This year, it's been really, really quiet in Lake Wobegon (still located under the O'Hare runways), except when planes take off. So, it will be hard to come up with a lot of news, due to a severely restricted budget (the car ate up the entire budget for the year, and then some).

My car has been replaced with a 2007 Honda Fit, their new entry level vehicle ($3,000 less than the Civic). It's similar in size to the old one, but is about 2' higher than the old one, and geezer-friendly (a lot easier to get in and out of), although the gas mileage is lower - only low 40's on the road. I had hoped to get another couple of years out of the old one, but starting in Oct 2006, it started having problems, and every time I got it back from the shop, it had a new, expensive noise. I finally said "Enough. I am better off putting all this money towards something more reliable". The Fit has been available in Europe for several years, and is made in Japan. It was new in this country and they were on allocation, so it was a lot of work to find one with a manual transmission and a color I would accept (not including red and orange). But I finally prevailed (silver).

The house is still over our heads. My former tenants came back, so I have both apartments rented again. My back fence is now 6' high (the limit). Since some of the (35yr old) roses quit on me, I had it redone so that (at 4') it wouldn't become the main path for the local juvenile delinquents. The city still won't let me put barbed wire on the top. The young (pack of 2) Iraqi militant tree rats (squirrels) are still in the neighborhood, and still getting into the garbage and trashing the garden. We did fine until a week or 2 into September, when they figured out there was food, in the garden and the dumpster, to make a mess of. On my side of the battle, however, I have discovered that they are not too bright, and have short memories. So I regularly manage to get them wet and very, very mad at me.

Martha is doing well as a therapist in private practice, still fixing people's heads.

I am now formally a full fledged member of Medicare, which should cut my medical coverage costs by more than half, which will be a big help for the budget. I haven't applied for the big bucks from Social Security yet, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

We only made it out of town once, this year. We went down to Louisville, Ky to visit with Martha's brother, and then, since we were already half way there, down to North Carolina, to see friends. We stopped at Amish Acres on the way back. Nappanee, IN has since been run over by a tornado.

I still hug my guitars regularly, and play open mikes here and there, although not as often as I would like. This year, the Lake County and the Fox Valley Folk Festivals never happened. Lake County had a communication problem, and the Fox Valley Festival, which is held on Island Park in the middle of the Fox River, was under 4' of water at the time. I did play on the main stage at LilFest again, a small festival in Wilmette, but this year, there were people in the audience. I also got called up to play at a concert in Long Grove to humor the crowd while the main act was on their way from the airport.

Since the political season seems to have started early, I'm hoping the politicians expend their war energy beating each other up and leave us and the rest of the world live in peace. I know that's a lot to ask for. But, hey, we can still hope. Peace.

Ted & Martha