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Happy Holidays to all our friends and relatives! I don't normally wait so late to start on my annual Christmas letter. But this year I had a reason to wait. I wanted to have the latest prognosis on Dan's eye to share with everyone. But then, I am getting ahead of myself. The day after Thanksgiving, Dan decided to go to see his doctor about these strange black floaters and flashes of light he was getting in his left eye. We had enjoyed a great holiday, with my mom here, Cinda home from school for the week, and Chris and Laura and Jayla (just starting to walk). So it was unsettling, to say the least, to find that Dan had a detached retina, which required almost immediate repair. After he and Cinda spent Friday afternoon (the day of the first BIG snowstorm to hit us) consulting with three different doctors on what was really a holiday for them, it was determined that he would have outpatient surgery the next morning, using cryo and inserting a gas bubble in the eye. The surgery, done by an excellent surgeon who specializes in diseases of the retina and macula and vitreous ONLY, went well and he seemed to recover quickly. Cinda went back to school, my mom went home and after a low key week off, Dan went back to work on Monday, December 7. Around noon, he suddenly realized that he only had half vision in the left eye and the other half was black. This seemed to qualify as a 'curtain' that he had been warned about and he got himself quickly over to the doctor's office, where the frustrated doctor banged his fist into the doorjamb. Dan's retina appeared to have torn loose, BIG TIME, and a surgery, under general anesthetic this time, was scheduled for the next afternoon. They had to go in, remove the vitreous from the eye, peel the retina back and zap it back in place and then fill the eyeball with gas. After sewing it back up, the doctor warned that he had to stay on his tummy for a day and then his right side for about a week, and NO READING!! The surgery went well, and from the start we were cautiously optimistic. He was a little frustrated at not being able to read or get on the computer or anything, but we listened to movies and I read to him and I was able to be with him most of the time for the past 10 days. Last Friday, the doctor said the retina appears to be holding well. Oh, I forgot, they also put a plastic kind of rubber band type thing called a scleral buckle around the eyeball which stays in there and eases the tension permanently. He can now see fuzzily with the eye, and has been given the ok to resume fairly normal activity, with one week before he can go back to work. They will wait a few months, and then redo the prescription for his glasses lens for that eye. There is still a fair chance that he could have the same problem with the other eye in the future. Anyway, we are both truly grateful for the prognosis and realize once again what beautiful friends and relatives we have been blessed with. The Canon Pastor from church who leads the men's Friday morning spiritual breakfast that Dan attends and the Dean of the Cathedral both were at the hospital within hours of our first call to offer their support and prayers. We have found a beautiful spiritual home at St. Michael's. These were actually the second and third surgeries Dan had this year. Back in early February, he had an outpatient procedure done to straighten a badly broken septum in his nose, which he never even knew he had. They took it out, banged it straight, then put it back in, as well as removing some excess bones, all under a local! Dan said it wasn't really painful, but a very weird thing to experience. Of course, I didn't know at the time that they had used the finest pharmaceutical grade cocaine to numb his nasal passage. I about freaked out when they mentioned that to me in the recovery room. It is very amusing now, but is was a bit unsettling for a few minutes that morning. Anyway, hopefully next year we will have a little less time spent in hospitals and doctors' offices. Truly, we were grateful that all could be dealt with successfully and that we have such wonderful medical facilities here in Boise. The same week that Dan was getting his nose fixed, my son Chris and his wife Laura made us grandparents. Jayla was born on February 2, six weeks early. She is doing great and of course if the cutest, smartest, little girl ever born. But then, what else would a smitten grandmother say? I really like being a grandma: you can spoil them, and then send them home. Over Easter break, Cinda was home, and my mom was also here, of course to visit the new great grandbaby. Chris and Laura expect to present us with a second grandchild next July. In April, Dan had to attend a conference in Salt Lake City, so we went down for the weekend and visited with Dan's sister