waaaaaaaaittttttt for it

I can't believe it has been more than a year since the last post.  To those of you that like the posts, I apologize.  for those of you who don't like the posts, I apologize (for starting to post again).  I am starting today to work up the bicentennial annual holiday letter.  This letter was originally a rant which Ginny would edit to make it seem like a holiday best wishes letter...she is evidently an amazing editor.  I think it has been about two years since the last update so this letter may be annoyingly long but if you are reading it online you always have the option to stop. I'm going to go offline now and start composing...while I'm waiting for the plumber to show up on a saturday (I am assuming the plumber and family will have a nice christmas after this bill is paid).  so ho ho ho to you all and I'll return when I have some holiday writing to share.
JJ Clause (get it?)

A little "light" music from Strasbourg

Last night we saw the Strasbourg water and light show which is put on every night in the canal that comes off of the Rhine river.  It is actually not as dull as that sounds but never the less.  Please take a look at the video.  The video was taken with a hand held helmet cam so the quality ain't great but the camera is so small it is the most convenient way to take video pictures.  I should explain that the video is not centered well but the reason for posting this clip is you will see dancers at some point.  Those dancers are holograms (or holographs?) that are projected into the mist and smoke over the water.  All done with lasers and other lights and in color.  It was pretty awesome.  Again however I have to apologize for the quality, I was shooting in the blind without a viewfinder to see what I was capturing.

I'll write again soon,
Au revoir!

Ahoj jsme v Praze - Hello we are in Prague

I am writing this several days after we got back to Strasbourg from Prague but I took some notes while we were there.  Hopefully this will bear some resemblance to the truth.

Prague is a wonderful city.  I don't want to cast aspersions on Strasbourg because Prague is just a much bigger more cosmopolitan city (yes I used the word cosmopolitan).  Two of our group got up early in the morning and went out to Strasbourg Airport and flew to Prague, we call them the advance party.  Four of us got in a car and drove the 6 hours across Germany to Prague (9 hours when you count getting a bit lost around Nuremberg trying to locate a burger king (don't worry, we found it)).  The retard party (don't get all huffy, I mean in contrast to the advance party, I think it is the right word to use in French it means delay) arrived about 12 hours after the advance party.  We were pretty tired but met with the apartment owner's brother and got squared away.  

The apartment was great although the parking space in a local garage that was supposed to be included didn't work out.  Tadious (or vacav, mirche, paco, or bubba as I was likely to call him) who was the brother of the owner told me he would come with me to park the car because it is a block or two away and it is difficult to navigate old town Prague.  ::::Let me take a moment to describe driving in Prague: Imagine if you will a corn maze out in Iowa and this maze takes up about 200 acres.  You cannot turn around in any branch of the maze and many arms of the maze come to a dead end (or in this case a sign that says no entry).  If you try a strategy of making one right had turn after another, you will eventually end up making a trail that resembles a lolly pop (and I am speaking deeply from experience here.  So you try to go down a few one way streets the wrong way and guess what, you end up making the exact same lolly pop trail that I described earlier.  So finally, you take a short cut through a hotel court yard, back up along a canal tow path, drive up the steps to a bridge, take the escalator in the enclosed downtown mall (the escalators are wide enough to fit a small car), then eventually you end up in the drive through land of Burger King and exit at the parking garage to your hotel.  And this is all with the assistance of the GPS which is set to speak English with an Australian Accent.  But wait there is more, after we arrived at the parking garage, it turned out the door to the garage (looked a bit like a spiked door at the end of a draw bridge entrance to a castle dungeon) would not open.  Bubba told me to approach the door slowly in the car (and make sure to show no fear because the door can sense it).  After doing that several times with no response from the door, He said let me run back to the apartment and get the remote (now I'm thinking to myself....that would have been a good thing to have at the beginning of this experiment) but I would have been wrong, because the remote didn't work.  So Mirche said "I will go inside and hit the switch" (which i thought would have preceded running back to the apartment to get the remote) but the switch didn't work so Paco so I will talk to the garage attendant (now I think he is just putting me on).  Vacav comes back and says the garage attendant says the door is broke, or as you Americans say, it is broke.  Actually at that point I used several American words and none of them were "broke".  None the less we made another excursion to a public parking garage that was only 2 blocks (and 14 miles by car on streets) away.

