Holiday Season 2001

Hello to all our friends and acquaintances. We hope you are having a wonderful holiday season and that the year has been kind to you.

It seems that I just finished writing last year's letter and here it is time to do it all over again. 2001 has been a year of adjustment and healing. It has been hard to acknowledge that all my close family is gone and that my closest blood relative is my first cousin. Will's family has been great and very loving. It helps.

Work has been going as well as I want. I'm enjoying choosing when I want to work - very luxurious. I am in great demand in the securities arbitration world to hear cases, with a number of cases in 2001 and I'm already booked for 7 in 2002. Have continued doing some mediation with Peninsula Conflict Resolution, our local mediation center, and the "court house steps" for small claims cases. I've also done a few facilitations and will do more in 2002. While I'm listed on a number of professional mediation panels, I get few cases, being a non-attorney. Some people are very short sighted.

My health continues to improve. Finally figured out why I wasn't recovering as well as I had expected. The official diagnosis is Gastrointestinal Reflux Disease (GERD). The medication is working and I've changed my diet radically to a low fat low acid regime. The weight loss is a great side benefit. Hopefully I will be able to go off the medication and do diet control only in mid-2002.

Will has been very busy this his 40th year. He has plowed through more classes to finish his bachelors degree at SF State. It is so hard to work days and go to school at lunch DAILY and/or nights in addition to work. Work-wise he finished putting together the system architecture and modules for a major project at work. Originally only a portion of the company's transactions were planned to go through the system, but the day they went live - 100% were put through. Then a special revised version was created for a country were no transactions are processed outside the country. Variations of this will also be installed in other countries. I'm so proud of him and all his great work.

With all the time and health limitations, we have chosen to only be active in the SCA (our medieval group) this year. I continue as head of the Needleworkers Guild and am having lots of fun with it. I also became the Arts Officer for the Principality of the Mists - basically the Bay Area and am looking forward to doing more artsy stuff.

Haven't done much on the house this year so no new pictures yet. The yard is shaping up nicely. We had a "small" drainage problem and Will put in 85' of drainage. Now we can replant the problem areas. In light of the current weather, I'm especially thankful of all the work he did in the yard.

Pete continues to be ever "Mr. Personality" and has been a great comfort. There are a couple new pictures of him.

We hope to get some more work done on our website soon. So check back in a few months for costume pictures and other stuff.

Our best to all of you and here is wishing you and yours a Happy Healthy New Year.