December 18, 2000

Dear friends and family,

Last Christmas seems like only a few hours away; I remember sitting in my workroom at this very same computer trying to think what to write for the 1999 Christmas letter. The one difference this year is that I have a super keyboard drawer, so I'm now typing at the correct height.

The neck pain I had reported on in last year's Christmas letter hasn't returned, and at work I've been very careful to always sit up straight, type at the correct height and pay attention to any repetitive motions that might be awkward. A few of my friends have experienced much more serious encounters with carpal tunnel syndrome, and I know how lucky I was it didn't happen to me.

I guess the most important thing to tell everyone about is our web page. If you're on the Internet, you can now go to www.SpareTimeGizmos.com for our business page or www.a2i.net/jfcl for our personal page.

Family and friends will find our personal home page much more interesting; we've posted biographies, chatty information about our hobbies, and pictures of course. I am currently working on cleaning up the travelogues of our train trips to accompany the many photos we took while traveling. So if you don't see them online now, please come back. I never said I wasn't a procrastinator! But eventually I'll finish them and all the details of our trips will be available, and hopefully make interesting reading too!

Next it's important to tell you that we're sticking with our weight loss program. Though we've each gained about ten of the lost pounds back, we have not increased in clothing size, and we have increased the duration of our exercise routine to attempt to burn more calories. Now we endeavor to walk 90 minutes each and every day!

This year we changed jobs yet again. Bob got a great offer from Philips he couldn't refuse so now he's designing flat-panel LCD displays. He loves that this job enables him to work designing both hardware and software, and it has given him a lot of new and interesting skills to master.

My previous job moved to Boston and not wanting to move with it, I sought and almost immediately found work at Aveo, a little startup with 130 employees which has been in business only for the past three years. I write JavaScript, and in non-technical terms this means I do the type of computer programming that enables web pages to be interactive. This job is both a substantial salary and a responsibility increase for me, and the hours are longer: we both typically now work from 7:30 to 5:30 which makes for a long day. I love the work, though sometimes I wish there was less of it and I, too have a lot of new skills to master.

When we're not working, we pursue about the same hobbies as last year. Bob still loves to build his little gizmos, I'm still fascinated by audio production software and Internet radio, I still want more time to garden and write, we still love rummaging around at flea markets, and we're still involved in ham radio. This year we ran the HF contest station for our ham club's field day, a contest where hams try to contact as many people as possible across the United States within a 24-hour period.

We've gotten involved in the Ham Radio emergency communications group for the city of Milpitas where we live. We are actually certified disaster workers, which despite its impressive title, simply means we submitted the proper form, properly filled out to the proper city bureaucrats. We are leaders in the local organization and it means a lot to me to know that in the case of a real emergency, I might be able to save lives and assist my community.

Because there aren't a lot of real emergencies, ham radio operators have to stay in practice. We provide communications for local events, like races and parades. For example, when we helped out with one local race, hams were stationed at every checkpoint along the route. If a checkpoint ran out of supplies, or if a runner needed medical attention, we radioed the information into a central coordinator. At another bicycle race we assisted with, Bob and I actually operated as the central communications coordinators; we were responsible for directing all the incoming radio messages from the checkpoints to the race officials. Sometimes we had to solve problems ourselves; for example when one checkpoint ran out of water and 35 more bicyclists were expected to be passing through, we had to quickly radio other stations on the route to see if someone could deliver water to the group that was in need. This is great practice for coordinating far more serious disaster communications in a true emergency. These events are fun, because they require discipline and the ability to cope with changing situations and priorities as well as the ability to communicate complex information rapidly and clearly.

Over the past year, we've taken short trips whenever we could get the vacation. In August, we got several weeks of unexpected vacation before my new job started, when my last job ended. We took the California Zephyr Amtrak train to Denver and the scenery was spectacular. Since we took the train both ways we got to climb the Rockies twice and Bob took about 100 pictures. I am still working on the log of our travels which hopefully soon will be up on our website. In Denver we had a wonderful time exploring the city, walking everywhere, shopping and tasting a variety of ethnic foods.

Last Christmas, we also took the Amtrak Zephyr to return from Indianapolis where we had visited Bob's parents. The trip was two nights and three days, all the way back to California. We had a true adventure then because it turned out we'd purchased tickets for non-existent rooms! We'd booked sleeping rooms on the train for the duration of the trip on car 33, the last one on the Zephyr. But Amtrak had pulled car 33, so there was literally no room for us on the now shortened train. We complained loudly of course, and Amtrak put us up in a Chicago hotel and we were able to get on the Zephyr the following day. So we got to spend New Year's Eve on the train after all! At midnight, they stopped all the Amtrak trains in the system, presumably to do a Y2K computer check, and they had New Year's Eve celebrations on every train too. Our celebration was somewhere en route between the Iowa border and Omaha, Nebraska! We were given special commemorative wooden train whistles for the year 2000.

Over the fourth of July we went to Eureka, a favorite California coastal city and had another budget long weekend complete with a harbor tour. We enjoyed walking, riding buses and eating great seafood! We didn't even rent a car there, and secretly laughed at all the tourists who are so car-dependent they don't know how to work exercise into their travel adventures. Maybe those effortlessly thin friends I used to be envious of aren't so lucky after all because they have fewer warning signs that a lack of exercise might be causing their health to deteriorate. After all as a person with a weight problem, I have a built-in warning system to tell me when I'm not eating right or exercising enough!

I continue to experiment with fat-free cooking. Some of my favorite techniques include making and draining home-made applesauce to use as a fat replacement in baking, sautéing vegetables in broth instead of oil and playing with lots of herbs and spices. But we still go out to eat more than we should, simply because we feel tired and unmotivated after long days at work. And even though we're sticking with the exercise, there are many days we do it because we feel we have to and not because it's that fun!

Glade turned eight in September and she likes to sleep more. But her guiding is still focused and efficient, she still chases her toys and loves to romp and snort. But I'm guessing she will continue to slow down and I'll need to retire her in a couple of years. Guide dogs are supposed to retire when their owner decides they are no longer able to move or react quickly enough to work safely. I am not looking forward to replacing Glade, but she's my third dog. I know that thinking about it and planning for it early is my best method of coping with the future sadness of loosing her.

Well, I guess that'll do it this time for the Christmas letter. Please keep us on your Christmas lists, we love all the cards and letters from everyone!

Debee