Christmas Letter 2000 Revisited

    Having more spare time than desired, it seems a reasonable thing to do is go through boxes and reduce clutter in various room in the house.  After opening one such box in our "home office", I came across a few copies of our Christmas letter from 2000.  It is retyped here (because I don't think there's a digital copy of it anywhere).  I hope I'll be able to use italics and bold fonts that were part of the original.  Here it is:

                                                                   Christmas 2000

Dear Friends:        

       Feeling the pinch of rapidly advancing postage deadlines, we have selected 20 words, more or less at random from our trusty Merriam-Webster Dictionary (Springfield, MA, 1994) with the intent to use each of such selected words in a complete sentence as part of our traditional, though unconventional Christmas letter.  There is no guarantee that the vocabulary word will be used correctly.  The words are:
          chink              locoweed                        cling                      dishevel
          gavel              impregnable*                  docket                    om    
          mutation         tenderhearted                velveteen               whaler
          finagle            sodium thiosulfate          earthly                   grapefruit     
          deadly             volunteer                       wampum                kinematics

The first year of the new millennium (or the last year of the previous millennium for those of you who cling to the correct manner of counting years) found the Tolmans not entirely impregnable.  As the year began, Rachel and Ben became parents for the second time in February with the arrival of Spencer Chadwick Terry, whose head resembled a grapefruit in size and shape.  Rebecca is now three years old and likes to finagle her way into having Grandma buy velveteen dresses.
        As Father Time brings his gavel down on the year, Allison and Adam have learned that Ali is likewise not impregnable (2).  Their efforts should bear similar fruit sometime in May.  But we have no earthly idea where they will reside at the time of parturition (not a selected vocabulary work, but not bad, eh?).  They presently reside in Pflugerville, Texas.  Clara is a tenderhearted, energetic one-year-old.  Her second birthday will be observed around the time of the birth of her new sister.  We’re hoping she’ll stay off the locoweed that could cause a mutation during her Terrible Twos. 
    Emily took a step into the adult world and had a summer job at Walmart where she saved enough money to buy lots of wampum and left it in a deadly pile on her bedroom floor.  She will seldom volunteer to clean her room.
    Jonathan is now a self-proclaimed whaler at BYU.  Prominent on his docket is his goal to harpoon a female companion prior to graduation.  He has recently changed his major back to Communications after a semester of chemistry.  He may find a better use for sodium thiosulfate.  It didn’t have the desired effect during his last date.
   Deanna has been a study of kinematics.  In addition to running the household and working at the ICU at Swedish Hospital, she’ll complete her Masters Degree in August and become a Nurse Practitioner.  She is impregnable (3).
  During bad winter weather, Wendell likes to dishevel de snow.  He believes there’s no place like om. 


          Our wish for you:

                May sodium thiosulfate bless your clinging earthly om.
                May tenderhearted grapefruit volunteer to see you home.
                May kinematic locoweed adorn the whaler’s docket.
                May you never find a deadly chink of wampum in your pocket. 
                May your skin stay soft as velveteen and may your life be full.
                And though you look disheveled, may you stay impregnable.
        
 Love,
                     The Kinematic Velveteen Tolmans 

Beer Bread

While rummaging through our pantry a few weeks ago, I came across a small white canvas bag labeled Fartless Beer Bread.  We think we may have acquired the bag several Christmases ago as a white elephant gift.  Inside the bag was a foil pouch containing, according to the printed instructions, all the dry ingredients needed to produce a tasty loaf of bread.  The only thing we needed to add was a 12 ounce can of our favorite beer.  Maybe that’s why the bag was still in the pantry.  We don’t have a favorite beer.  In fact, we don’t even drink beer. 

I’ve never tasted beer, but I have bought one once.   Brian, a co-worker had been a season ticket holder with the Colorado Rockies for many years.  Toward the end of the 2013 season, Brian was able to exchange many of his unused tickets from earlier games for a  block of tickets for a single game which he made available to other co-workers.  When I offered to pay for my ticket, Brian declined and said I could buy him a beer.

After enjoying the game for a few innings, but feeling the need to settle my debt,  I decided to make my move.  I asked Brian for a couple of choices and made my way to the brew vendor.  It was a cool evening in September and I  remembered that I was wearing my navy blue BYU windbreaker.  And I am fully aware that beer consumption and my alma mater and its sponsoring institution are not usually harmoniously connected.  Not wanting to display my BYU affiliation while purchasing a beer, I removed my windbreaker and tied it around my waist before approaching the vendor.  I looked around to make sure I didn’t recognize anyone on the concourse before making my selection and payment.  It was a relief to hand it over to Brian and enjoy the rest of the game.  That was my first beer purchase experience.  That was then.

Back to the present, rather than place the Fartless Beer Bread bag back in the pantry, I decided I could man up and go buy another beer.  Deanna needed to make a run to the post office and fill the gas tank in the car.   I decided to go along.  While she posted her mail, I would buy the gas and 12 ounce beer can at the adjacent station.  Not having purchased beer outside of a baseball stadium before, I was dismayed to find the only way to buy a 12 ounce can would be as part of a 6 or 12 pack.  The only single option at the gas station was a huge 25 ounce can.  I didn’t make the purchase. 

We made a second stop at a supermarket and found the same situation.  I wasn’t about to buy a 6 pack in order to make a single loaf of bread.

The following morning, while Deanna was at work, I decided to quit being a wimp and just go  buy the dang beer.  I drove to the 7-11 near Deanna’s office.  It was raining.  I looked down and noticed I was wearing the same BYU windbreaker.   I removed the windbreaker, found the beer section in the beverage cooler and selected a single 25 ounce Budweiser can.  Not wanting to look like that was the sole reason for my visit, I filled a 32 ounce cup with ice and a mix of Diet and Regular Dr. Pepper before proceeding nonchalantly to the cash register to complete the purchase..

After returning home, pouring the beer into a different container to allow it to reach room temperature, I proceeded to mix the ingredients and place the dough in a bread pan.  With the extra 13 ounces, 9 went into a recipe for beer bread I found in the internet.  The remaining 4 ounces went down the drain.  Mission accomplished.

 

 

Gates Rubber Co demolition

 

Over several months time, the old Gates Rubber Company factory on South Broadway was taken down floor by floor, building by building.  I took pictures occasionally from my vantage point from light rail as the train turned out of the Broadway Station.