2008

During the second week of March I drove, via Charlottesville and Richmond, to Charlotte, NC for some business meetings and a large stamp show where I ran into lots of friends and picked up a couple of nice pieces for my collection. On my return our friend Charles came to stay for a few days to hang out and also advise me on my upcoming stamp exhibit. It is always nice having Charles visit as, while most of my friends can humor me by making the appropriate "Oooh" and "Aaah" noises over my stamp collection, Charles is one of the few folks who can appreciate the depth of it so I always feel completely revitalized after he has visited.

Sadly, on Monday, January 14th, David and Julia had to take Scruffy for her final trip to the vet. I could not have done it myself and our friend Charles, who was visiting, stayed home and drank scotch with me while I cried. We have buried her in the back garden and will come up with something to remember her by.

Scruffy had been with me for nearly 22 years, which is an extraordinary length of time for a dog to live. I brought her home, at six weeks old, from the DC pound to our townhouse in Annandale and she was so small that she fit in one hand. She was staggeringly dumb but full of love and that strange little corkscrew tail would wiggle with joy whenever I came in the room.

One of the earliest Scruffy disasters occured in the Annandale condo. Some of you may remember the first sitting room suite I ever bought (Ok, it was the '80's so I can be excused!), which was all white satiny fabric with black lacquer trim. (Trust me, with the glass and black lacquer coffee tables, they were fabulous! (for the '80's!)). Anyway, I had left this little puppy in the basement and gone to work only to find, when I returned, that during the day she had obviously gotten cold or something and had lain in the ashes of the fireplace.

What stunned me was how far this tiny little dog had walked during the day while we were gone. There were black ash footprints on every sofa, chair and cushion; every carpet, every bed, every bathmat ..... in fact, the entire house was nothing but tiny little black dog footprints. I stood there in stunned amazement and then let out a shriek of horror that could be heard for miles. I think again that it resulted in yet another unique claim on our home owners insurance and weeks of steam cleaning.

Scruffy totally ran the house! When I brought Thor home, I wondered how she would cope but to my surprise, she immediately became the alpha. Until the day she died, if she got cross, she would bark at Thor, who would lay down and whine while she barked at his nose. (Bear in mind that Scruffy's entire body was smaller than Thor's head!) Another time I decided to get Thor a treat and brought home an entire cow leg (a huge and utterly disgusting thing which I threw in the front garden for Thor to eat). About an hour later I heard this pathetic crying and whining by Thor and looked out only to see him sitting about 5 feet away from the leg looking completely pitiful while Scruffy was laying on the grass with one tiny little paw resting proprietarily on this huge revolting leg.

For 22 years Scruffy kept me company, made me laugh and gave me unconditional love. Even over the last six months, Her Royal Crossness would simply stop what she was doing and would bark knowing that eventually someone would come and pick her up and give her cuddles. Things will never be the same without her.

Scruffy Thor

The first weekend in February we took Collin and Duncan for their annual Christmas present trip, this year to Philadelphia, PA to see Avenue Q (hilarious!), visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art (fabulous!) and go to lots of good restaurants (delicious!). Collin is now 17 and Duncan 15 and quite the young gentlemen. We had a wonderful time but it was interesting, especially in the restaurants, to see the looks on some of the faces of the other diners as they tried to figure out whether David and I were the parents of these handsome young men or perverts. I love spending time with my nephews and this was particularly fun as Collin found out the day before we left that he has been accepted at West Virginia University (WVU) so celebrations were in order. Before we left we had brunch with our friends Mary and Angela who took us round the funky part of Phillly to do some shopping.

At the end of February we flew to Las Vegas with Susan, Laura, Mark and Charlie to celebrate Mark and Charlie's anniversary. (We all kind of invited ourselves along). Between playing endless tables of craps up and down the strip, eating at as many of the incredible restaurants we could and then going to see Bette Midler in her new show at Ceasars Palace, by the time we got home we were exhausted! (We were also incredibly hung over as on the last night we had dinner at Lucky Chengs which by late night is a fabulous disco but in the evening is a Chinese buffet with drag queen waiters who then put on a filthy show while "forcing" us to drink large numbers of Cosmos. (Don't ask but I may post some pictures).

