A year of celebrations

Bridge and Travels

We had high hopes of doing well in the Philadelphia World championships in the Mixed Pairs, Mixed Teams, or Senior Teams. We managed 27th in the Mixed Pairs, not terrible but not great, and 7th in the Senior Plate (the consolation event), and bombed in the Mixed Teams.

We only went to one Nationals this year, Reno in March. Kitty and Steve had no great successes together, one low overall: 11th in the NAOP. Steve finished 7th in the IMP pairs with Markland Jones. Kitty had a very nice women's team, including good friends Margie Gwozdzinski and Ann Labe plus a close friend of a friend, Pam Granovetter, whom Kitty played with half the time. They made the finals but sadly did not get an overall place.

Our regional wins kept pace with previous years but our point totals did not. A highlight of our Bridge travels was beating the O'Rourke team which included the best pair in the world - Meckstroth and Rodwell- in the finals of a regional KO on Kitty's birthday in San Diego. A good birthday present for a bridge player.

However that same weekend we experienced a serious earthquake; we were a few hundred miles from the epicenter of a 7.3 quake down in Mexico. So we left town in a hurry, not understanding that the epicenter was South and East of us, and we spent the night in El Centro. Needless to say, now we were about 15 miles from the epicenter of some large aftershocks. Bang bang bang went the motor home, up and down on the jacks, many times that night. Not an experience we care to repeat.

Well they say that those who can't play any more, write; so sure enough we are the new editors of the District 17 Bridge newsletter - catch the current D17 issue here

Friends and Family

We made a trip East again this year for Paul and Lindsay's wedding and the World Championships. So we stopped in Dubuque to see Dave, Rochester to see Aunt Trudi and the Beyer clan, and the Catskills to see Grace. As we were visiting Grace on Yom Kippur, Kitty chose to fast with Grace to honor her ancestors, and spent part of the day reading her SRF teachings. We reconnected with Steve's cousin Bernie and his wife Trish who live in Tivoli, NY; he is a retired Bard professor. Kitty was very impressed with the Gehry building at Bard. Also Trish introduced Kitty to the delights of a Kindle (Steve gave Kitty this for Xmas, although he didn't know it at the time) and using Skype on her PC.

Open Sky Web Design

Kitty's fantasy of working by the ocean within earshot of the waves was finally fulfilled when we returned to the state beach RV park in Ventura CA after the Reno nationals. Her Blackberry serves as a tether device providing 3G web access to her laptop when we travel. The days of searching for wifi networks while on the road are over!

We always have a CSU intern now. When one moves on, we get another. Plus several designers we call on for subcontracting.

We are still specializing in content management systems: Joomla and CMS made simple. This year we have added many more bridge related clients. We did the online payment for entries for the WBF tournament in Philadelphia. We are slightly reworking the ACBL home page to meet the technology committee's recommendations and have temporarily taken on the District 17 web site until a more permanent solution can be found. We also made new sites for old clients, NMRID.org and NAFWS.org plus several new and interesting sites Bridge Winners - an online community for tournament Bridge players and David Decides About Thumbsucking. All of these sites were done by our designers and interns with guidance from Kitty, who still does the custom programming, but has otherwise become a manager again.

Our Health

Steve's PSA fluctuated a bit and caused us some alarm but a second opinion plus what appears to be a stabilization at 0.03 have allayed our fears for now. Kitty learned the hard way not to get a pneumonia shot and a flu shot on the same day; she was in bed for two days sleeping that off.

The year ended on a very scary note when Kitty was thrown from a golf cart in the parking lot at the Palm Springs regional and hit her head. This resulted in a concussion, a small brain bleed, and many days in the hospital. She is lucky to be alive and it may be several months before she is back to normal.