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To all our friends and family, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. If not exactly an annus horribilis, 2008 has not been a stellar year. We are very late getting any preparations for Christmas as Richard has been laid low for the past 7 weeks with a dose of the shingles which even now, seems quite a way from clearing up - I believe it's now a matter of Post Herpetic Neuralgia - aches & pains and not a lot of energy. There doesn't seem to be much that the medics can offer to try and speed up the healing.
With the somewhat unwelcome prospect of having to move house in 2009, we started 2008 with a re-modelling of the sun room on he back of the house. Ian and Richard laid down a new composite pseudo-wood floor, and installed new cupboards and window blinds, plus of course painting. I find that as a 70-year old, I don't get projects completed nearly as quickly as I used to. The other major challenge is to clear out 40 years-worth of accumulated "stuff". I was making some progress on that before the shingles put a stop to all that. It's a good thing we have a huge garage, where there is now a massive pile of junk to go in a big dumpster. In the New Year, I'll have to begin organizing a Garage Sale for the spring, and get back to having Janet & Dave remove all their clutter which they left behind when they moved out. I think we can probably hold in financially until next fall before moving, but we have to find somewhere much smaller with lower running costs. The credit crunch and financial turmoil of late have hit our retirement funds pretty hard. We haven't dared to look into our main portfolio, but I know that one commodity stock (very blue-chip 18 months ago) that we hold is now worth 10% of what we paid for it. At least I don't think that the value of our house has dropped too badly, if at all - Botsford is now reckoned by many to be one of the best streets in town as it is central, and being one-way, attracts very little traffic.
We also spent a night at the Downtown B&B in Moncton, which was Mary's childhood home when it was the rectory. Very pleasant, and we were also able to attend a Sunday morning service at St George's where Mary's Dad was Rector from 1932-1966. We were treated almost like royalty, and were delighted to find at least a few parishioners that we knew. Janet, Ian, Grace, Dave and Nicole all flew down from Toronto, rented an SUV and spent just over a week with us. The weather was very wet, but that didn't stop them all from doing a lot of sight-seeing in the area. After the Urquharts flew back home, Dave & Nicole spent a week on Prince Edward Island, visiting Nicole's relatives - her father was from PEI. They had a lovely time, and it wouldn't take much for them to move permanently to Charlottetown, apart from the prospect of not much work, which I guess is somewhat important. We're still very much involved with the church music, with the regular Adult Choir. I remain web verger for Trinity www.trinityaurora.ca which takes several hours work each week, plus miscellaneous other jobs around the church. Again, I have done very little organ playing lately, one funeral and a clergy pre-Lenten day has been about the lot this year. However, I'm playing Christmas morning again for the 29th year. Maybe the last if we move out of the Greater Toronto area, which might be a possibility. And if so, Mary would greatly miss the Thursday morning Bible Study Group she has attended for 21 years, and the monthly Book Club where she has been going to their meetings for 34 years. Again, we hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Richard & Mary |
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