One odd thing that has been going on is that I have been fighting fatigue and, as all my counts and other health markers are great, I decided to try to figure out what was going on by doing a sleep study in Washington. I showed up at the hospital at 9pm and was put in a nice looking hotel-type room whereupon a nurse started attaching electrode/monitor things. She hooked up pads with long electrical leads on my feet, legs, chest, back, head, face and either side of my eyes and mouth and then put two oxygen cords around my head and into my nostrils and then cheerily said "Now go to sleep." Right! I lay there for about an hour tossing and turning (and every time I did I would get tangled in all the cords) and eventually took a sleeping pill, which knocked me out. Apparently in the space of 5 hours I came out of the good stage of sleep to the non-resting stage a total of 151 times and had 89 apneas where I stop breathing. (When I recounted this to Val and Julia they responded "Well, we could have told you that - you have been doing it all your life and we used to just hit you and say "Breathe!"" - thanks folks!) I now have to sleep with a stupid mask and machine which forces air so that I keep breathing. Needless to say, this is doing wonders for my sex life!

March took me on business trips through Pennsylvania, New Jersey (with an overnight stop in Atlantic City), New York and Long Island. It was exhausting but quite productive. We also spent time in DC and in WV with friends and I spent a great deal of time working. Business has necessitated our expanding into some new areas and so I hired three new folks at the office, which means that we are packed into the office like sardines. (I am dreading the idea of moving offices but the time will be coming!).

April involved the California Vintners Dinner at the Mandarin Oriental (7 courses and 26 wines!), a fundraiser at the house for Joe DeLong, who is running for WV Secretary of State, the adoption of another caique (Maya - who is adorable), houseguests visiting on two weekends and the annual Smithson Society Weekend for the Smithsonian (which was completely fabulous and included a reception in the new courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery and a black tie dinner in the Enid Haupt Garden at the castle.)

At the beginning of May, our friend Kate and her husband, Tomas, threw a dinner party for our friend from high school, Ann Starrs, who was visiting from New York. We had a glorious evening and it never ceases to amaze me that 30 years onward, some of my best friends were those I made in high school. During May we also had our annual Spring Cocktail party at the house (the gardens looked fabulous!), had a high school graduation party for my nephew Collin in the disco (a remarkeably well behaved and polite group, which, when I think what I was doing at that age was quite frightening) and I managed to fit in a few more business trips. Also, in May, having been working out regularly for 9 months (no... really!), I realized that while the rest of me was looking pretty good, the stomach and love handles were not going away so in a somewhat impetuous mood, I went for liposuction. This was not a nice, quick and simple procedure as I had thought it would be - it was actually quite unpleasant and painful. That said, while I do not have a six-pack of abs, at least I no longer have a keg of beer sitting there.

June involved more business trips, lots of theatre in DC, a fun pool party with friends in Baltimore and a great fundraiser at the house for Anne Barth, who is running for Congress. This got a little controversial, however, as the day before the event, one of the local Republican activists went through this entire site, pulled out some of the less delicate or politically correct things I have posted over the years and promptly posted them as though they were her opinions. I went completely ballistic over this, but after David calmed me down, we decided to simply ignore it. (I wanted to point out that in the Democratic Party we are not required to subscribe to groupthink and that my opinions do not reflect those of anyone else, etc. - bah!).

In July I did business trips to New Orleans and Los Angeles (which took up about half the month), the Contemporary American Theatre Festival in Shepherdstown, and lots of houseguests. In August, after months of discussion and thought, we put the house on the market. I have been thinking for a long time of downsizing and things came to a head one afternoon after having drinks with Val and Cliff. We were discussing our long term plans and they mentioned that they were thinking, eventually, of selling their house and getting something smaller in the same area. At this point a light went off in my head and I suggested that, when that time came, I would buy their house as it would be perfect. One thing led to another and by the end of the month StagsHead was officially on the market! While I do not expect it will sell very quickly, considering the economy, there is no rush at all (and it allows me to work more on Val and Cliff as I do not think that they anticipated this happening quite so quickly!) All kidding aside, if the house does sell and if Val and Cliff did decide to downsize, we would certainly think about their house. If not, we intend to get something in Shepherdstown so will be part of the community for a long time to come.