The rest of the trip was wonderful.  we went to visit the cathedral, we had dinner on the bank of the river, we visited museums, I found the Deloitte offices in Prague, I found the offices of several law firm clients in Prague, we took the funicular up to the top of a hill in the city ad took in the view (with a camera) from there, I learned several words and phrases in Czech and even got one person to understand what I was saying.  Mind you I wasn't saying what I thought I was saying but he understood what I did say and he laughed (in Czech of course).  The weather was great, we got hit with one brief shower but we were headed into the castle and cathedral tour anyway so it was great timing.  I  stole two paver stones from a cobble stone street as souvenirs (don't get in a huff, they were tiny slices of the cobble stones that were being discarded), and besides it doesn't compare to me taking a small quartz stone today from the Maginot Line Museum.  I think someday I will be able to build a garden wall out of the stones collected from around the world.

I have taken at least a thousand pictures on the trip so far and a few videos.  I will post some of them to this blog at some point in the next week and I will post a few others to facebook.

So back to Prague, it seems like we were there for about 55 minutes but in fact it was almost four days. I guess if you figure it took me 24 hours just to get in the parking garage when we arrived, that makes sense.  The burger kings and McDonald's in Prague I have to say are a bit better than Strasbourg but for that matter they are all pretty much what you expect.  I have gone to some great restaurants in Strasbourg and Prague as well because Ginny and the others seem to like having properly prepared food some of the time.  I owe them a lot for letting me go off to Mikey d's for coffee and eggs and burger king for the Big King or Woper.  When we left prague, we made a quick stop at a little hill top village called Leuchtenburg (or berg, can't remember) it had an old castle like ruin and it had a nice little Catholic Church.  As important to me it had a tiny German bakery (but they had a German name for it). and they had some great pastries.  Then it was back on the road for the 6 hour drive to Strasbourg (and that is with the autobahn where you can sneak up to 95 miles an hour or more if the car can do it).

Prominte, (excuse me), it is getting late and I have to take a break from writing.  I'll write again soon.

Comment voulez-vous dire que en français?

Or, how do you say that in French?  Our fourth morning in Strasbourg and I am happy to say that I woke up in the morning and not afternoon.  Somewhat of a slow day today, doing laundry, writing on the blog, waiting to pick up Joe (father in law) and Joe (brother in law) Havlick.  They are flying Icelandic Air from JFK to Frankfurt Germany with a quick stop in Keflavik to check on the melting glaciers.  They are taking (we hope) the same airline bus from Frankfurt to Strasbourg that Ginny and I took.  A quick three hour jaunt (see how I am getting my french words into the conversation).
I think I realize why my Norwegian and Spanish is helping me to communicate here in France.  I approach someone and try to ask a question using my french studies (all two months worth) and unintentionally, I lapse into Norwegian with a bit of Spanish for good luck.  The people I am talking to think that it is just butchered french so they appreciate my efforts and they help me out.  I haven't found a single person in Strasbourg that doesn't try to speak English.  From two grandmothers walking their dogs to the guy in the cell phone store they all take great joy or pride in helping me and then giving me a little french lesson to boot.  By the time we are finished here, I should be able to speak English and maybe a little french.
Yesterday we took a little boat tour around the city of Strasbourg.  It was very nice although Ginny and I both had to fight off falling asleep due to the gentle rocking of the boat and the mellifluous tones of the pre-recorded tour guide in the headsets.  Judging from the prices, ice cream must be very rare in Europe.  About $7 for three small (I really mean melon ball size) scoops of ice cream.  It is enough to make you scream but I don't know how to say this is outrageous in French.
We saw the main cathedral in Strasbourg yesterday but didn't take a long tour.  You can walk to the top in one of the towers but again, didn't have the time and didn't know the number for a counselor to get me over my fear of cramped spaces and Ginny's fear of heights (sort of amazing that we get into airplanes at all). The reason my fear of cramped spaces is a problem is that the stairway up to the top is one of those stone spiral staircases like you see in the movies when they are taking someone down to the dungeon.  Very short and very narrow and I don't know how many stone stairways you've been in but the ones I've been in don't tend to have any give or flexibility.  Now I know why the hunchback of notre dame was hunched over, it was the only way he could get up the stairs.  Well I'm going to give it a try never the less.  Look for the headline "American tourist in France gets stuck in stairwell 300 feet up in a cathedral".  By for now, I'll be in touch (or touche as the french might say).

