amethyst73 | A procrastinatory letter

(To everyone: This is the holiday letter that we finally sent out this morning. Most of you won't receive hard copies of this because, well, you already *know* what our year was like! Early happy Martin Luther King Jr Day anyway!)

Dear Friends,

Peter and Catharine were supposed to write a New Year’s letter in January 2007.

But in January, Peter and Catharine took up ice skating, so they didn’t write the letter.

So they postponed the letter till February 2007.

But in February, Peter and Catharine acquired a Nintendo Wii and devoted most of their spare time to playing video games on it and having lots of fun, so they didn’t write the letter.

March might have been a good month for writing a letter.

But in March, their five cats (Tazz, Fluffy, Billie, Callie, and Mouse) demanded so much petting that there was no way that Peter and Catharine could possibly write the letter.

April showers bring May flowers. Did they bring a letter as well?

No. Peter’s open source 3D graphics program, Art of Illusion, was chosen as the project of the month on SourceForge. He spent so much time giving interviews to the press and signing autographs for his adoring fans, there was no time left to write a letter.

May. What about May?

No. Peter and Catharine were both busy making recordings of chapters of lots of public domain books for Librivox.org.

Then it was June - almost halfway through the year! But did they write their letter then?

No. Catharine was working hard on her singing lessons. Her teacher was quite pleased with her work, and declared that she was doing real bel canto singing.

The Fourth of July celebrates freedom. Did Peter and Catharine gain freedom from guilt by writing the letter then?

No. But they began assuaging their guilt on the matter of yardwork by beginning to clear out the weeds and topsoil from what had been a nicely planted area in their front yard when they moved in 5.5 years ago.

August is generally a nice, relaxed, summer vacation sort of month. Was any progress made on the letter then?

In August, Peter began a new job as a computer programmer in the Stanford Department of Bioengineering. Fulfilling one of his long term fantasies, he is actually getting paid to write open source software: SimTK, a toolkit for performing physics-based simulations of biological structures. (You can call him up and ask him what that means, if you like.)

September brings Labor Day. Did they labor on the letter?

In September, Catharine’s father was diagnosed with a degenerative brain disorder. She and her family were so distressed that working on the letter was completely forgotten.

Please tell me that they started the letter in October?

Sorry to disappoint. They were finishing the gardening project that was begun back in July.

Was anyone able to give thanks in November for their writing of the letter?

No. Peter and Catharine were singing the Poulenc Gloria with the Stanford Symphonic Chorus in a concert, and the letter would have come out sounding modern and slightly atonal (but very cool) had they written it then.

And in December, 2007 had pretty much run its course! Any chance of them writing the letter about 2006?

Unfortunately not. They scurried around trying to get things ready for Catharine’s parents to come and visit at Christmastime, but then ended up going to Boston at the last minute instead.

....But wait! I remember now! They did write a New Year’s letter at the beginning of January, 2007!

So that was all right!