7 Harbor Road, Morganville, NJ 07751 20 December 2004 2004 Seasons Greetings from Suzanne and Rod: Activities at the Pease household in 2004 still revolve around NAWBO, the National Organization of Women Business Owners, but Rod can now see the "light at the end of the tunnel". He has seen that light before, but on previous occasions it has always been an oncoming train. This time he made a point of being present in June to witness Suzanne passing the national presidency to someone else, so now has only the last 6 months of "Immediate Past President" to survive. On the negative side, Rod will no longer be able to accumulate stories, like the classic "breakfast with Bush", once Suzanne's NAWBO activities take a serious decline. The first half of 2004 saw Suzanne continuing her frenetic travel schedule. During her year as president she visited 28 NAWBO chapters in 20 states. Rod occasionally went along, but planning the itinerary often required linear programming. An example from last spring involved Rod driving her up to Boston for an evening meeting, back to a train station in NJ in time for her solo trip to DC, from which she flew to Tampa, Florida to meet with several chapters, ending up in Orlando, where she met Rod who had driven down to pick her up so he could kidnap her for a couple of days of R&R in Charleston on the way back. The second joint road trip was to the annual NAWBO convention in Dallas in June, an event important to the whole family. Rod made a point of being present at the meeting to witness Suzanne passing the national presidency to someone else, so at this point in time he has only the last 6 months of "Immediate Past President" to survive. Visiting Texas also provided him an opportunity to see some old friends from Lafayette days, as well as stoking up on plenty of BBQ and Tex-Mex. Routing the return trip through Louisiana allowed visits to relatives in Lafayette and a day at the Carr family reunion in Moss Bluff, which Suzanne thoroughly enjoyed. The big event of the year was a trip to Glasgow for the annual meeting of what should be called WAWBO (World Association of Women Business Owners), but is actually called FCEM, due to the French having named the organization first. By flying into Glasgow and dropping the luggage with the business duds at the hotel, we were able to hop a train to south western England for almost a week of walking through the Exmoor National Park with a Footpath Holidays tour before the meeting started. We enjoyed it because we were prepared for the weather - mostly overcast and often rainy. While Suzanne was meeting in Glasgow, Rod walked all over the city and checked out the local Indian and Thai restaurants. The household only added one new computer in 2004, an inexpensive HP a600n running XP, so Rod could continue to use a piece of software that got "enhanced" to no longer work under W98. Readers should note the acquisition occurred in August and Suzanne has still not noticed that she no longer has the fastest machine in the household. Other folks have family pets, we seem to accumulate old desktop PCs lounging on every horizontal surface. The laptops stay in bags on the floor where they manage to rub up against your leg and occasionally trip you. We even have a dead 1985 Compaq 8080 portable in the basement which Rod wanted to bury in the back yard like the cherished family pet that it was. Unfortunately all the other PCs are still alive, if a mite feeble, so ethically can't really be "put down". They also provide a useful source of heat in the fight for survival here in the frozen northern wilderness, as Rod often points out to Suzanne in their ongoing discussions about moving to a climate more fit for human survival. No news on that front. Kevin is doing graphic design and computer games from Collingswood, NJ. "Ready" is an adventure game on homeland security - free download from his cerulean web site for PCs. We wish you a happy and prosperous 2005. Suzanne and Rod web pages: email: Rods home page at http://home.att.net/~rod.pease/ Rods email: rod.pease@att.net Suzanne's business home page at www.ampersandgraphics.com Suzanne's email: spease@ampersandgraphics.com Kevin's business home page at www.cerulean.st Kevin’s email: mail@cerulean.st Kevin's online comic strip at www.absurdnotions.org