Nice to meet you Al Sace and Lorraine

Ah... France in August.  Not bad.  We are staying in a house (former Prussian Officer Quarters from around the early 1900's) in Strasbourg.  Ginny made all the arrangements (of course) and I made whatever business arrangements that I could prior to coming over.  It is great to mix business with pleasure as I never feel right just taking vacation.  We flew over from SFO to Atlanta to Frankfurt Germany.  Didn't sleep much on the way but I was so glad I got a hard neck brace before flying.  Didn't loose feeling in any limbs while spending 12-14 hours in an airplane seat.  Got to Germany 7:30 in the morning and then went about finding a way to Strasbourg.  We settled on an express bus that only took about 3 hours.  When we arrived in Strasbourg, it was about 31 or 32 degrees...I thought maybe I should have brought a parka....until I figured 32 Celsius is about 91 or 92 degrees F.  So I'm sorry I didn't bring shorts but if I had brought shorts, I probably would have sparked another French American war.

So the first night we didn't go to sleep until about 2:30am which somehow means we stayed up for about 48 hours with a couple hours dozing here and there in the bus.  Then I made up for it.  I slept for 12-14 hours and still wanted another 12 hours but couldn't get away with that.  The boss is on this trip and she saw to it that we got out and about the town to see what is out there.  We had dinner in "little France" which sounds romantic until our tour guide today told us the story of how it got that name.  I'll tell that story when all the kids have gone to sleep and aren't reading this blog.  Nevertheless, we had dinner right on one of the rivers or canals that runs around and through Strasbourg.  Then we took a walk along the river to get a close up view of "little France".  We drove home after dinner which is no mean feat.  You see Strasbourg has probably been around in one shape or another for a thousand years but certainly since the 1300's.  No one back then was thinking "how can we make sure there is room for automobiles in our little city".  I don't think there is a road, street, boulevard, or rue that goes more than three blocks in a straight line.  By law, a street must bend, turn, twist, or dead end within 2 1/2 blocks of a straight away.  Some roads don't connect to anything, you accidentally get on one and find that it has barriers as the other end and it is one way????  I'm sure there is a secret that they keep to themselves.  Oh and another tip the potential traveler to France, they speak French here.  Almost all the words are different from ours.  Oh sure, you can sort of figure out the connection for instance I will pay is something like jais payee but it isn't crystal clear.  I tried for several months ahead of time to listen to French lessons on tape (audio) because I thought  I KNOW SPANISH AND NORWEGIAN, HOW DIFFICULT CAN IT BE???  Now I humbly know the answer to that question.  I was told once today that my French is good but that was after I said merci.  He thought I was thanking him, I was begging for mercy. More to come, we will be here a while.

Happy New Year, I'm starting off by breaking last years resolution to get the annual letter posted by Dec 31, 2011.  Well I'll make a resolution for 2012 to get 2011's letter posted by the Jan 3rd.  I'll have it up here in the next two days.  Meanwhile, I'm spending Jan 1, 2012 in Brooklyn NY getting ready to fly home to Pacifica and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Halloween

Well normally I don't get excited about Halloween. It was a working holiday when I was a kid. We usually just went to a handful of the 14 bars in West Conshohocken and we danced or sang or acted like fools and got cash from the bar patrons. Candy was always nice but cash spends anywhere.

But this year we got a video mail from the "Super Pumpkin" aka the Tank, aka grandson Jack. I think he does a very good Rodney Dangerfield impersonation even if it is unintentional. I can't help but laugh out loud every time I see this video. I hope it makes your halloween a little happier.

