COLUMBUS OH

A white Christmas! Just what Lew needed to shove him out of his depression. True, Sunday is predicted to heat up a bit, which probably will melt the thin covering outside, but we will have had our first snow, and that counts for something.

But there still is a huge agonizing hole where Smokey was (still is).

We have been derelict in just general reporting, so catch up time. But no one has missed much - life in Columbus remains sedatatively routine - which may be for the best anyway. The neighbors all are very polite and pleasant, but not very active at home - the view out the front picture window rarely involves any movement. The only young children are the two across the street that belong to an orthopod and his wife. Rarely do they play outdoors - what a change from our childhood!

Movement - last spring we did have a lot of squirrels and bunnies, but in autumn few squirrels buried nuts and now there is no movement at all. We do have a large hawk and an owl in the neighborhood, so we assume nature has taken its inevitable course.

Health report? About the same, neither better nor worse. Lew does aerobic exercise every weekday for nearly an hour, about 4 mets, and that is to the positive. Paul goes to he gym for about an hour daily.

Paul also has completed the first stage of his nurse's training, so has his nurse's aide certificate and actually is able to take employment as such. His clinicals start in the spring, so he makes gratifying progress.

Bobbi continues as an unpaid correctional chaplain, accompanied by progressively increasing counselling work both within the correctional system and the diocese. And as a catholic she is discovering what it is like to be the target of biogotry. But that is alright, it gives her an outlet for her aggressions.

Bobbi also has gotten hooked on genealogy. No doubt this was reinforced when her first day of digging took her the short distance back to the mid-eighteenth century and the immigration of some Scottish royals. Since then she has been digging, digging, digging along the other ancestral lines. Most have turned out to be surprisingly intellectual. However, one line is definately of much lower social standing. Digging is slow on that branch, but we think Bobbi is hoping for some lurid scandal (as if the Scotch ancesters were not bloody enough).

Enough for now, we want to get this on the net.