2016 summarized
Well, I retired last year and took a bunch of trips to visit friends and family; but this year I hardly took any! We held our annual science fiction convention, Mysticon, in February and I ran the scholarship auction again this year. We raised over $4,000 for the scholarship winner! It helped having George R. R. Martin there as Guest of Honor - he wrote the Game of Thrones books. My niece Rebecca came to it with her family, Amitai and Jonah.
I did go to several other science fiction conventions; mostly to promote ours, but also the annual trip to Dragon*Con in Atlanta on Labor Day weekend. Amitai was there too, and he got me into a photo session with Star Trek’s original Captain Kirk! I was a huge fan of that show when it first came on, and still am.
My nephew Michael came to visit in June and I finally got to meet his wife Stacy! We went to Monticello (Thomas Jefferson’s home) and Natural Bridge, and Appomattox and Poplar Forest (Thomas Jefferson’s private home). We visited Booker T. Washington’s birthplace and the cemetery where my parents are. Grace was able to come up from Raleigh for a day to be with them. We even drummed a little bit together.
Grace graduated from North Carolina State University in July with her degree in food science. Hooray! I made two trips to Raleigh to help her move out of her apartment there and stay here for a month. She also got into graduate school - in CHINA! She’s going for her masters in biochemistry. We drove to Washington DC in August to apply for her student visa and visited the National Zoo while we were there. I put her on a plane in mid-September (boo-hoo!) and helped her deal with travel glitches:
If you’ve been following the Christmas letters from the past FIVE years, it has taken that long to build a new screen tent over the above-ground pool in my back yard. This year, I finally got it all fitted and basted together with fishing line. The plan is to sew it together during the winter and be DONE with it!
Here is Grace’s address in China. You can copy and attach it onto an envelope, it’s better than trying to write it.
浙江省杭州市西湖区古墩路565号耀江文鼎苑 12-701
Grace Van Eps
Yao Jiang Wen Ding Yuan 12-701
565 Gudun Road
Hangzhou, Zhejiang, P. R. China 310000
I did go to several other science fiction conventions; mostly to promote ours, but also the annual trip to Dragon*Con in Atlanta on Labor Day weekend. Amitai was there too, and he got me into a photo session with Star Trek’s original Captain Kirk! I was a huge fan of that show when it first came on, and still am.
My nephew Michael came to visit in June and I finally got to meet his wife Stacy! We went to Monticello (Thomas Jefferson’s home) and Natural Bridge, and Appomattox and Poplar Forest (Thomas Jefferson’s private home). We visited Booker T. Washington’s birthplace and the cemetery where my parents are. Grace was able to come up from Raleigh for a day to be with them. We even drummed a little bit together.
Grace graduated from North Carolina State University in July with her degree in food science. Hooray! I made two trips to Raleigh to help her move out of her apartment there and stay here for a month. She also got into graduate school - in CHINA! She’s going for her masters in biochemistry. We drove to Washington DC in August to apply for her student visa and visited the National Zoo while we were there. I put her on a plane in mid-September (boo-hoo!) and helped her deal with travel glitches:
- She had to leave one suitcase behind because it would cost $700 to fly with it.
- She put most of her money on a credit card but they wouldn’t accept it over there so she had to take cash from the card out of the ATM (this card doesn’t charge fees).
- She lost the card that had all that money on it and called me on Skype to panic. I counseled her to go to the police and/or the bank and report it. Turns out, she was so jet-lagged and stressed she left the card in the ATM, which kept it. She was able to get it back OK, whew! All of this was the first day there. What a way to start!
- I transferred her some more money but she had trouble picking it up because of red tape, etc.
If you’ve been following the Christmas letters from the past FIVE years, it has taken that long to build a new screen tent over the above-ground pool in my back yard. This year, I finally got it all fitted and basted together with fishing line. The plan is to sew it together during the winter and be DONE with it!
Here is Grace’s address in China. You can copy and attach it onto an envelope, it’s better than trying to write it.
浙江省杭州市西湖区古墩路565号耀江文鼎苑 12-701
Grace Van Eps
Yao Jiang Wen Ding Yuan 12-701
565 Gudun Road
Hangzhou, Zhejiang, P. R. China 310000