30 December 2007

Bill Dahn is one of the sweetest men you'll ever meet.  We came to know one another in a discussion group on CompuServe many, many years ago.  He attended several of the group's "Netstock" get togethers over the years and he even arranged one in Portland, where we had the very best creme brulee ever in a restaurant called Higgins'.

Bill has now dangled his toes in the blogging world and has created The Dahn Report, which is only a few weeks old, but he writes well and is enjoying the experience, so drop in and see what you think.

In a recent entry, he talked about "top 10" lists and listed top ten lists from a couple of local papers.  I checked out my own local papers and didn't really find any top 10 lists, but did find national top 10 lists.  Very depressing to discover that I have seen only 3 movies this year and none of them made anybody's top 10 list, but nice to see that The Big Voice: God or Merman made the Bay Area Reporter's top XX (I don't know how many are on the list) list of theatrical productions in San Francisco this year.

Bill goes on to list the top ten stories in his personal life and I thought that with the end of the year looming ahead of us, I would take a look back and do the same thing.

1. The top story, of course, has to be the expected arrival of our granddaughter in April of next year.  I have waited so long for a grandchild and am thrilled that one is going to join the family.  I can only assume that her birth next year is going to top my personal stories list for next year as well!

2. A close second to the expected birth of our granddaughter has to be Cousins' Day .  Who would have thought that out of the tragedy that was my mother's accident in January would result something as special as Cousins' Day?  What's even more fun is reading about other people who have been inspired by our monthly silliness to get together with their own relatives or friends and do something similar, as I did with the women of our Pinata group recently.  I think the older we get the more important it is to make an effort not to lose the friendships we hold dear.  I heard from one of the nuns in the convent of one of my grammar school teachers, who was calling to let me know that Sister Mary Johnetta, with whom I exchanged Christmas cards each year, has died.  I'm glad that we remained in touch, even if only once a year.

3. "Retiring" from medical transcription after 30 years was a biggie for me.  For the previous 2-3 years I had come to hate every minute of it but yet I didn't want anyone else to take it over, for whatever weird reason, because I had just done it for so long.  It was a relief when The Psychiatrist and I had "the talk" and agreed that I was really tired of doing his work.  I haven't seen or heard from him since and only had a mild twinge when I realized I wouldn't be getting my big expensive turkey for Christmas this year.  The freedom from pressure was a nice trade-off.

4. Walt's retirement was a biggie as well.  To go from 40 years of having him go off to work 5 days a week to having him home 24/7, with no expressed plan for what he intends to do for the rest of his life, has been a huge adjustment.  I'm not sure that we have fully made the adjustment, but at least we haven't killed each other yet.

5.  A terribly emotional part of the year was the loss of the Lamplighters' Jean Ziaja and our friend Michele Havel, both of whom died too unexpectedly and too young and left huge holes in too many hearts.

6.  Making it somewhat better, whatever the tragedy involved, is the constant parade of puppies through here.  I fall in love with each and every one of them and swear that this is the special one.  It always hurts to see them move to new families, but there is always another little guy who needs someone to love him and get him ready to find his or her own "forever home."

7.  Our trip to upstate New York in June (and to Niagara Falls for our 41st Anniversary) was probably our travel highlight of the year.  So much fun to reunite with old friends, and to visit parts of the country we'd never seen before.

8.  Running a close second was our trip to Los Angeles to see a taping of the radio show Says You again, as we had done the previous year (and will do again in April 2008).  I absolutely love that show and we now get unabridged versions of it each week through Audible.com.

9.  A local highlight for a lot of people was the 40th anniversary of the Davis High Madrigal choir, which brought back about 200 alumni of the "mads" for one gigantic tribute to its founder, Dick Brunelle.  The event was 10 years earlier than such things usually are, but because of Dick's health problems it was decided to do it now while he could still understand and appreciate what it was all about.  Our kids weren't involved in Mads (Marta was), but were connected through the Jazz Choir (Paul, Tom and David), and just knowing Dick, who was such a gentle genius and someone who changed the course of the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of Davis children.

10.  Finally, there is a lot of talk these days about social networking on the Internet and its increasing importance to people.  I feel kind of proud, for an old fart, to have been around the Internet as long as I have, to have been involved in social interaction since before the days of the World Wide Web.  This year Twitter and Utterz came into my life, adding to the group of friends I've made on Flickr, people who are doing the project of taking a self-portrait a day for 365 days (we have enjoyed it so much that another similar group will start on January 1 for people to take photos every day in 2008).  There are a lot of really nice people out there and it's great that there is a way to find more of them through the Internet and all the new ways that we are learning how to meet and connect.