Mission Accomplished - Feb 14, '00

In the end, the resumption of photo updates required two weeks of strategic, two pronged attacks by an alliance of grandmothers, concluded by a weekend of non-stop negotiations. But the effort has, at last, produced the required postings to the Rabbit Mountain web-page. This battle has not been won without some potentially significant casualty to future progress, as the former managing editor of the web-page "voluntarily" relinquished his keyboard to his partner in this familial production. Unfortunately, the newly seated managing editor's first executive act was to remove the "Daily" from the banner announcing "Alex's Daily Update". Oh well, some new pictures will be better than none.

Actually, it should not be surprising to find that web-pages exhibit the property of "half-life". Half-life expresses the amount of time it takes for a physical property to decay to ½ of its' starting quantity. For instance, in my field we express the half-life of ozone in pure water at 25 degrees C as 20 minutes, and we have all sadly learned that the half-life of Plutonium is expressed in thousands of years. Hopefully the half-life of the Rabbit Mountain web-page updates will approach the latter rather than the former, but I have some concerns and a sense of foreboding.

On the other hand, during the weekend, it was observed that the carbon-units with which we were negotiating exhibited one of the classical properties of life - the property of irritability. This does not indicate that they were grouchy. Not at all, because the biologist defines the property of irritability simply as responsiveness to an outside stimulus. You can poke a lump of coal (another carbon unit) with a stick all day long and it will not show irritability, but when Alex provides some outside stimuli, the adult carbon units display abundant responsiveness.

Interestingly, during the weekend they let slip, rather irritably I might add, that they had heard about the lack of pictures from several sources. Perhaps then, we can utilize the property of irritability to mitigate the effects of the property of half-life. If the production of Alex Updates begins to wane, we can all flood their web site with flaming e-mails of protest.

As you can see from the above nonsense, we have just returned Kirkland where Sharon was thrilled by the opportunity to hold her first grandchild. We had a great time but sadly we had to leave far too soon. While we were there, we did experience a couple of "senior moments". Saturday morning, Sharon managed to spend most of the morning taking pictures with a camera that didn't have any film in it. Then, while we were changing planes in Salt Lake on the return trip, I found Daryl's car keys in my pocket. No doubt about it, grandkids make you old.

This weekend we will travel to Laughlin for a couple of days with those other old people, the Olanders from San Diego. Laughlin has been one of their favorite haunts for a number of years, as it has been for the blue haired ladies from Sun City. Young people go to Vegas or Reno, but retirees and the SD Olanders seem to migrate to Laughlin.

The following week, Sharon returns to Washington, first for a week of sewing (thrilling) followed by another week with the Washington Olanders. Another week of baby holding - the woman is in-satiable.

With all of this traveling etc., I haven't had time to get a haircut for months. If I don't get to the barber shop soon, I'll have to pull it back in a pony tail - can you imagine the shocked look on people's faces? Hmmmm.

And finally, soon after the Washington Olanders found themselves in a family way, they called to inquire as to whether or not we have been completely candid with them about all members of our family tree. Basically they were asking if there were any institutionalized relatives that we had not previously disclosed. After the obligatory references to our troubled siblings, we assured them that all was well. However, now I'm not so sure. By now you may have heard that Natalie and Mort have chosen to leave Paradise in favor of Ohio in the dead of winter. This is not quite the same as being thrown out of Paradise for partaking of the forbidden fruit, they're doing it on purpose. Maybe there is a delayed acting, demented gene lose in the family lineage. Actually, the fact is that Hawaii has worked it's magical recuperative powers on Mort's back and now he has accepted an outstanding opportunity in Ohio and we wish him and Natalie well.

It getting late so it's time to go, Love to all from Arizona,

Sharon and the ancient one.