I'm sorry. I have been unable to write anything for some time. December was a tough month. We had two people out of work at various times and I had to fill in. I never did find the Christmas spirit that makes the season so much fun. I hope everyone had a lovely set of holidays.

Let's see. Where to begin? The Mercedes is dead. Haven't been able to revive it. The Buick died the day before the Mercedes. I paid good money to revive that one. Someone stole some of the Christmas presents I bought for Wakana and I had to buy more. I couldn't afford to mail the Christmas packages off to the family so they are still in the car. We had to move the office and our "supervisor" proved once again to be no manager. We did the best we could but she didn't arrange for boxes or for a truck. I rebuilt two of the broken down bookshelves before we moved them and made a passing comment that I could probably rebuild the third. She now expects me to do that.

But that's only the negative things that happened. There were lots of good things too. We managed to get the tree up and enjoy Christmas. Wakana made Christmas dinner, her first effort. We had baked chicken legs with mashed potatoes and peas and broccoli. I got lots of shirts for Christmas and a Haig & Haig pinch bottle holding a model of the Quest. My father made that for me and he made a model of a Japanese sailing ship in a square bottle for Wakana. We are on vacation now for another week. Then it's back into the salt mines.

Now it is New Years Day. We went to a nice party yesterday after spending the day rearranging the furniture in the living room. Today we took down the tree and packed away the Christmas ornaments. In a few minutes I am going into that living room for my first formal Japanese lesson. My resolution for this year is to learn to speak Japanese so I can have a conversation with my in-laws.

I went exploring on YouTube for sea shanties and found a little treasure trove. I am going to put the links on another thread.

I went to YouTube because Gordon's son had posted a bunch of proa links in the weekly newsletter. I am going to include them here for you to see what we are doing.

Here is a picture of a modern proa sailing in some unidentified harbor: CLICK!

Here are photos from the local canoe movement on the island. We (the Traditional Seafaring Society) seem to have influenced some other people. We have some members working in both groups. There are pictures here and in the next link of both the other group and some pictures of our group working in the Utt. Good stuff: CLICK!

Here are some more photos of both groups: http://picasaweb.google.com/todosloswhojos