Christmas Blog 1998

Season's greetings to one and all,

It's hard to believe that another year has passed in what seems like the blink of an eye. Fortunately, we have been blessed with good fortune and good health. We didn't win any lotteries, but we didn't have any major disasters either.

Carla continues in electronic information systems engineering at the U of R. She had a work term at SaskTel in Regina for the first third of the year, took classes through the summer, and finished off with another work term at CDC in Calgary. CDC does military contracting and she had hoped to drive one of the tanks in their parking lot, but it never happened.

Darren also continues in engineering at the U of R, but he has specialized in industrial systems engineering, which is more along the lines of designing and operating large industrial complexes. He begins his first work term at Cominco Engineering Services in Richmond, BC in January. He is pretty excited about it, but we are having trouble accepting that his first work term is twice as far away and twice as long as Carla’s. It will be a big adjustment for all of us. Darren has been keeping pretty busy. He worked full-time hours at Costco for the summer and is now working part-time as a cook in a bar & grill as well as helping out at Grandpa's autobody shop. But his major accomplishment was at home. He completely stripped the paint off the '66 Thunderbird we acquired from Grandpa Schwartz and repainted it a bright, flashy red. It looks great and we hear it could be worth some money, so now we are afraid to drive it in the winter.

Laura won a local modeling contest in November/97 and has since been in a fashion spread in the local newspaper, several fashion shows at malls and a night club, window modeling at a ladies clothing store, and a few miscellaneous events. One of the contest prizes was a trip to Vancouver to be scouted by international agents. It looks like she will be going to Japan for 6-8 weeks around Feb-March/99 and possibly to Italy in the summer. Now THERE are some big adjustments!! We are trying to sort out the logistics of school, chaperoning, safety, etc. We have some concerns, but it is hard to refuse such an opportunity. Laura is doing well in grade 10. She did not return to dancing this fall, but has joined a fitness club where she works out 2-3 times per week. She has just begun the in-car portion of driver training, so we are getting out to practice whenever we can.

Celeste's home life is considerably more relaxing, now that she isn't driving Laura to dancing 4-5 times a week, but her job at Sask Agriculture is pretty hectic with her being the only Admin support person for 15 office staff. Fortunately, they have finally realized how much responsibility and work she does and upgraded her job classification. That doesn't make the work any easier, but it makes it easier to take.

Glenn's main occupation (outside of the one that pays the bills) remains genealogy. Personal family history has taken a back seat to running the Zichydorf Village Association. This entails publishing newsletters, keeping up a large email correspondence, compiling a genealogical database that now exceeds 10,000 names, and trying to link all those people together into families. It may not be as exciting as going to Calgary, Vancouver, or Japan, but, at his age he can't take much excitement anyway. He hopes to make some serious progress on his own family history over the winter.

Best wishes of the season and have a happy and prosperous new year.
Glenn, Celeste, Carla, Darren, and Laura.