Happy Holidays - Nov 27, '02

Happy Holidays everyone - we hope this finds you all healthy, wealthy and happy.

Ok, so everyone must have been quite relieved as it’s been awhile since the last spate of nonsense was spammed out to clutter your email boxes. You didn’t really expect it to last much longer, did you?

One last shot at “Home alone” – while having lunch at work with one of the non-volunteering cooks, I related some adventures which occurred during my major house-cleaning project the night prior to Sharon’s return. At one point during my monolog the non-cook looked up at me with totally un-disguised disgust and said, “You really can’t do anything for yourself, can you?” Well, no. It’s not so much that I got married, but rather I acquired a second mother.

Sharon and I have some interesting arguments: The other night we got to arguing about who’s hair is the longest – mine is but she won’t admit it even though she just got hers cut. I went to the hair salon the other day but the waiting line was over 25 minutes – I told them I would be back in a couple of weeks. That was a month ago so I guess its about time to try again.

Woe is me, what have I gone and done – have I bitten off more than I can chew this time – what ever happened to getting smarter as we get older? To briefly summarize my latest debacle: Last summer I went to Kemmerer, WY to help a friend work the fossil fish quarries. From that trip, I brought home a couple of fossils which I “prepped out” – it was a lot of fun. On our next trip to Colorado, we stopped at the same friend’s place and bought several more fossils for me to prep. But, before I could get around to working on them we made another trip to Colorado, again stopping at the friend’s place and learning that I could buy two pallets of fossils – cheap – and after prepping them out, I could sell them at 10 times my cost. Doing the math I had a vision of early retirement - I arranged to buy the entire load. Somewhere over the next week or so that rosy prediction changed when our friend confidently stated that he was sure that I would be able to sell the prepped fossils at 3 to 5 times my cost – too late, I was already committed to purchase about 3000 pounds of rocks.

We retrieved the rocks from Thayne, WY (damn near in Yellowstone!), built shelves to store them in the garage and acquired the tools and materials to build a miniature Paleontology lab. Boy, did my schedule change – up at 5:15 AM, go to my paying job from 6:30 to 3:30, drive home, dinner with Sharon (and the news), move out to the garage to work on the rocks, and finally into bed around 11:30 PM. Weekends consisted of getting up and going to work in the garage – except for short trips to buy more supplies for the paleo lab. This schedule went on for weeks until I began to realize that not a single fossil was done, I was not having much fun and the work was becoming drudgery! I began to feel like a guy who had a great time on a blind date with a beautiful blond, married her the next day and later discovered she is bi-polar!

So I took some time off to watch some football – got to watch my beloved Broncos get pounded into the home turf twice – some relief!

The plan is for me to prep out a bunch of fossils in time to take them to the Quartzsite Gem and Mineral show next January. It is a five-day event and Sharon has said that she isn’t going. That means that I will have to man the booth by myself – which is a problem. I have noted as time goes by that my activities are becoming restricted to smaller and smaller circles around the nearest “relief station”. I tried, but failed, to get a spot in Quartzsite near a loo - how in the world am I going to go 5 days without a potty break? Sharon (Miss modesty herself) has suggested that I discretely keep a can under one of the tables – I may contact NASA to see how the astronauts solve the problem – perhaps I should cease all consumption of liquids 3 days before the start of the show?

Speaking of retirement, we have started to think about taking advantage of the low interest rates by buying a “second home” somewhere to retire to in a few years. I thought that our plans were set on Grand Junction. We have friends there, it is only half a day by car to the grandkids, the National Monuments of Utah are nearby, it is supposedly economic for retirees and that certain sister-in-law and husband have mentioned retiring to the area. But with my current run of luck, about the time I make a down payment on a house in GJ, the grandkids and family will be transferred to California, the friends will move back to Idaho, cost of living will soar in GJ and the in-laws will move to Hawaii. Anyway, the other day Sharon informed me that since we have started the refinancing on the Phoenix house, we need to “sit down and decide where we want to live” – evidently around our house a plan is never a plan. Next she gave me the short-list of minimum requirements for the new home – let’s just say that if I work 3 full time jobs we might be able to afford to find a place that qualifies. Stay tuned this could be fun!

I guess that's it for now - Susan, how is everyone?

Love from Phoenix,

Sharon and the living fossil