We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a better 2021.

This year started out so well, but things sure turned south thereafter.

Friends and Family

In January, Kitty's brother Shipley had a meeting in San Diego so was able to come and stay with us. It was great fun to finally show him our home here. It has such a fabulous view, many flowers, fruit trees, and San Diego weather (except for the hot summers says Steve).

In early February, after living here for eight years, Kitty finally visited the San Diego Safari Park with girlfriends (left to right) Chris, Carole, (Kitty), and Lynne.

She loved it so much that when Sally Woolsey and her children and grandchildren came to San Diego a few weeks later, Kitty went again! Sally treated us all to the hippopotamus experience, which was amazing.

Grandchildren

Kitty misses her grandchildren Jack and Julie. No live hugs this year, just video visits every weekend.

Her son Paul and family decamped for the duration to Bellport, Long Island, where they bought a summer home at the end of June. Trying to work from home with a three and a four year old underfoot was very difficult for Lindsay and Paul, but the move to a big house let her parents, Cathy and Marc Nathan, shelter with them and provide copious child care.

Travels

One of Kitty's conferences (i4GG on DNA) was moved to the first weekend of February from its usual slot in December. Little did we know this would be the last live conference of the year for Kitty. Since it was only TWO days and in Las Vegas, Steve and Kyndra went along too and we stayed in the motel we had enjoyed the year before during the Bridge Nationals (Steve says he doesn't remember enjoying any National in recent years). We love Vegas for the buffets and shows.

At the end of February we went to Tucson for our yearly Bridge tournament there, as well as to visit with good friends Adrienne and Bill.

Health

On March 2, Kitty had a fever and a splitting headache, so we went home early from the Tucson tournament. She spent two weeks mainly in bed, congested, with constant headaches, tired, drinking ginger lemon tea. Steve of course was fine as he never gets a cold.

After a few weeks, we discovered that we had been exposed to COVID at the tournament. A Colorado bridge club had had a serious outbreak, and several players died, but no one knew that at the time of the Tucson tournament. A number of the players from that club were at that tournament, and a player we had played against for 20 minutes was later diagnosed with COVID (he recovered). No tests were available in California at that time for people who did not need hospitalization.

It was weeks before Kitty felt fully better. She had lingering issues with shortness of breath and congestion. Her later antibody tests were inconclusive, so we will never know if she really had it. Her ENT doctor thought so from the symptoms we described when he did a tele-appointment for a later ear infection.

Steve's ongoing battle with prostate cancer that has spread to his bones took a turn for the worse in May and his fierce back pain came back. That same month a new drug that had been in use for several years for breast cancer (and others) got approved for advanced prostate cancer. It targets Steve's faulty BRCA2 gene in the cancer. Steve started this new drug in June. It was working beautifully until recently. However his doctor thinks maybe only one nodule is not responding while the rest are, so focal radiation may fix the issue. We still drive up to Los Angeles every 3-4 months to see this oncologist.

The Lockdown

We had self quarantined out of an abundance of caution on return from Tucson in early March, even before the San Diego lockdown. Kitty made her own hand sanitizer from the aloe and alcohol she happened to have in stock and ordered lots of cute masks from Etsy. Kitty learned to use ZOOM to run her garden club meetings.

We started using Imperfect Foods for vegetable deliveries and Instacart for the local supermarket. Our friend Wirt picked us up a few other things at Costco and a neighbor gave us some toilet paper (nice neighbor!). Eventually when things opened up a little for a while in the summer, Kitty did some careful masked shopping at Costco and Home Depot (high ceilings = good airflow) and Steve got a haircut, He has now grown a goatee!

Steve has pointed out that his life has hardly changed except that Kitty no longer drags him out to play bridge once a week. Now she drags him off to walk or drive by the ocean every few weeks when she needs to get out of the house. Kyndra loves those car rides!

The only time we see other people is from a safe distance when we are out walking our dog, a daily activity. We did have one beach walk and outdoor brunch with Lynne when things were more open. Also, we have had a few video calls with various far away friends

Bridge

Soon after that fateful Tucson tournament, all live Bridge tournaments were cancelled for the rest of the year We tried playing bridge online at BBO but did not like it much, so cut back and mainly practiced our bidding and did play problems there.

Since bridge tournaments were the main funding for District 17 whose online Bridge magazine we were paid to edit, they cancelled it. We were ready to retire from doing it anyway, as we were underpaid for the amount of work that went into it. Naturally Kitty blogged about it on her bridge blog - bridgeteaching.com/2020/12/end-of-an-era/

Our 20th anniversary

We celebrated our 20th anniversary quietly at home with Thai food courtesy of Uber Eats [Get $20 off your first order at Uber Eats and we get something too. Use eats-kittyc248ue at checkout. N.B. The Instacart and Imperfect Foods links above are also affiliate links where we both get a deal.]

DNA

Kitty has presented DNA talks online using various platforms for the IAJGS and CAGGNI conferences. She is now working feverishly on her self recorded Rootstech talks due December 31.

She continues to help people with their unknown parentage issues using DNA, and often finds interesting twists and turns. For example in her own family, Kitty is fairly certain, from DNA relative matching, that her great great grandfather Jorgen Wold, born 10 years before his parents married, was not the son of his father of record. Click here for that story; the research is ongoing.

Videos

Kitty has been learning to use a free video editor called OpenShot, experimenting first with the Lakeside Garden Club Zoom recordings. Next up after the Rootstech talks will be all those home movies that she had converted to MP4 format long since. This includes a Lee family home movie, presumably made in about 1923 based on the ages of the children. That is the year when Kodak first introduced the 16mm format for home movies (original here - kittymunson.com/movies/HHLeeXmas.mp4 ). Her dad told her who everyone was but that audio was on an iPad that inexplicably stopped working. Hopefully Kitty's memory will be up to the task of providing audio.

Goodbye 2020, We Won't Be Missing You Even a Little Bit

It has been a difficult year. Fortunately for us there have been no COVID deaths in our immediate families, but we have friends who have lost parents and cousins. However it is not surprising that many of us do not personally know anyone who has died of it, since most of our circles are only a few hundred at best.

Here's wishing for a far better year next year, for us all!