), has been spending lots of quality time with him, looking at Christmas lights, decorating the Gingerbread House, singing, giggling and having a jolly old time. For those getting this letter on papyrus (paper) you can see video of Jack and Ginny doing some gift wrapping at http://www.notes-fromthe-john.blogspot.com. (You can also see past holiday letters posted there.)
Hope your Holidays were wonderful, all your Festivus grievances are resolved and that you - Have a Happy and Healthy 2011!

With love from,
Ginny & John, aka Grandad.

I can do what Grandad does!

Our first ProSigma company retreat- Catalina Island

GG & Jack

Jack and GG build a snowman with mommy

Matt Olney (aka daddy)

Ginny kissed the Blarney Stone in Ireland


Happy Thanksgiving in Norristown PA 2010

Bill, Ginny, Linda, and me in Sedona AZ


Tank and Grandad having serious lunch at Carl's Jr.

Kelly Janes (aka mommy)


Dixie Chick hiking girls (Ginny's walking group)

2010 Holiday Letter (not quite done)

I am diligently working on this year's Christmas letter. I promised that this year would be on time and I aim to have it posted by Christmas. In the mean time I am going to post a festive video of my grandson Jack "the tank" wrapping presents for his parents. Ginny and I are biased but I think he is one of the funniest, cutest 2 year olds I know.

Happy Festivus from

the John

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, a bit late.

God Jul og Godt Nytt År, litt sent.

When I posted the 2008 holiday letter to http://notes-fromthe-john.blogspot.com on December 3, 2009, I promised that the 2009 letter would be coming soon and it would not be as late as 2008. True to my word, it is not as late as 2008. I’m getting better but still litt sent, as they say in Norway. No promises but if I follow this trend, I am very optimistic about 2010’s missive.

Ginny and I did our fair share of travel in 2009, mostly in the U.S. and mostly to see our grandson Jack

k, aka Tank. We did a week at the Jersey Shore when he was just one year old last June. He looked like he was going into second grade rather than his second year on the blue marble. Ginny enjoyed herself and we almost took over as babysitters for one day but Kelly took a long look at Jack’s granddad (me) and decided she would keep him with her. Ginny did have the chance to babysit for Jack when Matt and Kelly took a night off from parenthood and went up to Connecticut in February 09, for a night of rest and relaxation. I want to make the point that I would be an excellent babysitter as you can see from the picture below (that is me, helping out as Santa at an office gathering in Dec. 09). We also got to visit with Matt, Kelly and Jack on a trip to Seattle in the summer. We had several days of pure sunshine and warmth and plenty of “Jack” time.

Work at Deloitte has been a challenge this year mostly because of my health/neck problems. I was out on disability leave for the last four months of 09. I had a neck operation to fuse 4 vertebrae. This was long overdue and it stemmed from the fact that I broke my neck when I was 14 (there is a humorous story there that I will post to the http://humorthis.blogspot.blog site in the near future. So almost one year after having my right knee partially replaced, I had my neck put back in order with screws, plates and bone implants. Very high tech and so far very successful but I won't know for certain for another 3-6 months. While I was on medical leave, Ginny and I took a trip to Southern California but not just any trip. We rented a small RV and took the dogs along for a road trip. I didn't feel comfortable flying but riding in the RV was a piece of cake. It was small enough to be drivable and large enough to sleep all four of us comfortably. We got down to Santa Barbara the first night and got a space in an RV park on a hill looking over the Pacific Ocean. Then we had breakfast at a place where they used to film the TV series Sea Hunt (for those of you old enough to remember that). Beau and Jeff Bridges got their start working on that series with their father Lloyd Bridges. But on to Orange County where we visited with my sister Linda and her husband Bill. Gus and Gine got to visit with one of their relatives Kingston (Linda's dog). On the way home we stopped in to see a taping of the TV show Late Night with Craig Furgeson. The show was very funny. But not as funny as our late night episode trying to find our camping spot at Pinnacles National Monument. We arrived at the camp about 2am and got to sleep around 3am. But by 4am an alarm was going off in the RV indicating CO2 problems. So I figured out the electricity was plugged in properly or the electric service wasn't turned on. Either way I fired up the generator and we turned the heat back on but it was almost worthless because I forgot the skylight vent was open (to air out CO2). We got about 1 1/2 hours sleep that night. Funny now, but not then.