September involved a business trip to Texas and, as always, RenFest most weekends. The weather was glorious and we spent most weekends hanging out with our friends at Faire. RenFest continued through October and culminated on the last weekend with the Day Of Wrong. For those of you who do not go to Faire, we all are clothed each weekend in our finest period garb and try to remain, for the most part, moderately historically accurate. The closing day, however, all rules are off and so this year, after rejecting a number of ideas, David and I came up with a 70's disco theme done in the Renaissance style. He put together a truly hideous doublet, covered from top to bottom in panels of gold, black, silver and purple reflective metal discs, I glue gunned a hat with mirrored pieces and hung disco balls from the side (and codpiece!) and we topped the whole thing off with a pair of silver 12" platform boots (which were tricky to walk in.) This was greeted with gales of laughter, about 2000 photographs and total disgust from the purists.

At the end of October, we headed off to Greece for a weeks vacation with our friends, Roger and Hans, who had booked into a terrific condominium on Crete. As it was my first visit to Athens, we walked all over doing the tourist thing and thoroughly enjoyed our time there. We then met up with teh boys and spent a quiet week touring around Crete. We had not realized that the coastal towns have been taken over by young British package-tourists who spend most of their time misbehaving but, this being the end of the season compounded by the fact that we were staying inland in a much nicer area, we managed to avoid the Ocean City meets Spring Break crowd (with the exception of one night of debauchery). The weather was delightful, the food delicious, the company great, the scenery beautiful and the history humbling. David and I promptly dumped the "let's buy a vineyard when we retire" plan and now have the "let's buy an olive grove in Italy, Greece or Spain" plan as this seems to involve a lot less work.

In November I was privileged to be invited to attend the meeting of the National Council of Philatelists at the National Postal Museum in Washington. This coincided with their bi-annual dinner and an exhibit by the Club de Monte Carlo. It was a wonderful experience and I met some great folks who are all united by their love of philately. One of the highlights was the opportunity to see some of the collections that they have in their vaults; awe-inspiring material that has been left to them over the years. I have become friends with some of the staff and curatorial department of the Museum and love being involved with them. This also gave me the opportunity to catch up with many old friends and make some new ones. David's mom and sister were also in town for a family reunion and we spent some nice time with them as well.

Sadly, when we returned home, Zoe, Davids dog of 16 years, had died. While this was not a surprise, it was still very sad. Zoe, like Scruffy, had been with David most of her life and had got him through good times and bad. She was a delightful little girl with a big toothy grin and we like to think that she is somewhere chasing cheese-squirrels with Scruffy.

In the middle of November, the expansion to World of Warcraft was released. As it gets dark early and there have been no good movies to watch I have been spending my evenings playing with my stamps and then playing WoW with David (and Julia, Cliff, Duncan, Rich, Dave and many others!) We had a lovely Thanksgiving at Julia's and are now in the process of getting ready for the holidays with all that that entails!

All the family are well.  Collin is loving West Virginia University and is taking a varied and diverse number of courses.  Duncan is doing well in school (and has just got his learners permit to drive!).  Julia has a new job that she thoroughly enjoys and Val is taking real estate classes (and learning math – surprising herself in the process by the fact that she is doing well at it!)  Cliff has been working non-stop on our Korean contracts for the business and (although he moans) is having a great time.

Healthwise we continue to muddle along.  David has been having liver issues associated with a blot clotting disorder but he is seeing some specialists over the next few weeks and we hope that everything will work out fine.  He has converted the old office building/garage into a huge pottery studio on the ground floor and a sewing studio on the second and spends most of his days potting and sewing.  (I think the next step is to find a store that will carry some of his work as we are running out of space!)  He is very talented and thrilled to have discovered something about which he is passionate.

Life, on the whole, is good and we are happy that we decided not to go sailing this year! Both David and I wish you and yours a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year!

Ian