13March1996

My dear Jones & Hambachers,

Let me start with a big thank you for Jones's very special fax, all 3 pages of which rolled in a little earlier in my day. Jones you will be qualified shortly to lecture Noah on how to deal with wet weather. My joints creaked in sympathy at the cascades you've suffered since my departure. Poor you & poor guests & poor Casa 3.

As for me, I've been having a ball while doing a few useful things on the side, the best of both worlds. The most useful, in Tomba's eyes, is the thrice daily walk which he has already come to regard as sacred. We have adopted a mile-long route which runs in a big circle around the development. The walk was snowbound on day 1 but 2 days of high temps have turned the snow into great pools of water, damned up by the still frozen culverts blocking the runoff. The golf course has gone from 90% white to 90% brown since my arrival & promises to turn green almost before my departure.

Mum joined us for the early walk today but declined the later one. She continues well. We sat down this a.m. for a couple of hours to go through her records & to draft half a dozen letters to the appropriate people. Penny's printer hooks up the back of my laptop and the pages just fly off. Mum marvels. But it's the tools that make the job easy as I point out to her.

Monday we went shopping, hunting for some computer software to enable me to put Ann's records on computer file. I thought we'd have no problem finding it, but it was designed for the pre-Windows95 system & I needed it on floppy disc rather than CD rom, requirements that had salesmen at the first three big computer stores we visited shaking their heads in regret. We finally found the last available copy at a small store & carried it home with the delight of discovered treasure. There were a couple of stop-offs en route, to replenish my supply of jeans, top up on groceries & the like.

I spent a couple of hours with Ann last night working on the records & a couple of hours more doing the same by myself early a.m. Kevin was the first to appear. He's an early bird. Next came Ann who had a heavy day at her grief support centre (where I joined her this evening to put the software on the newly donated computer). Penny was going off for an interview for a teaching job (no outcome yet). Alan appeared mid-morning & took himself off to school in his car. Finally Mark appeared after lunch. His work as stage manager means that he works late and sleeps late. Yesterday we dropped into the restaurant where he works freelance for a drink & to say hi. He seemed happy enough. But it's a tough life, earning comparatively little at what he needs to do in order to give his services voluntarily at the theatre work he loves.

Returning to the grief support, I had my first meeting there tonight with Bob Glasgow, the minister who partners Ann in her work & who stayed with his wife at the Quinta last year. He's a dear guy, half crippled by arthritis, whose life is given over to supporting others. Sadly, the reorganisation of Calgary's hospital support services has caused serious administrative problems for the pair of them, to say nothing of political infighting. Annie & Kevin have learned to their cost that there's no politics like church politics. It's strange that religion brings out the worst in people but it does.

Lots and lots of love!
t