December 20, 1999

As I said in my Christmas letter, I am pushing the Christmas deadline again this year. Took a while to compose the letter, don�t know why, because I didn�t do anything this year. Maybe that was the problem. Not �nuff to say. The �what I was planning to do� would have been fun to tell about. Shirley, my dear co-worker and I were finally going to go to Albuquerque to pick up and drive back my furniture and other fondly remembered items. Then, everyone got laid off. Oh well, best-laid plans and all.

That was the second plan to get the �stuff� that has failed. Anyway, I finally got the letter finished. Of course, I decided to put a pretty picture on the top, like stationary. Well, there went another few days.

Now, the labels. I know I received a new address for one of my friends (Karen) last year, and do you think I can find it? Right answer. Checked the rest of the addresses to the best of my ability. Then I printed them out, remembering not to use the �Karen� label. Waiting for it to hand-write.

Then it got to be December 16th. And by the way, I was going to do all of this before my Albuquerque trip, which was December 2nd through December 7th. OK, back to December 16th. I did manage to go buy the cards and Christmas stamps. Looked and looked for the right cards. I wanted the long slender ones, so I could do a double fold for the Christmas letter and pictures like a real letter. Oh, by the time I got to this point, I had decided to include pictures of family from my Albuquerque trip, which now took a few more days to arrange all on one page and print. The point of the fold was so Sally�s face wouldn�t be creased (any more). Boy, am I going to catch it for that remark. Ah, but I digress. I found the right cards. By the way, did you know that the envelope for long slender Christmas cards is not the same size as a business-sized envelope? So I used the regularly shaped cards I already had, sorry for the crease, Sally. The cards I already had were nicer anyway.

My friend Audrey showed me by example that including a business card-type thingy would be nice for my friends to keep handy. It has my name, address, phone number and email address. What more could one want? So I decided that I had to include these as well. A couple more days, especially when I decided it would be cute to put a picture on the reverse side of the cards.

Guess what, I now have the long awaited card from Karen with the coveted new address. She was timely; I was just in �panic mode�. Onward!

Now, we have it all together. Labels, cards & envelopes, letters, pictures, Christmas stamps and business-type cards. I put them all together. Please know that I have more than thirty cards to send. Because I am a terrible letter-writer and have lived all over these United States and this is the one time of the year that I do communicate, I had better get it right. Sorry, I know that is bad.

Now that everything is together (things are in the envelopes), and I have put the stamps, labels and return labels on the envelopes and taped them shut, it is time to take them to the post office. For Pete�s sake, it is December 19th. Ok, off we go, well, not we, just me. I want to have the cards in the mailbox for the 6:00 am pickup, tomorrow. The car will not start. Dead battery!!

And again guess what? It is not easy to solve a �dead battery� problem on Sunday. In New Mexico, (you remember the old place), you just call AAA and pay the man when he arrives. Yeah, right! Here in the great (?) state of California, you must be a member, first. Kinda tacky, don't ja think?

Well, here is the saga! I called a couple of places, and was reminded that this was Sunday. So I resigned myself to wait until tomorrow. Monday morning I called my friend Gary (who lives an hour north of me) to see if he would give me a jump and follow me to a place where I could get a battery installed. He had been in bed the past 4 days with the worst case of the flu that he has ever had. Jeez! He sounded terrible, too. He did make a couple of suggestions, though.

Then I had a clever thought. Really! What if the connection was just corroded? So I went into the garage and popped the hood. I had visions of raising the hood. Whoops! I fiddled and fiddled with what I thought was the release, to no avail. Got a flashlight to survey the situation. More fiddling. Back getting tired, so I got a chair to sit on. More fiddling. Then I gave up.

Went into the kitchen to wash the crud off of my hands and while looking out the window, what should appear but a man. Now, for the first time in my life, this is what I needed. I explained to him my plight. And he quickly raised the hood. Know what? The release is to the left of the catch. Well now, just clear the post of corrosion. Right? Wrong! Good plan. Undesirable results. Back to square one.

Another bright idea has come forth. My friend Shirley works just a few blocks from my house. Wish this had dawned on me this morning, and we could have taken care of this on her lunch hour. However, she came over after work and gave me a jump, and followed me to an auto parts store. The nice young man put a battery in for me. The whole thing cost $54.00. That is about $100 less than I had originally anticipated. On the road again (that would make a good title for a song, wouldn�t it?). And where was the first place I went? To the post office, so the cards would be there for the 6:00 am pickup on Tuesday, December 21st.