Directory December 2, 2000 Archives
Ice fishing season will open in one month on January 1. There will be 10-18 inches of ice on the lake then. There is no ice on the lake now. How will that happen? Little mysteries. When we went to Louisiana November 18-25, we left here in late fall and came back in early winter. You could feel the change. And this week the day time temps have been in the 30's and the night temps in the 20's. Maybe the lake water gets good and cold during this time and then when the temperature dives into the teens for a few days it can transition to the frozen state quickly. Jean the meteorologist.
November messes with your head. It makes you feel depressed in a weird way. A number of people have told me they feel this way in November. It's not the dark time but the transition to the dark time that does it. By the time December gets here, I'm over it, I take some St. John's Wort, put on some Christmas tunes and it's fine.

    In Louisiana we
  • visited with friends at Jinx and Peg's party at Camp Tchefuncte, arriving in a downpour, staying overnight in a cabin and having brunch the next morning.
  • stayed at Anita and Malissa's in Covington, picked some mirletons, had breakfast with them and Connie and Amy Davis.
  • stayed at Ginny and John's new house in Slidell. Pelicans on the water, watching The Matrix on the giant TV, visiting with Beryl McSmith a few houses away.
  • had coffee with two former students, David Goeke and Dan Hare, in Baton Rouge. Great to talk the talk with them and good to see that David has carried his amused grin into semi-adulthood.
  • had an Ida Burger at the River Queen in Port Allen with Neva, Jimbo, Anita Richard, Edith Deaton, Gloria Jean and Charlotte Lefebvre.
  • Shopped in Slidell for coffee and other goodies, shopped in the French Market and Riverwalk in N.O. for Christmas presents.
  • had dinner with Cherry and Beth at Semolina. Wonderful to talk with them and catch up on their lives. I've decided that Portland would be a good place for them to live, and I've started clipping job ads from the Portland paper to send to them.
  • Visited with Claudia and Mike and grandbaby Hannah, and on Thursday with Ingrid and Robert and most of the Matens crew, and Georgette and July and Jason. Nephew Jason and wife Susan were leaving for Colorado where Jason has a cool job using arial photo data to make 3D maps of cities and integrating that with demographic data to help companies decide where to put towers for line-of-sight wireless stuff.
    Nephew Todd has dropped out of high school in his junior year and will pursue various computer certifications. High school can be just awful. I remember. If he sticks with the certification path, he'll do fine. His brothers Matt and Sean will stay on his case as needed.
There were several other people I really wanted to see in Louisiana and people I saw but wanted more one-on-one time with. It was hard for me to think clearly about arrangements because it was, you know, November.
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