Greetings and salutations, it's about time I stopped working for a few minutes and reached out to the constituents whom I've neglected to give an update on the craziness that is the Watson household. Our motto is "making chaos out of order" and we've lived up to that over the past several weeks. I only wish I knew where to begin. So I'll start at the end.
Sometimes the best moments in life take time to set up. For example, a tree. You don't just plant a tree. Well, you can, but you don't in this analogy. You start with a simple acorn, and with water, and sunlight, and piles of mulch to make a mini-mountain around the tree, the tree blossoms, into a beautiful butterfly. That doesn't just happen overnight. It takes time. Now take for example, my wife's birthday. For years, I've done nothing on this day. I've been grossly negligent in celebrating what is clearly among the top 20 happiest days of my life (and yes I have a list). Last week, this negligence paid off, because after 15 years of not doing anything, I successfully threw her a surprise party. She was shocked. Thanks to some help from her friends, we had a wonderful time which she spent mainly shaking her head and saying how she surprised she was. It even included a slide show of pictures of Regis, from cradle to current day (thanks much to Jane Watson and Oma for their efforts). Reege looks pretty good for someone her age, and I'm happy she's still putting up with me after all these years. Heaven knows she could do better.
I was able to pull the surprise off despite some long hours at the salt mine. I can pass along 2 fun stories from my job (cue announcer voice..."when Jim says 'fun' please note that he is an accountant and 'fun' is a relative term, some restrictions apply"). First, while touring a facility that one of my clients was going to acquire, I was informed by the CEO that I was standing in the room where the Lunar Module was designed and built. Imagine, to be standing in the place where they built the craft that brought Tom Hanks safely back to earth, well, that almost brings a tear to my eye even now. The second cool event was getting to see the USS Intrepid sail down the Hudson. For those that don't know, the Intrepid is a WWII-era aircraft carrier that was retired to a New York port and has since been used as a museum. The government is spending several million of your dollars (thanks by the way) to refurbish it, which involved digging it out of the mud, towing it down the Hudson, dry-docking it, and beginning 6 months of work before tugging it back. Generally, bigtimers like me eschew the luxury of a window for the charming homogeneity of the cubicle. So, I asked my secretary (who is an ex-Marine who rides a Harley) if he (yes, he) would keep an eye on the window for the moment it sailed by. He obliged, and when the time came I ran to the window like a school-kid at the sight of the first snow, just in time to see the ship pass. Yes, I have a boring life.
For those of you still awake at this point, you'll be happy to know that kids are doing well. When we last left you, Jimmy was playing football. He has moved on to basketball now, participating in the YMCA's league for the 2nd straight year. Maggie is all ready for Santa, having written approximately 15 letters to him, all of which say "Hi Santa, Love Maggie" because those are the words she knows at this point. Annie is still not fully embracing the Santa concept, which I attribute to her mistrust of everyone, and to her relatively understandable awareness that as the youngest she gets what she wants anyway and a strange intermediary seems inefficient.
The kids were exceptionally cooperative during a recent trip to Alpharetta, Georgia, which is a suburb of some suburbs of Atlanta, and is home to the Holzgrefe Clan (Fritz, who is Regis's brother, his wife Mary Jo, and their children, Megan, and Fritz IV, who I refuse to call Little Fritz because frankly he is not - the kid is solid and should be playing fullback and so I will call him "Bronco Nagurski" or "Six-Yard Sitko" before I call him "Little" Fritz). Anyway, the plane rides were worry-free because our kids are champion travelers (that sound you hear is Regis punching me because I've just jinxed our upcoming trip to Indiana). One item of note from the trip - we visited the Atlanta aquarium, at which yours truly got to pet a manta ray and a baby shark, and which featured a gift shop. Annie, who was enamored with the aquarium's penguin exhibits, found similar fondness for the gift shop. Did she want a stuffed penguin? No, instead she picked out a blue stuffed octopus which she promptly named "Puppy." As for Maggie, she picked out a pink shark, which she named "Sleeping Beauty." Jimmy, recognizing that his parents had to pack this stuff up to fly home, bought a t-shirt. That may sum up our children more than anything else I can tell you.