Barcelona Espana Segundo Noche

In case some of you were feeling that Barcelona sucked. Quite the contrary. The second night we were there we went out for a walk in the Gotti Disctrict (I think that is what it was called). We were going for tapas and wound up in a scenic old (I mean middle ages old) section of Barcelona. Along the way we came across some musicians performing what I believe was some traditional Catalunyan style music. I've attached a video. I also bought the CD which has a bunch of great musical pieces on it. Enjoy the video clip and picture yourself walking in these narrow ally ways among the medieval churches, market places and homes. Great memories and not concerned so much with pickpockets...just kept our eyes open.

Stop thief!

Hemos visto algunos carteristas. That is "we saw some pickpockets" at work today in Barcelona. But let's start at the beginning. We all decided to get up early today but we didn't have to set an alarm. We went to sleep "early" last night around 11:30pm or midnight. Ginny didn't sleep at all and I got up around 6am. Bill, Linda and I went out for a pastry and coffee while ginny tried to go to sleep around 8am. After breakfast I went off to rent a cicycle and Bill and Linda took a walk. If you saw the "trapped in an elevator video from Wednesday night" you will appreciate what it took for me to get myself and the bicycle into that little elevator. I didn't dare leave the bike locked up outside because I was advised that without a lock a bike will be stolen in less than 10 seconds but with a good lock it would take maybe an hour or more before someone took off with it.

In the afternoon we all hopped in a cab and went over to the harbor for a 1 1/2 hour cruise which went out of the harbor and into the Mediteranean Ocean. That was sort of fun but Linda got mareado (seasick). When we arrived safely back on shore, Ginny and I went up Las Ramblas (supposedly a very historic area of town). It seemed a bit more touristic than historic. As we sat and had some tapas, I finally spotted what I thought was a pickpocket. We observed him and sure enough he was wandering through the crowd, meeting up with some other unsavories and then they would go back into the crowd trolling. I got a few pictures of a couple of them but we never actually got pictures of one of them doing the deed. They were always in thick crowds when they were working.

So much for the excitement. Ginny and I took a cab home and we were all getting ready to go out for the evening when it started pouring rain. Ginny and Bill are trying to drain the awning on the deck as I write. I'll update this if one of them gets struck by lighting.

Espana Noche Dos

Wow, Barcelona is great. We all slept in today (that is putting it as mildly as I could). I woke up around 1:30pm and the last to wake up clocked in around 4:30pm. So we all got ready in our good time and somewhere around 5:30 or 6pm we wandered out on the town. We walked to the City Park and checked out the people walking around, took some photos, and then we headed over to the Born district to find the Picasso Museum but before we got there we found some street performers (listening to the CD as I write this), then we wondered into the Iglesia Santa Maria del Mar. Evidently Saint Mary liked the seaside. Then we stopped for some Tappas at a nice little outdoor joint. While Bill, Linda, and Ginny waited for a free table, I ran around the district looking for a digital memory card and a sim card for my cell phone. I got to see a bit of the city but not much, mostly I worked up a sweat (the weather is beautiful but just a bit humid). I took plenty of pictures, some of which I will post at some point here. Found a place to rent a bicycle and generally we all had a good time. I'm really happy that we came here. It exceeds expectations, even though when Ginny and I sat in the park around the corner tonight (around 10:30pm) a woman came up to us and warned that I shouldn't sit with my back pack and camera sitting out. She told us someone would come by and swipe it. So much for me trying to look dangerous and threatening, ha. Hasta Manana

P.S. no one got stuck in the elevator today, hooray or Bravo, Muy Bien

Viva Espana Elevator Espisode

Viva Espana

We (Ginny, sister Linda, brother-in-law Bill) are staying in Barcelona. So far it has been pretty exciting. We landed on the same plane, went out to catch the bus to center city and after Ginny and I stepped onto the bus, the driver shut the doors and we left Bill and Linda standing on the curb getting their tickets! So much for traveling together. They caught the next bus and we saw them at the Plaza Catalunya downtown Barcelona. We weren't at the plaza more than five minutes when the theives scoundrels and pickpockets noticed the touristas and tried to distract us. Lucky for us a woman who was watching this happen came over to us and told us to stay alert that the man sitting behind us was getting ready to steal our stuff. Welcome to Spain touristas, now give us your stuff. So we gathered together, tried to look like we knew what we were doing and we shuffled off to the metro station to get to our apartment. After getting to the apartment and the building manager letting us in, he warned us not to a) hang out at the Plaza Catalunya and certainly not to take the metro from there to the apartment and if we did defy the theieves and muggers, we should never hang out at the end of the metro station (which we had already done). I asked in my best spanish (which was funny because the building manager was Scottish) if he had watched a video of us traveling to the apartment because we had just done every single thing he told us not to do.

