Hi Everyone,

    Well, it has been one week since I started to re-do my web site and, while the going is a bit slow, I am making progress each week. I now have some photos loaded, and I'm starting to set up my file system so that I can load lots more from the past year!

    We just received calendars from England and Texas. Beautiful! Thanks guys!! (Chuck & Penny, and Gordon!). Now we are "homesick" for both places. I can just see us now: dining on the Riverwalk! Having a pint at the Plough in Prestbury with the fireplace roaring ... ahhh!

    As you noticed from the home page, I have erected some scaffolding in our Great Room (family room) in order to finish off some replacement sheetrock that needs some work over by the fireplace. Most of you know that I am not fond of heights, so you can imagine that 18 feet off the floor is not really my idea of an ideal working place. But, it has to be done and I made a good start today. When I finish this, I'll move the scaffolding over ten feet or so and fix that fan that hasn't worked for years. Dale will be so happy ...

    Dale has the Christmas Spirit and has been hauling boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations up from the storage "cavern" in the cellar. The place will be a wonderland for kiddies (grandkiddies, especially) by the 25th. I missed out on an opportunity to put up all my outside lights in a nice warm environment because I have a cold and couldn't do it yesterday, when the temperature broke all records by hitting 73 degrees fahrenheit! That's almost 20 degrees above normal for this time of year. So, I am sure that next weekend (or so) when I get around to it, it will be a freezing day with high winds.

    Last night nephew Rick Crotty (yes, that's "Ricky" but he's a big guy now, so us guys have to call him "Rick") arrived with his friend, Joe, on their way to a plumbing job in Raleigh-Durham, NC. Unfortunately we couldn't convince them to stay for more than a few hours before they were back on the road. After this job they are on their way to Chicago. Between him and his brother, Brett, who has just left Myanmar (Burma) and is on his way to Kuala Lumpur, these guys have it made - traveling all over.