Hello from West Richland once again! Contrary to evidence in our last two Christmas notes, the tumbleweed invasion has slowed, likely due to development of their local habitat. Not having to clear them from our yard, gave us plenty of extra time this year to be busier than ever.

Due to the changeover in contract at the Hanford site, Glen's company downsized to a point where they started shipping their employees off to other places to work. We didn't have to move, but Glen spent almost half the year in Los Alamos, New Mexico, learning project controls and writing Internet software applications. The Los Alamos contract ended in September, but by this time Foster Wheeler had discovered what Glen was doing and decided he could do that for them instead of the client. This meant travel to New Jersey, The Garden State. At this writing, internal budget cuts are forcing them to let him stay at home, to his and Jill's relief.

Jill's company, Battelle, continued its much more sane and stable strategy of keeping their employees at home, to Jill's dismay, although she did manage to eke out enough trips to continue her elite frequent flyer status on Delta Airlines. Recent senior management support of pollution prevention and environmental issues has made her job even more enjoyable.

Travel wasn't just for business, however, as we managed to fly down to Ecuador twice this past year. The first time was a much-anticipated trip to the Galapagos Islands, bracketed by some time in Ecuador's capital city of Quito. At one point, we were able to split our time and ourselves between the two hemispheres (see photo). The Islands themselves were amazing, and we would tell you more in this space, but we have our trip diaries to type up yet.

Speaking of trip diaries, we did finally finish the one for Italy (trip taken in March of 1996). We didn't expect to procrastinate on it quite that much, but circumstances always seemed to get in the way of completion. We are now working to get back on track in our correspondence and travel reporting. The Italian trip web page will probably be up by the time you read this, and those of you we thought might remotely be interested should keep an eye out for your copy in the mail. (If you do not have WWW access, and didn't win the hard-copy lottery, a simple letter from you to us could pry an extra copy loose, we're sure.)

We returned to Ecuador for two weeks in July to co-present a seminar on Pollution Prevention and the Internet (lemme see, can you guess whose topic was whose?). Thanks to the U.S. Agency for International Development and Corporacion OIKOS, we visited two universities, two chambers of commerce, and five different businesses, meeting with students, professors, and business leaders on how Ecuador could bypass years of pollution mistakes and run their businesses cleaner and smarter. Jill found that it confirmed what she has always wanted to do (i.e., work in a foreign country) and Glen found that he liked teaching. We hope to be able to do something like this again in the near future.

This year also found us in Houston once again in June for Sharon Gross' wedding to Craig Alexander (Sharon was Jill's roommate in college). In August, we managed to add-on to a business trip to Atlanta a personal trip to San Antonio for Jill's birthday and the World SF Convention (where we were joined by Jill's parents, Glen's parents, Mog and Dick Everett, and a bunch of our Austin friends). In October, our good friend Pamela Florence joined us in a visit to the Ashland, Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Then, finally, in November, we met up with Jill's parents in Palm Springs and watched Bob play in the finals of the USTA 3.0 Men's Senior's Tennis Tournament.

Whew! Tiring, but a lot better than the alternative.

We're writing this shortly after Thanksgiving, and plan to spend Christmas here in Washington. The future for us is quite open at the moment, and we are not sure where we'll be next year at this time, so do stay in touch, or you'll miss next year's exciting Christmas missive!