and family in Bountiful, a suburb. I couldn't take the day off at the time, so I came home on the bus on Sunday afternoon. That was an experience I hadn't had in a long while. It took eight hours to go 300 miles, and I was very glad to get home. Cinda came home in mid-May for the Summer. She got a job in a day care center near our house. About 3 weeks later, she was offered a job at about twice the pay on one of the production lines at Hewlett Packard. And, as she put it, no one deposited any bodily fluids on her at the HP job! She worked there all summer, working about 30 or so hours a week in a clean-room reworking disk drives, including such duties as soldering tiny wires under a microscope. I think she enjoyed it for a change, but doubt if it is something she wants to do for the rest of her life. She is home at the moment, but flies off to Chicago for the holidays tomorrow morning. She is going into the second semester of her sophomore year in the architecture program at the University of Idaho. Dan and I are always feuding with her about the football and basketball teams, especially when they played BSU (and unfortunately MURDERED us). That afternoon, we locked her out of the truck until she promised not to gloat (too much). She does seem to like school, over all, and is doing well. We spend a lot a time working on and playing on the computer, Dan more than me, but me more and more. One of the things we do is communicate via electronic mail over the phone lines to people all over the world via various discussion groups. For many months, one of the groups had been talking about the possibility of getting together for a clambake in Rhode Island over the 4th of July holiday. The plans were made and we were not certain until mid-spring, when air fares came way down, that we would be able to go. Meanwhile, some of these people were attending a Folklife Festival in Seattle over Memorial Day. So, we took off and went over there for a long weekend. It was very interesting meeting and playing with these people we knew well, but had never met face to face. We were to meet by the Rhode Island flag at a certain time, and almost freaked when we got there and the state flags weren't flying that day. But the flagpoles were marked by state, and our friends showed up right on schedule. It was a fun weekend, with bumper cars and Greek dancing and Japanese food on the floor. The only damper on the whole thing was on Sunday morning when we discovered that our truck had been broken into and among the things taken was Dan's camera bag and all the stuff in it. The camera equipment has, of course, been replaced. But all of the pictures that we took were lost. It just made us angry, since it was parked in a lighted lot of a major hotel chain. After we complained to their national headquarters, they did post warnings to guests about the high theft rate in the area. Oh well, live and learn. Toward the end of June, Cinda drove down to meet Susanna in Utah and bring her to Boise for part of the Summer. Cinda, as mentioned above, stayed here in Boise to work while the rest of us were traveling around the country. We drove to San Francisco with Susanna for ALA in late June, stopping and playing at Circus Circus in Reno for the night on the way, always a blast. Then Susanna and I played tourist in San Francisco while Dan attended meetings. We went to Alcatraz, which I had never done, even though I lived in the Bay area for 10 years. We shopped until we dropped, ate at Fisherman's wharf and on and on. Then we drove Susanna to Prunedale and she visited with Dan's folks while we flew East for the week, and the big clambake in Rhode Island. It was my first trip to that part of the country, and I really loved the whole area. We landed in Boston, rented a car, and saw a bit of the country. We spent two days in Boston proper, then drove up around southern New Hampshire and then down to Plymouth and the Newport, Rhode Island, area. We toured some of the mansions in Newport, drove out to Westerly to buy $100 worth of old postcards, attended a July 4th ball game in Pawtucket and then spend the whole day of July 5th in Bristol, Rhode Island, at the clambake, visiting with and getting to know over 50 people from all over the world that we had never met (except for the few we had met in Seattle a few weeks earlier). It was an incredible experience. The weather was almost perfect (a little cool) and the food was unbelievable. I had never been to a clambake. They dug a pit, and lined it with seaweed and put in vast amounts of food including two-pound live lobsters for everyone. I actually ate 4 whole lobsters during the week we were there. The day after the clambake, we headed off to Cape Cod and spent the night there, after driving out to Provincetown for a very interesting evening. I had never heard of it and had no clue as