Christmas, 2001

This has been a strange year.  Like all Americans, we were appalled, and I don't think I need to say why.  Still, we did manage to have some fun this year.

Lucinda had her second birthday in March.  As could be expected, she had a big birthday party.  We took her to see her first 'big movie', the IMAX "Dolphins" movie.  She liked the dolphins, but found the loud sound somewhat frightening.  We also took her to see the butterfly exhibit at the Natural History Museum.  She also was treated to several trips to the L.A. Zoo, Kidspace Museum, and various other activities during the week while Daddy was at work.  And finally, we painted her room this year.  It's kind of a shocking shade of pink, but she picked it out herself.

We saw our usual complement of obscure movies.  "Live Nude Girls Unite!" was a documentary about the first unionized peep show in San Francisco.  "Startup.com" chronicled the quick rise and even quicker fall of an internet company.  "Go Tigers!" was a look at high school football obsession in Massillon, Ohio.  Finally, "The Endurance" followed the ill-fated  Shackleton Antarctic expedition in 1914.  We also saw some regular movies.  "The Day I Became a Woman" was a set of three vignettes about how women live in Iran.  "Haiku Tunnel" was a comedy by Josh Kornbluth, who we had seen perform in person back in 1998.

As always, we went to a number of museums this year.  We saw "Made in California" at the L.A. County Museum of Art, as well as two trips to the Museum of Neon Art downtown.  "To Protect and Serve" was an exhibit of photos from the LAPD archives at Fototeka Gallery in Echo Park.  "Magic: The Science of Illusion" showed some examples of how magic illusions are performed.  "Assignment L.A." showed a set of photographs by L.A. Times photographer Boris Yaro.

We are still at the same jobs.  Stan achieved instant notoriety in the USGS after the February 28 Seattle earthquake when his were the only web servers in the Earthquake Program to survive the crush of traffic.  He is now the Alpha Geek of the web servers.  Cathy is still enjoying being a stay-at-home Mom.  So we're both still happy with our career choices.

Other activities of the year included seeing the Spinal Tap concert in June.  They played all the old favorites, complete with the 18" Stonehenge.   "Varla Jean Merman is All Washed Up" was a cabaret show with Varla Jean, a drag queen who is ostensibly the love child of Ethel Merman and Ernest Borgnine.  It sounds a bit odd, but the show was tremendously funny.  An airshow in Van Nuys gave us a chance to see both old and new warplanes close up.  We also started hiking again this year, taking some short trips into the local mountains.

Finally, we even did a few house projects this year.  We had the acoustic tile ceiling in the family room replaced with a real drywall ceiling, as well as installing new central heat and air conditioning.  Cathy revamped the planters in front of the house, putting in new flowers, stones, and a pair of Chinese Fu Dogs.

Hope you all had a good year.

Stan and Cathy

http://cosmo.pasadena.ca.us