Merry Christmas to All and Happy New Year
Here's wishing you and all your friends and relations a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year.It's Christmas Eve and I'm trying to get myself into the mood. I've given up shopping and hope that Shirley has done enough. I had in mind a couple of last-minute items but simply could not deal with the crowds yesterday and today - so will have to hope for some time and patience after Sunday.
We've made a habit of doing up a Christmas Card online for the past several years. This is the first time I've done it up in my web log (Blog). I've been trying to get Shirley and some of her friends to start contributing some of their thoughts and musings - even offered to set up a separate site for them. The world seems to have discovered Blogging.
This is the first year that Shirley and I are celebrating Christmas without having either of our boys, Michael and David, living here at home.
Of course we both have birthdays in December too, and Shirley's is her 60th. This year the kids and their "significant others" as well as Shirley's sister Val and her husband Doug came with us to our favourite restaurant here in Pitt Meadows, Chives Bistro.
This year has gone by all too fast. I've been busier than a one-armed paper-hanger with the hives, working for Solara Technologies Inc.(still) as their Chief Technology Officer and V.P. of Operations, as well as looking after a number of other companies' internal systems and external web and e-mail servers.
In between times Shirley and I have done a small amount of travelling here in BC, but aside from a trip to Las Vegas for a convetion, we've pretty much been home-bound. Dave and Krysten moved out to their basement suite, and Michael has moved in with Morgan. Logan, Dave and Krysten's dog, is gone and the cats (Ming and Sachi) are all that much happier for it.
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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year We're all blessed with good health, and we're looking forward to the new year with anticipation of at least a bit more liesure time than we seem to have had this past year.
As you can see at our family web site there have been lots of activities with friends and family. There are lots more pictures from the sessions the ones you see here were taken in. I'm continuing my business as a contract systems consultant. The past 25 years have had their ups and downs, but on the whole it has allowed me to "stop and smell the roses" when there are roses to smell and no fires to put out. Shirley watches the phones at home while I'm out visiting customers or on the road doing other things (like going to Las Vegas to a vending machine convention this past April for Solara) When the weather is good, we tend to get out in the garden and are almost getting the upper hand on some of the Rhodys. When we bought the house we counted over 70 bushes but I think we're down to less than 40 now. I'm in the middle of creating a water (hazard) feature in the back yard. It will have a pool deep enough for fish to over-winter, with a small waterfall into it and a stream out of it leading toward the house. The birds and beasts have had so much use out of the half-barrel I put up a couple of years ago, that they should have all sorts of fun with what I'm planning. It will go right past a couple of the larger bushes where our flock of ground-feeders (finches, sparrows, towhees, etc.) spend their day singing. Judging by their avid hopping around the ditch as it sits, they'll enjoy we're sure. Solara Technologies is an offshoot of a company I did some systems recovery work for back in the late summer of 2003. The CEO (Dorn Beattie) is an old Rock-n-roller from the early '70s and we've been graced with another star from that erra in the form of Susan Jacks (of Poppy Family fame) who is working with us in Solara while we gather the resources to do another venture in the Music business. To these energetic people I've added some of the people from other ventures; Suzanne D'aoust who worked with us at Wimsey along with Ken Cillis, and Ted Powell who I've known since around the same time I first met Susan Jacks back at UBC (when Susan and the Poppy Family sang for the opening of the new Student Union building). None of us really want to count how many years have gone by, but we're all having a great time reinventing the vending machine and dragging it kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. Along with my work with Solara, I've continued working with Ed Clunn in and around his businesses dealing with streaming video and "the new media" uses of the Internet. You can see some of what is being done at sites like Streetcast.tv and Ebahn.tv (sorry, you need Windows Media to view the video) Shortly I hope that you'll be able to see some content from a couple of others of my friends, David Ingram (Taxman), who will be doing a tax call-in show, and David Hancock who will be sponsoring some wildlife real-time video from an eagle's nest on Hornby Island near Nanaimo, BC. I've been working with both Davids on their respective web sites, and you can see the new Hancock House forum for lots of interesting tidbits on Sasquatch amongst other things as well as some of my own articles. Hope all is well with all who visit our sites. Please contact us and let us know if you are going to be in town so we can gather around the pool in summer or the living room at other times.
Richard and Shirley |
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