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Keep
on trucking
With a rainy first half of 2005 and no demand for water trucks,
Gene decided to leave behind outdoor weather and port-a-potties
for office work: designing and selling custom furniture. But the
hours were long, the phone rang incessantly (he had little time
to enjoy the luxury of indoor plumbing) and the paperwork was endless.
He’s happily back in the saddle again with his water truck,
working construction-man hours. This rainy season, he’ll volunteer
his fix-it man skills at church.
If the
writing doesn’t energize you, the coffee will
Judy’s writing fiction—still no sales, but because she
writes early mornings at Starbucks, she can’t give up pretending
to be a novelist for fear of caffeine withdrawal. For the first
time ever, she taught college: an evening course in public relations
at Concordia University. To finance her fiction writing and low-paying
teaching, Judy just started an enjoyable 30-hour-per-week job at
a mortgage company: writing and taking photos for the employee Intranet
and newsletter. But this good news is tempered by the bad, with
too many funerals the last 18 months: her dad died suddenly of a
heart attack, shortly following the death of her dad’s older
brother, and then came the deaths of an aunt and uncle. Just two
months ago, the family lost a cousin’s too-young son to a
car accident. We know these loved ones are all in heaven, but we’d
rather have them here with us.
No
such thing as a free lunch, at least not after college graduation
Erik spent all summer in Europe, first as a tennis player in France,
and then as the poor-student guest of various friends in Spain,
Italy and Austria, and as a pampered grandson in Finland. He hopes
to finish up college at UC San Diego with a degree in economics
by the end of summer. And then?
Video
games and more video games
A fast-growing 8th grader (six-foot tall so far), Justin does tae
kwon do and paints. He hopes his dream of someday designing futuristic
cars for a video-game company will persuade his mother to allow
him to play more video games.
May God bless you and
your family this coming year!
Judy,
Gene, Erik, and Justin Alexander
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