So speaking of doing what he told us not to do. He warned us not to all get in the elevator (ascensor) at one time with our luggage because it might not take us all. So 10 hours later after we took our siestas, Bill Linda Ginny and I went for a late night walk to the harbor area and had dinner. We stopped and got some groceries on the way home and around 12:45am we all got in the little elevator (with our groceries) and hit the top floor button. We got as far as 5 and 1/2 before the poor little elevator that could wheezed, coughed, sputtered, stopped and then dropped a few feet. Did I mention that this little elevator had no airconditioning, no help phone and that all four of us took up about 90% of the square footage in the lift? Lucky for us I knew 6 words in spanish some of which included holy crap help us we are stranded in a tiny elevator. I will post the youtube link to our elevator night mare as soon as I can get it loaded.

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.

Holiday letter 2008 (a year late)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

In trying to think of a catchy introduction to this annual tome, I finally thought, hey why not just get to the news, after all it is at least a month late. With that in mind, there was a ton of news this past year.

Literally and figuratively we had a HUGE addition to our family this year. Baby Jack Janes Olney (aka the tank), weighing ten pounds, was born to Kelly and Matt on June 9^th. He continues to be a big boy at 7 months and keeps growing in leaps and bounds. He is a funny kid, you can make him laugh by waving a newspaper in front of him and you can make him cry by handing him to me (aka the hammer), for two minutes. I swear I’m not torturing the kid. He likes his Grandmother Ginny, or Gigi, almost as much as she likes him.

There were two more new members to the family in June. Gus and Gine (hard G and rhymes with Tina), are golden retrievers who were given away because they each had some small behavior problems. They have turned out to be fabulous friends. They are very active dogs but I try to give them some time almost every day on our treadmill. I sit on the exercise bike next to them as they do their time. The golden rule is…a tired dog is a well behaved dog. Ginny and I spend a fair amount of time training them and miraculously, it seems to be working.

For those that are keeping track, I still work for Deloitte. In a few months it will be 6 years! I still think it is the best place I have ever worked and I hope that I get to retire from this place (not soon though mind you). I managed to do very little business travel last year but still I saw Nashville, New York City, Philadelphia, Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, England and Norway and a couple places I’m sure I forgot. I’m working on my comedy writing. I know some of you will be saying, enough with the comedy, maybe you should focus on writing in a timely manner (did you notice this holiday letter is a month late?) But, I want to entertain not just inform. I have been getting my feet wet by submitting work to magazines, doing cartoon captions, and anything that will help sharpen my writing skills.

Even though Ginny retired from United in 2007 she is working as hard as ever. She is on the Board of the Pacifica Resource Center, which helps families in Pacifica that are in crisis. This year she is President of the Board so she will be spending more time than usual working on behalf of the Center. She continues to carry a rigorous exercise schedule which now includes running in trail races, cardio, weightlifting and work with her friend and trainer Jeanne B. One day she did manage to take a six hour “short cut” in the mountains while she was on a three hour training run with Gus, but no worries, they were both fine and had a good night sleep that night. Ginny is also a member of a neighborhood cooking club, she takes several classes in some kind of dance, art, yoga and I’m not sure what else. She took several trips to NYC in 2008 as Kelly went through her pregnancy, child birth, and medical problems with her gall bladder. Thanks to Skype video conferencing I didn’t feel like I was a total bachelor.

My Mom is slowly on her way into the fog of Alzheimer or dementia. Some of the family saw this coming for over a year now but it is very difficult to do anything to help. I succeeded in getting Mom to sign a power of attorney but that doesn’t carry much weight unless you are in the state (Alaska) where she is living and I live about 2000 miles away. I petitioned the state for guardianship but was unsuccessful due to mostly a strong set of laws protecting the individual and an overburdened state system that can’t do anything more than a quick surface evaluation.

