Today is Emily Pearl's 14th birthday.  She and Jessica went to the
"Festival of Life" competition at Eastern Nazarene College this past
weekend and both came back with awards to make their parents proud.
I've teased Harriet Douglas on more than one occasion that I've told
my kids to "Come home Number 1 or don't come home at all;" and that's
all it is: teasing; I don't put pressure on my kids to perform.  My
mother can vouch that my teenage scholastic and artistic achievements
were approached with something less than vim and vigor. But, tes, I am
very proud of my kids and what they accomplish.

Joy has begun meeting again with the church children for the Spring
musical, "Dr. Newheart's Neckup Checkup," a sequel to the ever-popular
"Dr. NewHeart's Christmas Cure."  While she busied herself with this
task, (and cleaned the house for the Sunday party), I was spending a
lot of time getting to know my new computer a bit more intimately than
I wanted.  I thought I'd be smart and connect the new computer to the
old computer, but try as I might with different ports and wire
combinations, I was unsuccessful.  I transferred many of the pertinent
files by a diskette-load at a time.

You know that screen that says to exit an installation program to shut
down other programs before proceeding with the installation?  Well, I
am guessing, because I don't really know for sure, that it is a good
idea to follow that instruction.  I was on the phone three times with
tech support and completely restored my machine to factory settings
twice in as many days because I got myself into a spot where my system
would only display 16 colors.  (And yes, I dowloaded drivers and tried
everything. Compaq support set me straight with the SCANREG/ RESTORE
command.)  What's the big deal?  Most of today's applications won't
even run with JUST 16 colors.

On Sunday evening, we hosted a Superbowl party for some of Miranda's
college friends.  There was standing room only as she and forty of her
friends took up just about every inch of carpet and seating space in
the barn.  We thought it could be a good thing, with a big old house
like ours, to get all those 98.6s in the house to bring up the ambient
temperature.  And with college students, we figured that they even run
a little bit hotter and save us even more money on heating bills!
However, as anyone should know, the exchange rate for heat versus food
is not 1-for-1.  Earlier in the week, we made a bulk buying binge at
Costco's and we still nearly ran out of food, and with college
students, that could be a scary thing.  As it was, we made a half-time
run to the convenience store, down the street, for more soda.  But it
was all worth it because everyone seemed to have a really good time
with what turned out to be a really good game.

Now that football season is over, I can look forward to a few Sunday
Afternoon naps; a pseudo-hibernation until the crocuses reappear.
When Joy and I return from the California sojourn, it will be time to
start some of the garden plants inside a sunny window, and time to
prune the apple trees.

It looks like the weather will cooperate to get us off the ground and
away from the east coast for a while.  We'll see you when we get back.

Mark