I only worked two days at H&R Block this week. I thought I was scheduled for today, but after I got there, I found out I wasn’t. I’m only scheduled for one more day, and then I’m through for the season.

The monthly public meeting of the Friends of the Library was this week, and I presided. I thought it was a good program, but attendance was poor.

We attended an activity called Paint Fest on Saturday. About 50 people gathered in the chapel activity room, and painted panels that become part of a work of art to be hung in hospitals to make the walls more interesting for patients than the bare walls would be. We’re planning to take six or 12 of the panels to New Zealand, to make one or two pictures to mount in one or two hospitals.

We attended a fund-raising dinner for Hospice on Saturday evening. They had a big crowd, and I think they made something like $20,000 for the cause.

My computer died on Thursday evening. I took it into a repair shop Friday morning, and it’s not back yet. I’m typing this on my laptop, in frustration over the things I can’t do until I get my main computer back again.

I hope everyone else had a good week.

I’ve been working six days a week at H&R Block.  We’ve been through the peak of our season.  Now we get maybe four clients per preparer per day.  It provides quite a bit of idle time between clients.  So far, we haven’t got many interesting returns to do–they’re still mostly wages only, and standard deduction.

On February 2, we had a drill for the Big Canoe Emergency Response Team.  The simulated emergency was a fire in the Big Canoe Chapel.  I was sent to the gate to help the guard answer telephone calls, which of course didn’t exist because it was only a drill, so it wasn’t very interesting for me.  We’ll do a review of the drill at our next meeting.

Margie attended the meeting of the Big Canoe men’s club with me on February 3.  She was the only female in the room.  I wrote up the meeting for our newspaper.

We had the gathering of what we call Dinner 8 on February 5.  Eight people get together for dinner once a month for four months.  This was our turn to be hosts for this series, and we had a very pleasant time.

My cousin Nancy Geigler and her husband, Grant, came on February 10 and spent the day with us.  We had a very pleasant time.  It was fun to learn about their family.  They recently bought a weekend cabin about 20 miles from where we live.

We had a planning meeting yesterday (Saturday) for our upcoming trip to New Zealand.  I got there just as the meeting broke up, because I had to work.  Plans are coming together.

I hope everyone else had a good week.

I worked at H&R Block six days this week. We are at the peak of the season–usually four preparers on duty, and usually a client waiting as soon as we finish the previous one. Several interesting personal situations, but no interesting returns yet.

Margie and Ellen went shopping for baby gifts for our future great-grandson on Saturday. They found lots of good stuff. In case I didn’t mention it, the future parents are Kevin and Lara, and the baby is due in March.

I left work early on Thursday to preside at a meeting of the board of the Friends of the Pickens Library. We’re getting overwhelmed by the number of donated books–people are very generous.

I operated the sound system at the chapel this morning. It’s more complicated than it used to be, because we now stream video of every service.

I completed a web site for our square dance club–www.treetwirlers.org.

I hope everyone else had a good week.

My annual service at H&R Block has begun. The clients haven’t been coming in at a really high rate, but enough to keep it interesting. Yesterday I had a client who wanted me to do his return for 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010. The four returns together brought him about $4000 in refunds, so it’s strange he hadn’t filed sooner.

I’ve been putting lots of energy into the Big Canoe Emergency Response Team. We haven’t had very good leadership for a couple years, so there are lots of challenges. I feel good about the progress I’m making.

We had a wonderful time on January 14. There was a baby shower for Kevin and Lara (Will is due in March). It provided an opportunity to see lots of Scott and Ellen’s friends that I don’t get to see very often, and to see all her sons and her two daughers-in-law. Here are a couple pictures from the day:

Philip, Michael, and Kevin

Ellen, Philip, Scott, Lara, Kevin, Michael, Laura Beth

Margie, Ellen, Lara, and Laura Beth

Kevin and Lara with the gift from the future great-grandmother

Additional pictures are at picasaweb.google.com/raybowyer01.

I created a web site for the school in Zimbabwe that we have supported. It’s at http://bowyerschool.com.

I hope all is well with everyone else.

We booked the travel for our trip to New Zealand. We leave March 3 and return April 9. Visit about eight places in between. It should be a good trip.

