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Happy 2001! Like everyone, we're back from holidays, wishing
we could have kept playing a little bit longer, but looking ahead
to the new month, the new year, and yes, the new millennium,
filled with hope, excitement, and stress about all the work that
has to be done.
Our holidays were grand and happy and filled with too many
fine moments, memories, and gifts to completely detail here;
but I'll share some of the high points. Since we are a household
of three, we had four Christmas celebrations, one with the members
of each of our three families, plus one more for just our household
(on Boxing day). Added to all this was the Wunderland
Toast Society Holiday Party, and of course New Year's Eve,
plus we saw lots of out-of-town friends in between, and I even
went to a reunion of my old Explorer
Post... basically, it's just been a whole lot of socializing.
We actually didn't see anyone from Kristin's family during
Christmas this year; her sister and family are spending a year
in Israel, so her parents went to the Holy land for the holidays.
But just as we'd sent gifts for them along early, they'd left
some behind for us, and we sat down to open them on Xmas Eve,
at roughly the same time we'd usually be doing this with them,
thus observing the holidays with Kristin's kin in spirit. (And
we got some neat stuff from them!) Before that, we exchanged
Neat Stuff with Alison's parents and relations at their delightfully
remodeled home downtown, but here too absences were felt... her
cool, zany brother Alec is currently in China, working with the
Peace Corp. This was his first holiday season so far from home,
but I'm sure he handled it fine.
 On
Christmas, we had dinner at my ancestral home, where mom fixed
one of her fantastic dinners for a bigger crowd than ever...
for the first time that I can recall, there was a kid's table
on the edge of the dining room! Oddly enough, that's where we
three (plus Rash) ended up. And then came the chaos of 14 people
tearing open a huge pile of gifts, all at the same time!
As usual, we created something new to give away to everyone,
but since we haven't yet finished mailing out copies to everyone
on our list that we plan to send them to, I'm still referring
to this only as Secret
Project 44-CC. Then for the families, we made fudge
(as usual) and cookies (new this year), and even created some
custom-made gifts, though of course we also bought plenty of
gifts, too, including a Cat in the Hat game for my goddaughter
Sharon, who carried it around for awhile, proudly proclaiming
to everyone: "It's a game!" (The number of games in
her universe just doubled.)
 The coolest
custom gift we created was a set of T-shirts, ID cards, buttons,
notepads, and a plaque, all conferring membership in the 7 Continents
Club on my parents, who this year completed a lifelong goal of
my mom's by setting foot somewhere on each of the 7 continents.
(It's truly amazing that we were able to create a run of exactly
2 full color T-shirts for this project... hooray for CafePress!)
We also made some cool pads for Alison's parents, plus we (well,
Alison) designed a logo for my 9 year old nephew Eric's production
company, which he long ago decided would be named Man in Hartsford
Productions.
As for the loot we received, we got all sorts of neat things:
the usual assortment of books, CDs, clothes, games, toys, videos,
and fattening goodies; a new exercise machine to combat that
last category; new tires for two of our cars; a bunch of cool
new drinking glasses; Kristin got a slew of new Pez dispensers
(seven different bugs) and the new Spiderman videogame; I got
the new Tomb Raider, five time travel books plus the very outstanding
Book
of Tiki, a complete set of boardgame ornaments, and a Titanic
mechanical bank; and Alison got a juicer and a shopping spree
at Behnke's Nursery. And not only that, as of yesterday, the
business got a new (and desperately needed) digital copier! Oh,
and Leah sewed us a beautiful Looney Labs signpost banner! Lastly,
Alison and I each got new sketchbooks, plus I got $50 to just
spend, all in shiny new golden dollars. Wow! Such a haul!
Thank you, everyone! (And please forgive us if we never get around
to sending out those NQ notes...)
 But
while our new year begins with only sunshine, we have friends
for whom 2001 has been nothing but a nightmare. On New Year's
Day, the townhouse next to toK
and Todd's home burned down! Their place would surely have gone
up in flames too if it weren't for the firemen, who battled the
fire inside their house even as flames from the neighbors' attempted
to enter. But although their home was spared outright destruction,
damage from water, smoke, fire, and firemen was very serious.
This picture of Broccoli
sprout #11 will give you a faint glimmer of just how much
damage this has done to their lives. But their insurance company
(State Farm) is taking really good care of them, moving them
into a hotel and bringing in teams to recover and reclaim as
many of their trashed belongings as possible. As for the building
itself, estimates are that repairs will take six months. Yikes,
what a bummer. But as FDR might have said, things could have
been a lot worse... though missing for a long while, their cats
eventually turned up unscathed. Sadly, the same could not be
said for the household actually destroyed by the fire... they
lost a dog as well as their home.
Anyway, we're all very sad about this, so please keep these
families in your thoughts, and perhaps take this as a reminder
to change the batteries in your smoke detectors and otherwise
do what you can to guard against such disasters. (Which reminds
me, it's time to get that insurance video updated...)
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