Dear Friends,Once again,
we start our letter: "Chris and Earl have moved and Vibeke
has a new job…" but notice it isn’t as long, the font is larger, and
there are more pictures. As you get older, it gets harder to read
all those little words.
The year has gone very well, we were able to go skiing a
few times last season and expect to do so again this year.
Earl’s contract at Marin General
Hospital continues and he commutes to Saint Mary’s Hospital in Reno
two days a week. He is racking up those Hilton points, Southwest
Frequent flyer miles and getting fat on bags of peanuts.
Chris continues at Vision Software in
Oakland as a senior consultant. She, like Earl, has been traveling
this year to such exotic places as El Paso, TX, Seneca Falls, NY,
and Sacramento, CA.
We are proud to announce that she has gone
a year without any broken bones or torn ligaments. (Last reported
injury was Dec. 6, 1998, a torn muscle in her foot.)
Vibeké is
still living in a two-bedroom house in Santa Rosa, but is looking
for another place to house her zoo. She has been working as a
Veterinarian Technician at 24-hour pet emergency hospitals this
year. She signed up for classes at Santa Rosa College for her
Licensed Veterinarian Technician (LVT) certificate.
Earl’s web work continues. This year he added,
two hospital sites and a Medical Surgical Conference in the US and
the Isla Navidad resort in Mexico. We are duty bound to make at
least one-business trip to Mexico each year to our sites, take a few
pictures, catch a few fish, etc. This year we showed up for New
Years and participated in a mini-tournament.
Earl and
Chris each caught a tuna while fishing from a 50-foot yacht that was
being checked out as a possible wintertime charter for Z Pesca. We
plan to arm ourselves with laptop, digital camera, swimsuits and
venture to Barra de Navidad early in 2000. Who knows what we might
catch.
On our way home we stopped by the Troncoso's
in Mexico City. We had a good time visiting Elias, Cristina, Adolfo,
and Pablo. Both Pablo and Adolfo came for a month in the summer,
just in time to help us pack and move boxes.
Chris
arranged for them to take lessons at her Tennis Club. Equipped with
bicycles and BART tickets, they wandered the streets of Oakland,
Berkeley, and San Francisco, went to Giant and A’s games, X-Games,
and visited the new Sony Metreon, As Arnold says, "they’ll be back."
(We are saving a lot of boxes for them to unpack.)
While "the boys" were with us, we had the privilege of
participating in the beautiful June 27th wedding /
commitment ceremony for our close friends, Anne Lowry and Lois
Leynse.
That is where "the boys" met Virginia (a guest from
Columbia that has since visited them in Mexico).
The main
event of the year was this summer. Seven of us traveled to Germany
to see the total eclipse of the sun on Wednesday, 11-Aug-1999.
Earl, Chris, and Auntie
Xochitl Zuñiga left a week before and were met at the Frankfurt
airport by Josef Mayer. After visiting with Josef and Feltina,
touring Fulda and Würzburg, we sightseed our way to three
one-bedroom condos in the Bavarian Allgäu at Oberstaufen.
Bob Walden, Adele Schmitz, and their friend
Fawn joined us on Saturday and Vibeke flew into München on Sunday.
The seven of us enjoyed the following week, traveling around
Bavaria, seeing the sights and relaxing.
The second week, four of us drove over the Alps though
Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and into Italy via the "Devil's
Highway". Driving the Autostrada, stopping at Autogrills, and
successfully avoiding Italian drivers, we made our way through Lake
Como, Bologna, Florence, to end up searching for Guidonia (near
Rome).
From
our Guidonian condo, overlooking a new golf course, we visited
Rome, the Vatican and "El Papa", Pompeii, Herculeum, and the
catacombs of Saint Sebastian.
On
our way back to Germany, we stopped in Florence to see David,
Innsbruck to shop, München to drink beer, and Dachu to remember.
We dropped Vibeke off at
the München airport and continued on to the Rhineland. From our base
in Rüdesheim, we made day trips to Worms, Strasburg (Xochitl wanted
to go to France) and a trip down the Rhine to Köln.
Our
final night, we rendezvoused with Josef and Feltina at sunset in
4-star restaurant below a castle over looking the Rhine.
We finished up by using some of Earl’s Hilton points
to stay in New York City visiting "The Lady", the Empire State
building, and Central Park.
Vibeke agreed to keep
the cat, Droolie, now renamed Baba Gata, until we returned from
Europe.
When we
got back, she not only returned our cat back, but also included, at
no additional charge, Marco. Marco, sometimes known as Snaggle Tooth
was later damaged in a catfight. We had to return him for warranty
repair.
At the
1998 Cory Family Society’s Annual Meeting in Pacific Grove, Earl
volunteered to take over their database and develop a web site.
http://www.thecorys.com/coryfamsoc/ has turned out to be a very
popular. He spends a lot of time answering email and keeping it up
to date as people send in additions and corrections.
Chris
continues to play tennis every chance she has, but being home only
on the weekends, has cut into her game. She played a few tournaments
this year at the club and still takes lessons from Anne Lowry.
This year we saw several
good plays in Los Angeles. We continue to get season tickets to the
Mark Taper Forum with Marie Gregor. Not only do we see fine theatre,
it also gives us an excuse to visit friends and family and walk
along the beach. The highlight of this season was "Enigma
Variations" with Donald Sutherland.
In June,
we held the "First Annual Cory Tequila Tasting." We invited a group
of friends over to try 23 different tequilas. We featured ones from
Joven to Añejo. Don Rose surprised us with 50 glasses, suitably
engraved for the occasion.
The Cory Moving Tale
continues…
You will remember that
last year in November, we moved into a condo. It turns out that it
was a little small for our life style. It's features included: 1200
square feet, three small bedrooms, no microwave, small kitchen, no
barbecue, no garage, and was yard free. Needless to say, a lot of
our stuff was in storage.
In
May, we decided to look for larger quarters. Using the open house
listings, we took off one Sunday to see what was available. We came
upon a "two-story" house in the China-Hill area of Oakland that was
being "fixed up" by a realtor. The downstairs part of this house, a
former basement, had been converted into an apartment and was now
zoned as a duplex. We made an offer that afternoon. The seller
became the broker. A friend of his, the "loan-a-ranger", stopped by
and signed us up. By Wednesday, we had a house; built in 1925, which
is still under reconstruction. By the middle of July, we were able
to move in and rent the condo. We have a lot of space for visitors.
There are two spare bedrooms upstairs (one is being used to store
boxes until the boys get here to unpack) and a furnished apartment
downstairs.
Earl took over the
downstairs living room as an office and immediately started
rewiring, putting in an Ethernet network, four phone lines, and
cable TV to every room and procured a DSL phone line for fast
Internet access. Chris took on the small front yard. Using her new
whip, hedge trimmers, chain saw, and a load of bricks, she went to
work on the overgrown lawn and flowerbeds. She reworked the lawn and
planted flowers; it is beginning to look very colorful. Next summer
we will start on the back. It needs a wood deck and patio cover so
we can get back to Margaritas and barbeques.
In 2001, the first year of the new
millennium, we plan to visit Alaska, anyone want to join us?
Well that’s a summary of
our life in 1999. We are looking forward to hearing from you as we
close out the 20th century. We accept letters, phone
calls, visits, e-mail, faxes, etc. If you are ever out our way, let
us know and we can get together. Sunday waffles anyone?