We had a very quiet New Years Eve. We invited a friend for dinner. She had to leave early because she’s recovering from knee replacement surgery, and we went to bed shortly after. So we didn’t see the ball drop.

We saw the movie “Descendants” on Friday. I found it sort of depressing.

Most of my time this week was spent processing information from Christmas cards and letters, and the pictures I took in Colorado, into my various records. It was good to have that finished. Now I’m concentrating on preparing for some upcoming meetings that I will be running.

I hope everyone else had a good week.

I got word that my niece, Vi Cochran, had died in Denver on December 17. I went out to help the family. Her brothers and sister, children, and most of the spouses were able to be there. I’ll put just the brothers and sister here:

Barbara Hambek

Robert Boone

Tom Boone

Additional pictures are at picasaweb.google.com/raybowyer01.

It was fun to see all the relatives, even though the occasion was a sad one.

I returned just in time to go to Scott and Ellen’s house for Christmas. I’ll post just one picture here:

Tim, Margie, Ray, Ellen, Scott

In addition to Scott and Ellen, Tim, Michael, and Laura Beth were there. We had a great time together on Christmas, and then everyone came to Big Canoe for the day after Christmas.

I hope everyone else had a good week.

I worked at the Good Samaritan Health and Wellness Center. I finally got caught up on a backlog of work that had been hanging over my head for four weeks.

Margie had been sick most of the week, with intestinal distress of some kind. She recovered Friday morning, although she still doesn’t have her normal energy level.

We held a dinner party for ten Friday evening. They were a fun group to have together.

I have finally finished all the necessary training to be a tax preparer this year. It’s a relief to have that completed. Now I have to find a time to work on some practice exercises to be sure I know how to enter returns in the computer.

I’ve been doing some work this week on the web site of the Big Canoe Emergency Responses Team. One thing we have available on it is the Big Canoe evacuation plan, and it’s out of date. So I’ve been working on bringing it current.

We went to a restaurant near where Ellen lives for lunch with Scott and Ellen today (Sunday). Margie had prepared some Christmas gifts for Ellen to give to her co-workers, and this was the best way to deliver them. It was a nice opportunity to chat with the two of them. They are both really busy with the combination of their jobs and their other responsibilities.

I hope everyone else had a good week.

I got the copies of my memoirs this week, and sent them to some of the people I think would be interested. If you would like a copy, let me know.

We put up all our Christmas decorations. Here’s what our tree looks like:

I worked at Good Samaritan Health Center. I operated the sound system twice–once for the Wednesday evening program, and again for the Sunday morning services. We had a congregational meeting to ratify the selection of our new senior chaplain after the second service.

I have been appointed to a new Information Technology Task Force for our property owners association. We had our first meeting on Thursday. It’s pretty impressive–several of the members are former Chief Technology Officers or Chief Information Officers of large companies, and one is still working as an Information Technology consultant.

We had two holiday parties this week–one for our neighborhood on Saturday, and one for our Sunday School class on Sunday.

I hope everyone else had a good week.

We’re busy getting out our Christmas letter. It has been written, this week we had the paper copies reproduced, and now Margie is putting the paper copies in the mail. We’re holding off on the electronic copies pending any corrections that are needed.

We celebrated Thanksgiving by going to a restaurant with Tim. Here we are:

I sang with the men’s chorus this morning. We hadn’t rehearsed, in observation of Thanksgiving, but I think we did fairly well in spite of it.

I hope everyone else had a good week.

Margie was in Houston the beginning of the week. I met her at the airport on Tuesday, and we met Ellen and Tim for dinner on the way home.

I presided at a meeting of Friends of the Pickens County Library on Thursday. We had a speaker on the Martin-Marietta airplane factory.

We went to Athens, Georgia Friday and Saturday to see our grandson Philip and to attend a University of Georgia football game. It was great to see Philip, and Georgia clinched the eastern division of the South Eastern Conference.

Margie and Philip waiting to cheer the team

We had the monthly meeting of Friendship Force on Sunday. The program was about a foreign exchange student from Brazil at a nearby University.

I hope everyone else had a good week.