Here it is March 28,1999 already.
Tried calling Amy and Dad, just got answering machines. Guess that is good, they are out and about! We had a good weekend again, two weekends in a row out in the boat. We went out Friday night, stayed on the boat overnight. Went ashore Saturday and hiked the beach, then lay in the sun and relaxed. We had smore's both Friday and Saturday nights, cooked hotdogs over a campfire last night for the first time in eons. Decided to leave Shell Island about 8PM to come home. I tied the dingy to the stern for about the hundredth time. We had gone about a half mile when I noticed that the dingy was gone! We turned back and found it aground on Shell Island, just waiting patiently like a dog waiting, knowing we would be back!

No other adventures, just home for the weekend. We got up this morning, had breakfast and cleaned house. Looks fabulous now!

Glad Jim and Michelle are getting situated.

Donald wrote:

Hope you are all fine. It's been a while, so, here's an update from the left coast... After ten months on the market without a single offer, we finally got two serious parties interested in buying the house. One bowed out prettyquickly, but we accepted the second offer. Closing is scheduled for June 19 to allow the kids to finish the school year. We got an unpleasant surprise when they did the house inspection. It turns out that the builder didn't backfill under the house properly and the crawlspace is 2"-3" lower than thefooting drainpipes (at the base of the foundation) allowing that much water to accumulate under the house in wet weather. We have an estimate to dig new drainage ditches and place a sump pump under the house, but I'm hoping to come up with another less-expensive solution, or perhaps share theexpense with the other parties. The kids are doing fine. With college application deadlines coming, Stephanie is concentrating a bit more on her grades. She would really like to go to an Ivy League college, based on her performance in Debate. She is applying for a debate camp at Dartmouth (in Hanover N.H.) for a month this summer and there is a good chance she will be able to go. Stephen should be with me in California again this summer. I'm still busy working on my 'Hang 2' hang-gliding rating. I've been flying from the 150' level for the last month, which is a real rush. I was making good progress but my landings aren't as smooth and on target as they should be so I haven't been moving ahead in the last weeks. Bad weather moved in today so I made only one flight. I've got high hopes for a good lesson tomorrow, though. Today was my 170th flight (with only a few 'crash' landings and no injuries!). I'm having a great time doing it. It's cheaper(doesn't cost anything to jump off a mountain) and closer than skiing, too. I'll be up in Seattle for the week of March 29 for an AIX system administration class. Work is going OK. Congratulations on completing your course, John and on your new computerDad. Best to all! Happy Spring! Don

March 17, 1999St Patrick's Day

Finishing the computer training school was only part of the battle. I now am studying like mad trying to learn all that we just touched on at school. I have six exams to take (by June) and I have five study exams on the computer to try. I have no answers to one of the exams and have only been able to get 811 of 1000 points (48 of 59 problems). Finding the twelve I have wrong is proving to be a daunting task! I got a 100 on one of the others though!
We have a new system at home. Nate, Denise and I each get one point for each task we do around the house, we were tired of Nate playing computer games and getting the house a mess without touching anything. The one who gets the most tasks done in a week gets $10 from each of the other two. On the first day Nate did one task, Denise did 8 and I did 7. Yesterday Nate did 19 tasks!!!! He did everything from wash windows to vacuum to get groceries to read us the tale of St Patrick!! He washed the dishes, cooked dinner and had the table set when I got home! I hope this keeps up!

Jim sent this picture of the face of his not yet born son!

March 7, 1999

What a busy time!! I have been going to school nights but I am finished! I still have my 6 exams to take. They are interactive tests. If you get an answer wrong, the computer gives you another in the same vein, if you get that wrong it keeps giving you similar ones until it is out. It then tries a different subject, if you get it right it goes to a different subject! One of the guys took it and answered all the questions right and he was done in 15 minutes! Others took 90 minutes and failed. I hope I can do them right, it costs $100 for each try!

We had a great weekend. Dad H's new computer came in and Denise and I went up to install it. Denise went around to the huge yard sale and found things for her mom. I took Dad's old computer to a friend of his (Clyde Clark) and installed it there. I set Clyde up with AOL as he is totally a novice.
I set Dad H. up with a new e-mail address
tedherrick@hotmail.com
He will see a major difference in his work on making cards, going from a 486 up to a 333MhZ Pentium II with 32 Meg RAM!

After setting up Dad's computer we came back and went out on the boat! After getting to Shell and anchoring, we decided to take the dingy and go get the makings for someor'es. We went to shore in the dingy, then found that the nearest store was two miles away. We decided to walk. Off we went, got the marshmellows, hershey bars and some crackers, then on the walk back we broke off dead branches for firewood. We loaded everything into the dingy and went to Shell Island. There we built a bonfire and talked and told stories and made the somor'es! We laid out there under the stars and enjoyed the beautiful place. We then came back to the boat and slept til 11 this morning. We had a big breakfast Denise made, then went for a long walk on the beach, collecting shells. We cleaned the inside and the bottom of the dingy and came back home. We had to take two tries to get into our slip as the wind blew us around, but we had great trip!