to its unique character. It was a blast, and Dan bought me a wonderfully interesting ring out there that elicits comments all the time because it is so different. Of course, most people spot it because I wear amethyst rings on four fingers and a big amethyst pendant around my neck all the time. I have found a new passion: amethyst. Dan is entirely to blame, since he turned me on to browsing through antique shops. So now, I just love thumbing through old postcards, and looking at 'pre-loved' jewelry (what one antique dealer called one of the rings that we bought). I also love helping Dan look for postcards, and spend many evenings sorting and filing our collection while he types away at the computer. We just got a new 486 computer (I won't bore anyone with all the nitty gritty details) with Windows. Dan swore he would never learn Windows, but since the whole world is doing it, he is finally coming around. He said it really isn't so bad with the faster machine. We also got a high speed modem this year which makes a lot of our e-mail traffic process faster. I am gradually learning to feel comfortable on the computer, although I have been using one for years at work. It now feels a little easier to use and I actually feel, sometimes anyway, that I know what I am doing. Dan has been a big help in bringing me kicking and screaming into the computer age. Anyway, I digress (so what else is new). After Boston, we flew back to California. We spent a couple days in Prunedale with Dan's folks, including a very enjoyable afternoon at the fabulous Monterey Bay Aquarium. I had never been there. Dan got some fantastic pictures of the jellyfish exhibit and also some very unique sunset shots. Actually, Dan took 42 rolls of pictures during the two week trip. And for those who have been anticipating (or probably given up) getting copies of the clambake pictures, please don't despair. I think we may finally be getting them to you soon. We had planned to have them to send with Christmas cards, but it didn't quite work out the way we planned. After Prunedale, we stopped in Livermore to spend the day with my mom, sister and various other relatives. Then, we drove a long day to get home and crash. A couple weeks later, I drove Susanna back to Utah and met her mom in Park City for the night to deliver her safely back. We really enjoyed having her here. She is getting to be quite a grown up young lady and turned 13 in October. On the way to Park City, I decided on impulse to stop by Bountiful and see if Dan's sister Sue and her family were home, since Susanna had not seen them for several years. Well, we hit the jackpot, since not only was Sue there, but another sister, Diana from Illinois, was also there on her way to California and we didn't even know that. So, Susanna spent an hour getting quickly reacquainted with various and sundry relations. In September, Dan and I flew to Denver for a library conference at which we were both presenting papers. I had never really spent time in Denver, only flown or driven through it. Dan had to be in Dallas for 2 days before that, so we arrived separately. I rented a car and when he got there he showed me around his old stomping grounds. It was wonderful. I loved the city and the conference was a big success, the first time I have ever presented a professional paper. One of the days, we drove down to Colorado Springs where we visited the HP library folks for an informal tour, since the main banquet of the conference was held at the 'Flying W' dude ranch near Pikes Peak. That was an experience in itself, since it is a beautiful natural area, and the dinner and entertainment were wonderful. The last night of the conference, Dan drove me up almost to Vail, over 12,000 foot Loveland Pass, to a place called Frisco, Colorado, where we had a wonderful dinner and then drove back to Denver. The scenery was spectacular, including a beautiful rainbow. I know I have left something out. Maybe when Dan reads and edits this, he can add his two cents worth. He wasn't up to writing a missal of this magnitude! We continue to play as much bridge as we can, and attend our meetings two or three times a week. We will finally be wrapping up last year's book project at the end of this month. It was a success, but will be nice to have all the books out of the garage. Dan has recently (since he couldn't read) gotten his HO trains out of the garage and currently has them set up on the dining room table. It makes the place kind of like a Christmas playroom. But then, we are both just a couple of overgrown kids, right? If you have gotten this far, please know we both wish you and yours a happy and peaceful holiday season and new year. Thanks again for all your prayers and good wishes. They truly do make a difference. Love, Gail (and Dan) Lester |
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