It is New Year's day. We just rang in 2003 from a beautiful restaurant high on
Pfänder mountain. It was especially fun because this was the first
restaurant I ever went to in Austria. I took Andrea's parents there in
1988 to impress them with their lovely daughter's aging suitor. What they
remember about that night is that I paid with a credit card. Worse, it was
one of several credit cards that I had in my wallet. 
I didn't know that
credit cards were not often used in Austria, and that having more than one was
considered a profligate waste because of the very high fees associated with
credit cards in Europe. But I digress. The meal was great, the wine
mellow, and the view over the city of Bregenz into Switzerland and across the
Bodensee to Lindau was perfect. The landscape was carpeted with fireworks
and believe me, we could see them all.
It's been another great year. It started in Austria, took us to Paris
at Easter to spend time with great friends John and Sue Hughes, on to the
Cincinnati area for a long overdue family reunion, Raleigh for a wedding,
Florida for a month in June and another in November, Austria again during the
late summer, and finally, back to Austria in early December. 
And all that
without ever checking a bag! We may be getting good at this travel game, which
is not any more difficult post 9-11 except for taking off your shoes from time
to time.
Skiing was a lot of fun this
year. We had the new Jag to use, and avoided crowded weekends.
Often, we had the lifts all to ourselves! We were sad to leave in early
April, but the trip home was great . . . mostly because Delta had overbooked and
we volunteered to give up our seats. 
We were put up in a
great hotel, treated to dinner, drinks, and breakfast, and got to spend a
beautiful day at the big Stuttgart wine festival. Oh, we each got $750 of
free travel from Delta, too. That's twice. Last time,
Delta paid for our trip to Costa Rica.
In June, we drove
to Florida to visit with my folks in their handsome new digs. (Actually, I
made one additional trip to Florida in the spring to be with my family when my
dad joined the LHP Zipper Club with a triple bypass. Everything turned out
great, but Pop wasn't too happy for the first few days.) Then back to
Asheville in July, where we enjoyed the street festivals and music, re-designed and more or less
rebuilt the screen room, painted the master suite and the guest room, and
refinished the woodwork supporting our monster front windows. This year
we'll probably do the kitchen, which we hope to do in a relatively
painless way.
From Asheville we drove our new Buick Rendezvous to northern Kentucky for a
great family reunion. I loved those reunions when I was a kid. My
cousins were great pals, and there were lots of them. But there hasn't
been anyone to carry the reunion torch for many years, so it was really welcomed
when my cousin Gary got things going. We devoured a pig, drank too much,
picked on each other unmercilessly, and had a great time. Tooling around
Newport, Cincinnati, and Covington was an eye opener, too. Everything
looks fantastic, and the nasty old waterfront areas have become the top tourist
attractions, with fabulous shopping, hotels, restaurants and a world-class
aquarium.
We spent late July and all of August in Bregenz. We rode our bikes everywhere--didn't even bother to get
a car--and jump-started our workout routine at the Fitness Center. 
I had
overdone the workouts last year and really screwed up my arms and
shoulders. So, I had to lay off for a few months, exercising by lifting
heavy forks to my mouth repeatedly. *sigh*
September and October were spent in Asheville, of course. It was a very
late Fall, but we
enjoyed it nonetheless. 
We headed for warmer climes in November, where we nestled into what now feels
like our private apartment in Lighthouse Point. We had fun with our old
pals Ray and Mary Alfonso, and spent a few days with brother David at his
fantastic house in the Keys. David was a touch under the weather, but we
had a ball. Back-country fishing was particularly fine; we had great
weather and caught a mess of fish: snapper, jacks, ladyfish, sea trout, grouper
and more. Our last fishing hole was the best. You could hardly get a
line into the water before something took the bait.
Christmas here was busy, as usual. The routine is that we have Christmas Eve at Hans and Gitti's with the kids, Christmas with Walter and Linde, and then the day after Christmas at our apartment, where we are expected to provide a traditional American Christmas dinner. We do just that, with turkey and all the trimmings.
So here we are, ready for a performance of Cinderella by the Russian State
Ballet later this month and at least one side trip to Italy, where we are
planning to visit the Tuscany region. In March, we will begin our annual thaw
with a couple of weeks in the south of Spain. We'll keep you posted!
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