Christmas 2000 and New Year 2001

f The annual newsletter of Douglas and Christine Smith f

Health

Christine had her cancer operation on the 8th December 1999 and was allowed home for Christmas. Her doctors were delighted at her progress and recovery and at the 6 months check-up there were no recurring signs of cancerous cells. We do hope this stays the case.

To give Christine another interest and thus help her recovery, we bought a Kodak digital camera which she has been using enthusiastically e.g. in pictures of the cats and in photos taken when walking around the local area and especially the Urmston Meadows. Some of these are now on our website

Tabitha and the menagerie

Tabitha

On 12^th October our favourite purry furry cat Tabitha was put to sleep by the vet.

She had been well until mid September when she coughed up a furball and soon after that was diagnosed with a kidney problem and possibly a tumour. She lost more than half her body weight in 3 weeks and it was heartbreaking to see her go. She gave a loud yowl at 4:30 on that last morning and fell into unconciousness. At first she did respond to Douglas's voice but by breakfasttime it was clear that nothing more could be done for her

Tabitha is now buried close to several rose bushes

The remaining cats are just beginning to recover now from the shock - Leo looked more bewildered than ever and Grey’s hair fell out in clumps. For over a month the house has been unnaturally quiet for a menagerie of 2 humans, 5 cats and 2 dogs.

Holidays and Day trips

We planned a day trip to Iceland for the time Christine was due to return to work but one week before this her doctor cautioned against it...so Douglas went on this trip alone. It started out raining and cloudy with late snow on the ground but by the time the group got to the Gulfoss falls and the geysir basin it was cold but clear.

Douglas went to Astronomy 2000 in Kensington, London...since when there have been no clear skies here at all - any hint of an aurora or meteors and the clouds descend.

In May we went to Northamptonshire for Autographica 2000 and met with 3 more astronauts and many other interesting personalities including Star Wars actors and an ex-Playboy model from the 1950s

We spent a day in London for the Stamp Show 2000 where amongst the highlights were a glimpse of items from the Royal Philatelic Collection and meeting Tom Baker and Elizabeth Sladen who were signing items bearing the Dalek millenium stamp from 1999.

In June Douglas's mother went to Jersey for a weeks holiday and Douglas was due to go out for a day to drive her around . He arrived at the airport and joined the queue 90 minutes before departure - when he reached the front there were still 40 minutes left ( within the check-in time allowed by the tickets ) but he was refused permission to board as being "too late"!! British Airways are no longer his favourite airline !!

We had a major holiday to celebrate Christine's recovery and Douglas's 40th birthday. We went on a Cosmos coach trip of 60 people ( ranging in ages from mid 20s to 70s and nationalities included a Polish man, a couple of South Africans retirees and several Americans and New Zealanders with the majority being British).

The tour left from Denver and went to Las Vegas visiting many of the national parks and monuments taking in Mt. Rushmore, the Devil's Tower, Jackson Hole, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Monument Valley, the Great Salt Lake, Bryce Canyon and the Grand Canyon.

A group of 4 (including us) went on a light aircraft trip round Monument Valley flying at 6am for best visibility. We all went on a cruise on Lake Mead and most on a raft ride down the Snake River. All went on a helicopter trip over the rim of the Grand Canyon and Douglas went on a helicopter flight from Las Vegas over the Hoover Dam and onto the base of the Grand Canyon.

We even went to the gigantic Family History Center near to Temple Square in Salt Lake City which holds the largest genealogical databank in the world - we could find no records of Christine's ancestors and only some of Douglas's maternal great aunts.

We had to buy more digital film in Utah for Christine's digital camera and still ran out!!

In late August we made our annual trip to the Eyam Wells Dressing and for once had bright cloudless skies

In November we went on our usual visit to get Terry Pratchett's autograph in his latest book - as always he was extremely pleasant and we met many familiar faces in the queue outside

Work

No real changes here - Christine is still trying to run an underfunded office and Douglas is on the team developing yet another generation of travel agency systems using Delphi 5 and the Advantage database system rather than SQL Server !

Christine is studying for her "European Computer Driving Licence" involving several of the Microsoft Office suite of programs which has been paid for by her council. Unusually Douglas's company ( now called Ramesys Solutions for Travel ) paid for him and 2 others to go on a 2 day course on Cold Fusion software which took place on consecutive Saturdays at Manchester University.

Some of the exotic places where Douglas was sent from work included Bacup ( during a blizzard last December ), Bradford and Edmonton ( North London during the flooding at the end of October 2000 ) !

Cars

Douglas's red fiesta is still going after 17 years but Christine's blue fiesta ( formerly belonging to Douglas's father ) which took Douglas and his parents to our wedding so long ago, finally failed its MOT test with heavily corroded bodywork. In September, Christine took possession of a red Volvo 440 which certainly is swifter than the fiestas.

Concerts

As expected Christine was in hospital during most of December 1999 so we missed all of the planned concerts. This year we went ( as part of the holiday ) to a Western music show and hopefully will be seeing Chris de Burgh in Manchester just before Christmas 2000.

Computers

No major changes here although Christine's computer can now play the DVDs of the Grand Canyon that we bought over there and we hope to get our colour printer working again before next Christmas and finally upgrade the home computer network!

Douglas's search for Extra-Terrestrial signals using the SETIatHome software has now completed 2516 units ( as of 1st December 2000 ) which places him in the top 0.5% of worldwide users and nothing has been found...yet

Our Urmston web pages have continued to receive hits and we have been stopped in the street and on the Urmston Meadows by several people to ask if we are responsible for those pages!!

We wish you all a happy 2000th Christmas and a very Happy New Year which marks the true start of the third millennium and of the twenty-first century AD.

Douglas and Christine Smith

dis@cix.co.uk and chrissie@cix.co.uk

Douglas I. Smith, dis@cix.co.uk

[Xmas News][Xmas 1999][D.I.Smith][A.C.Smith][Urmston]