February 16th Dave Wrote

Hello everyone --

Since my deadline for this letter is today, I thought that I'd better sit down and write it after dinner tonight. So here I am, sitting on a recliner beside our wood stove on a very cold night with my laptop computer adding to the heat of the wood stove. A warm laptop computer feels good in winter, but it's less pleasant in summer when I'm already uncomfortably warm!

To me, the winter seems to have been exceptionally long, but maybe that's just my age showing. Actually, we had the coldest January in this area since 1961. We rarely got above freezing during January, and we had a lot of nights that were down near zero. For the first time in my life, I got a bit of frost-bite. It happened on a cold morning (-2 degrees) when I put on thin gloves while clearing snow off my driveway. Running a snow blower doesn't generate the circulation that shoveling might have done. Anyway, the tips of my middle and ring finger on my right hand still feel partially numbed from that experience, although the numbness is gradually disappearing.

I may have mentioned at our Christmas get-together that Carol was in a fender-bender just before Christmas. We decided to get rid of her car because it wasn't worth repairing. On a very cold day in January, we went car shopping and ended up buying a used Camry (2000 model, 32,000 miles) for Carol. Between buying my pickup truck in August and Carol's car in January, we spent almost as much money on two vehicles as we did when we bought our house! (Think about that, young couples: in 25 years a modest vehicle may cost half as much as the houses you just bought. And we haven't even mentioned the costs of getting those cute babies through college!)

With both of our boys back in college, Carol and I again find ourselves with long winter evenings that we can spend reading, working, or watching TV. We both enjoy watching reruns of "Law and Order" on the TNT cable channel, but I spend a lot of nights doing work-related things on my computer. Last Friday, we went to an old theater in a nearby town that is still run the way theaters were run 30 years ago: no food/drink concessions, one big screen, and clean seats and floors (since the place doesn't appeal to teenagers who seem inclined to leave their gum stuck to all available surfaces in most mall theater complexes). We saw the movie "The Girl with a Pearl Earring," a movie about one of Vermeer's famous Dutch paintings. We really enjoyed it and will probably go to that theater again for other movies, now that we've found a place where I needn't be paranoid about becoming permanently attached to my seat thanks to the leavings of the previous occupant.

And at this time of year, if I get really bored, I can always work on our income taxes. What a complicated mess our government has made of things. Computers don't seem to be making things easier; they just allow government to collect more personal data and design tax laws so complicated that people with any investment income could never complete an income tax form without resorting to a software program. (Was that income from your mutual fund an ordinary dividend, a qualified dividend exempt from Federal tax, a short-term capital gain, a long-term gain from before May 5, a long-term gain after May 5, or a qualified 5-yr gain?!! ) Sometimes I think that if the government replaced our current income tax system with a flat tax, half of the US population would suddenly become unemployed. Just think of how many tax consultants, lawyers, and IRS workers might lose their jobs! But why should I complain? I'm one of those people who probably benefit from a complicated tax system with lots of loopholes.

Carol and I took a few days off in January for a get-away in Lancaster area that included a visit to some old college friends near Hershey and an overnight with Mom in Souderton. On the way to Lancaster, we stopped at Cabela's new store along I-78. We were there on a snowy evening, so the place was almost empty and we could look around without jostling from crowds. What a place! If you haven't been there yet, you should go visit it. It's like a natural history museum for hunters and fishermen. However, make sure you go when most other people wouldn't want to be there because I can't imagine what it would be like on a busy day. Their web site says that they expect 7 million visitors/year in that store.

When we visited Swamp Church on SuperBowl Sunday, they announced that the youth group was having a SuperBowl party. I'd love to have heard the youth pastor's commentary on the half-time show. Someone told me that right after the game, President Bush called the New England Patriots to congratulated them on a well-deserved win. Al Gore called the losing team to tell them that they had been robbed by poor officiating. And guess what: Bill Clinton called Janet Jackson! (Don't feel bad if that story doesn't make sense to you: Carol didn't get the subtleties of the story either!)

Well, enough social and political commentary for now. I hope that all of you are doing well. Spring is just around the corner!