E:\LETTERS\Xmas09.txt 
L---P

    2009 
    What's New with Joy and Dave 
    by Joy Beeson 

    We had record high water this winter -- I'd never seen Winona Lake over Park Avenue before.  We were high and dry, but I hear that a lot of people got water in their heating ducts. 

    We have learned that a bald eagle can hover like a hummingbird.  We're pretty sure that the coot it was after got away -- I hope he caught a good lunch later, but I was rooting for that coot! 

    Joy sold the wind -- that is, a wind-farm company bought an easement to my forty acres of Clinton County.  Wind power is bogus, but the checks clear. 

    Dave got fed up with the way some of our drawer pulls caught on clothing, bought a package of handles at Menard's, and changed the handles on the drawers and cabinets near the sink.  (Menard's is new in town, and he has been having a lot of fun there.)  The new handles looked so nice that he went back and bought two more packages to change the rest. 

    Joy took on responsibility for banner-making on Wednesday nights.  The idea was that Martha would hand me a design and I would supervise volunteers while they executed it.  That isn't *quite* the way it worked out. 
    
    A couple of weeks before Father's Day, I scratched my finger with the needle of the treadle.  An utterly-trivial event, but it was the first time in half a century of using sewing machines that I've sewn my finger, and at my age you don't get to do something for the first time very often,  
    Speaking of the White, when I looked around for a logical place to keep my brand-new laser level (a battery-powered chalk line I acquired for marking bias lines, which has seen more use lining up banner components) the only empty secure spot associated with sewing was one of the drawers of my antique sewing machine.  Somehow this pleases me very much. 
    
    Early in the year, Comcast decided not to transmit any e-mail with Sherry's address on it, and I gave up trying to send the Banner to the Klemmes.  (In August, I learned that when Comcast says "this message exceeds a temporary limit", Comcast means "this address no longer exists".)  I've taken to posting the Banner at  http://davebeeson.home.comcast.net/LETTERS/MMMBANyy.TXT in addition to mailing it. 
    I also had a knock-down, drag-out battle with Thunderbird, which, at random intervals, insisted on converting the plain-text back-up copies of the Banner into execrable HTML.  Then I got tired of wrestling with invisible hard returns and told Thunderbird to stop "wrapping" my lines -- whereupon it started randomly deleting hard returns I'd typed in by hand.  I couldn't persuade Agent to send e-mail, nor could I get Alpine to run on my machine, so I now  compose the Banner with PC-Write and copy it into e-mail at the last minute. 
    I joined Facebook, but soon got banned from posting for, as near as I can make out, running an unfashionable operating system.  I can get at it through Dave's computer, but rarely bother. 

    I didn't teach embroidery once this year.  I would have been invited to do my embroidery gig at the Pinewood Derby, but I had a prior committment.