Our holiday guests had all left by January 5th, which was a good thing since we were graced with three feet of snow overnight on January 15th. We had been in Phoenix and couldn't get up the mountain due to the snowfall. The next day we headed intrepidly homeward. Now, imagine Lynne in light cotton pants, a T-Shirt and pink sneakers wading through hip-deep snow while Marc, who ALWAYS has his parka and hiking boots, laughed behind her. Shea got to stay with Lynne's Mom.
Marc didn't care that he was homebound because he was writing "Variations in Dreampaint" (Analog 10/97). He also wrote "A Brief History of (Eat Chippos Now!) Intellectual Property," an utterly silly piece (Analog, 1/98). In March Marc accepted a position as Documentation Engineer with Electric Communities, a virtual-world-on-the-Internet company where many of his old employees and friends work. This idyllic job lasted only six weeks, at which time Electric Communities conned him into accepting the newly-vacated VP Engineering slot. After commuting every week since April to Silicon Valley, in November he said, "Enough!" Marc is now at home working on his next novel (actually it became a two-book series the first week!).
Somewhere in February and entirely due to an offhand comment Lynne started proofreading for Baen Books (publisher of Marc's novels), and has since graduated to copy editor. In addition to that, Lynne's still teaching a full load at the local community college and occasionally doing computer consulting for friends. Eclectic!
Shea (now 7-can you believe it?) continued to lose teeth at an alarming rate during early '97, but has since regained some ground. She's getting good grades in math and science, and reads extremely well (thanks to Lynne's mom, who coaches her with perseverance and patience). Her writing is now legible, but that doesn't mean we can get her to write thank-you notes! So here is a big thank you to anyone who sent Shea a present for any occasion this year-you know who you are! Next year she writes them or dies!
Thank God for Lynne's mom Karla Kay (known as the "O'Gee" for complicated reasons, moved to Kingman last year), who took up the slack while Marc was gone. This incredible lady took Shea to school, picked her up, took her to soccer, swimming, camp, you name it! Lynne's schedule is so erratic, she'salmost never in the right place at the right time to get Shea. We would not be alive now without her (this is only a slight exaggeration!). She also started a pet-sitting business this year-it's going great guns and Shea helps her with it on weekends. We hope to have her energy at 50, much less north of 60!
In our spare moments or to hit "reset" we cruise nearby primitive roads on our 4x4 "Quad" (ATV) visiting abandoned gold mines and other historic sites here in the mountains. It can't quite go everywhere that a horse can, but then again you don't have to feed it or clean up after it! We just bought it a snowplow attachment so that it can help us out this El Niņo winter.
In May Lynne came up with a brilliant idea for a bigger closet for our bedroom, to which Marc foolishly agreed. Taking the bit in her teeth, Lynne then designed a 2-story 1000 sq. ft. addition to the house. Marc's favorite part is the Treehouse, a glassed-in room hanging out over the hillside. First runner-up is the vertical 15' Climbing Wall-mock-rock holds used by technical climbers to practice indoors. So imagine us at home, climbing the walls-literally! In fairness to Lynne, she did add a bigger closet to the bedroom as well.
This addition effectively took up the vacation budget for this year, except for a one-week trip to Phoenix in July with Shea and two of our friends, which was a gas! Hotel had 9 swimming pools!
So, we now have plenty of room (not that we didn't before). Hope to see you this coming year.
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