Ginny had her hands full last year with the Pacifica Resource Center duties. She was the president of the advisory board and the Executive Director was retiring so with the help of the ED and other board members Ginny spent quite a bit of time working on recruiting, and assisting in any way she could to get the new Executive Director on board. She also spent time with her cooking club, hikes in the coastal mountains, gardening and of course… the dogs.

Kelly and Matt got to go back to the mother land (England) for Christmas. They took Jack back to see his grandmother in London and some of his other relatives (Uncle Tim, etc.). They got out just in the nick of time, leaving London one day before a massive blizzard hit. Those that haven’t been reading these letters for 35 years might not know that Kelly was born in England when we were stationed in Mildenhall, England in the Air Force. Matt was born and raised in England and probably considers himself more of a pure Brit than Kelly (ha). But Kelly is a dual national.

Gus and Gine had a good year and I think in another 5-10 years they might just be well behaved and obey all commands. Gus had six weeks in house quarantine after made a stink about a skunk hiding in a culvert. I found out about it when Ginny woke me up about 1 o'clock in the morning telling me Gus got in a fight with a skunk. I already knew that a skunk was involved because Ginny was nearby when Gus got sprayed and when she came in the bedroom I woke up from the smell which was on her coat. So she ended up taking him to an all night veterinary clinic. They wouldn't let him inside because he smelled so bad. But Ginny convinced them to come outside the clinic and treat his bleeding nose. Evidently the skunk not only sprays but it bites as well. In fairness Gus bit him first, picking the skunk up in his mouth and getting bit in the process. When I saw Gus the next morning, he just looked like "what the heck did I do to deserve this?" Oh the smell…lasted for another several weeks even though we did several of the recommended washes to get the smell out of his fur. Other than that, we love having them around even if the skunk doesn't.

A bit of history, I think we started doing these annual newsletters back in the late 80’s or early 90’s. I would draft a letter full of rants and raves and Ginny would edit it down to a more pleasant holiday greeting. Over the years I have had less and less to rant and complain about so it becomes a challenge for me to come up with something to write about. It probably got easier for Ginny to edit but at the same time she got frustrated waiting for me to do the first draft. Last year and the year before have given me a lot to complain about but I keep thinking that we have it so good, it would sound bad if I went back to my bitter writing. What to do you ask yourself? Well I’m starting to write on two blogs (mentioned earlier) There I can be as bitter and sour as I want. I love that. One more thing to be grateful for...the world wide web.

A hat Trick… from Jack Janes Olney

Have a great 2010, (what’s left of it) Love, John & Ginny

Get your motor running

Ginny and I took a ride on the motorcycle for the first time in over a year. Thanks to neck surgery we might be doing this more often now. Here is a helmet cam view of our ride on the sunny California coast.

~the john

A day at the race track

I got a new helmet cam and Got to test it at an office event where a few of us went to the go kart track. My two race mates both ended up lapping me at least once but they had a weight advantage. I think I weighed more than both of them put together. I should have been given a kart with two engines. But it was fun and the camera worked great. I used it the next weekend to video a motorcycle ride that ginny and I took on a sunny Sunday in April. I'll post that video next.

~the john

Sunshine Superman

I must be getting my vitamin D and calcium in sufficient doses these days. I just got back from the Doctor's office where I had my 6 month evaluation of my neck surgery. The doctor said it has been a miraculous result and that I must be some type of superman. I'm pretty sure one of those statements is a bit of an exaggeration. I think it was good surgery not a miracle. I feel pretty good...no, I feel very good bordering on great. I did over do the weight training last week and pulled a muscle or two in my back but the doctor didn't seem to think that was a major setback, he just advised that I go slower with moderate weight. Now I need to shed 10 pounds so I can get into a wet suit and go out ocean kayaking. Anyone contemplating neck surgery I'm happy to refer Dr. Clement Jones in San Francisco. He is one of the best.