The Dreaded Christmas Letter

Happy Kwanza, Channukah, Buono Notte, Feliz Navida, Bonne Noel, Merry Christmas, Mele Kalikimaka e Hauoli Makahiki Hou!

Did I cover everybody? Probably not but, in the spirit of the season, my best wishes for a better year. Only twelve more months before the idiot in the White House is out--let's hope we survive it.

Meanwhile back at the hale...Not much and plenty happened to us Maunawili wahine!

I didn't go anywhere out of state this year but Kath went holo-holo plenty: Washington, North Carolina, India, Nepal, Tibet, and Shanghai.

Her over-50s women's soccer team went "three-peat" to win the Veteran's Cup in Bellingham, Washington. Here's a foto of the winning team:

This is actually the foto from last year but it's virtually all the same people so what the hell.
Some of these wahine: Lee Kalama, Linda Davis pictured along with Kath were part of her traveling gang to Nepal and Tibet. Two others, Theresa and Tempe, joined them and off they went! I got regular posts of the trip from hell. While they didn't suffer natural catastrophes or military coups, they did have surly guides, car breakdowns, border delays, visa la-la, etc. They all came back thin from lack of food or, in Kath's case, 3 weeks of altitude sickness (that's the reason I didn't go because I remembered how badly I did in Peruvian high altitude and knew I would not be able to hack it!). I'll have Kath post a separate blog for her trip which has some spectacular sites.

Kath came back October 1 from Shanghai to discover she had been pink-slipped along with 89 other folks in Kaiser's "redesigning" contraction. So, it's been an emotional, heady and bumpy few months! She'll post a separate blog about that I'm sure!

On the other hand, I traveled plenty (in my head)! Got back into my art seriously for the first time in 20 years. Tore apart my office and turned it into a studio (you can click on the foto and see the sumi ink wash I was working on and tacked to the ceiling.). Kath and I laid the new bamboo floor so it looks really choice. Here's a few pix some of you have seen. Only one of you has commented on it (Dorothy hated it! Although not without reason) As you can tell, I definitely got into manga, attended a manga/ anime convention, found myself to be the oldest person there (no really). As a friend of mine said, I need to find a rich gay geek to buy these. They're large format (24" x 36"), drawn in colored pencil and sumi ink (Kath wanted to make sure that she got her credit as my colorist. Ok, so she did pencil in a few areas in the drawings and I call it the Grappler Series based on Baki the Grappler, an anime TV show. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MNGRu1o2o0) Very Oedipal and twisted--love it. The whole experience was an entry back into making art so that I've actually moved beyond manga and am now working on a gallery installation idea. Now if I can just get a gallery interested (details, details, details...). It involves weaponry and armor--I'll leave it at that for now.