Ginny’s Dad is doing well. He visited with us with his brother Roy in early December and they built a train platform for under our Christmas. It was perfect and will last for years to come. We loved having them here. Her Mom is doing well at Blue Bell Place. We visit her as often as we can and she almost always knows us.

We had the 3^rd annual Super Bowl Party where we had friends, family, and co-workers over to watch the big game. It is always fun but neither Ginny or I really get to watch the game.

I went on a great big adventure with my brother in law Bill Thomas this year. We went out and rented some dirt bikes (motorcycles), took them out on a trailer to Occotillo Wells Desert State Recreational Vehicle Area and for two fun filled days we learned (the hard way for me) how to ride off road in the desert and up the hills. Actually, I learned how to ride up the hills and tumble back down with the motorcycle bouncing off my chest armor (good thing I got that). Overall the weekend cost me a torn hamstring muscle, a very large hematoma (bruise), a couple bruised ribs, and a bruised shin bone. I’ve never had more fun in my life! Bill and I had to see Bette Midler perform in Las Vegas with Ginny and my sister Linda. That was the price we had to pay to go on the motorcycle trip. So I had to go through some pain in order to really injure myself out in the desert… actually, the show was pretty good.)

We had a gathering of family and friends over for the 3^rd annual 4^th of July celebration. Pacifica makes a huge deal about safe and sane fireworks and that there will be zero tolerance of illegal fireworks. And yet every year it is like a war zone. It seems as though some of those fireworks go off right in front of our house every year. Strange huh?

We took a trip to England and Norway in August and decided that just going ourselves (Ginny and me) would be too boring. So we invited my nephew Erik and Ginny’s nephew Emerson. I mean if you are going to travel to two foreign countries and move around to a different place every two days you should take two teenage boys just to add to the excitement. It turns out our instincts were correct and the two boys not only enjoyed themselves but I think they got some education out of it as well. We stayed almost entirely with friends (and you know they have to be good friends to put up with 4 of us) in England that we met in the 70s when Ginny and I were living there during my Air Force time. We stayed most of the time with relatives in Norway. Surely a way to find out how close you are to your relatives. They were unbelievable, (my relatives that is), they picked us up at train stations, took us to bus stations, loaned us their cars, let us sleep at their houses and made like they enjoyed our company. We started by taking a train (first we took the wrong train going in the wrong direction, ha) to see family in the south of Norway (Kristiansand) then we headed up the west coast where we visited the family homestead in Torvik. We had an absolutely hilarious dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Aalesund then we headed to the capital city Oslo where we stayed with one of my cousins and her family. Then we took a day trip southeast of Oslo to see more family and took a short (4 hour) jaunt to see my cousin’s quarry near Sweden (and brought home a couple stones from the homeland). Finally it was time to head back to London for a layover of 36 hours before heading home. Emerson left a couple days early and found his own way from Oslo, to London, and then home to Kalamazoo Michigan. Erik stayed with us and flew from London to San Francisco where my sister Linda met him and drug him the rest of the way home to Orange County CA.

Oh and as part of my ongoing “paying for the sins of my youth” program, I had to go in for knee replacement surgery in mid October 2008. I had an exceptional recovery according to the physical therapists and doctors but I was expecting to get over it pretty quickly so I’m proud but it didn’t seem all that exceptional. The one thing that I found to be most exciting was that I didn’t use anesthesia just a local nerve block so I couldn’t feel anything in my leg but I was awake and able to monitor what they were doing. It turns out they only had to do a partial knee replacement which is the equivalent of having your tires retreaded rather than replaced. It’s a complicated explanation but basically they go in and carve off some of the ends of the bones and anchor some metal surfaces on top of the bone. And for those that are interested, no it doesn’t seem to cause problems with the metal detectors at the airport.

We spent Christmas in Brooklyn with Kelly, Matt and Jack. Staying at Matt and Kelly’s co-op was fun and I got a chance to get up and walk around Brooklyn every morning checking out the greasy spoon restaurants for breakfast. I must reiterate the old saying….never eat at a place called Mom’s. Then we went to Philly to see the rest of the family. It was a wonderful holiday.

Well that is a summary of 2008. Feel free to comment, critique this.

John (aka hammer) and Ginny (aka Gigi to her grandson Jack aka Tank).