Pre-Holiday Update 2002

Hi All,

Wow, it's been a long time since we've sent out a photoessay/update. I guess the primary reason is lameness on the part of Jay, but running a close second was the loss of our camera (with lots of pictures :-() during our summer trip to Florida.

What you won't see from that trip includes: Demaris & Jay lounging on Cocoa Beach. Pat & Steve visiting with Jay & Demaris at Disney. Pictures of Disney's Animal Kingdom Park (although you can see some nice pictures taken by Shari & Louis from their trip to Animal Kingdom in 1998 here.) You'll also miss the summer pictures of Jay's garden including the pictures of the 4' potato plants before the potato blight hit. The plants came down with Verticillium, (see the section on Wilt diseases) a particularly nasty virus that stays in the soil for up to 7 years. It appears that our "disease-free" potato seed this year was infected with it.

So otherwise what have we been doing? Demaris has been busy actualizing at Safeco and has now passed test #3. When last reported Jay had just ended his employment with FBI's Most Wanted #14. The long and the short is that Jay been mostly unemployed, although keeping somewhat busy doing consulting work. Sadly, the WA economy and jobless rate is the worst in the country at 7.9% last count. It's difficult to the point of almost impossible to get an interview these days. Jay's had exactly 1 interview for a job (where they were actually hiring and paying money) with well over 1000 applications submitted. There are always possibilities on the horizon but it's hard to be too optimistic considering the numbers to date.

This postcard will include pictures taken with the new camera we purchased for our anniversary. The new camera is going to take a while to master-- in addition to providing increased resolution there are lots of new features which allow us to attempt photos that we'd never have tried before and so it's going to take a while for the new photographic skills to develop. Most importantly we now have the ability to capture video. You'll get the chance to see our first attempts herein.

As for content, you'll see pictures from our trip to Ancient Egypt/Las Vegas, pictures from a celebration at Frank & Judy's as well as a few assorted images we wanted to share with you. We hope you enjoy them,

Demaris & Jay


Jay and Demaris with the new camera.


Seen above is the "Winter Artichoke" in our garden. It's actually just a regular artichoke but it didn't grow all summer, however since the first freeze (about a month ago) it decided to triple in size. It's now about 18' high. To the right is a Thyme and behind the artichoke are two Broccoli plants starting to flower (mostly obscured.)


One other garden shot, a Brussels Sprout plant. Although I can't stand eating "little green balls of death" as plants they're really neat to grow. As you can see the sprouts grow out of the joint between the leaf branch and the main plant, as the plant grows up the leaves/branches at the lower levels fall off leaving only the top level of leaves at the top. The sprouts remain and grow even after their surrounding branches have fallen off. Sadly brussels sprout plants don't really like the cold/wet weather and it looks like we won't get a crop of sufficient size due to late blooming.


Ramen. Now you might ask "Why a picture of Ramen?" But that would be silly. Everyone knows that Ramen is tasty, cheap and Jay has a long history with Ramen. This history includes: The "Ramen Wars" with Cub Foods of 1990, an attempt to get Cub Foods to provide a modicum of customer service, which after 2 weeks resulted in the store manager's capitulation and violating company policy by changing a shelf tag with a Sharpie. The great stock-up of 1991 where we attempted to fill an entire apartment floor to ceiling with Ramen, and we can't forget Bill and Jay's attempt to see how many months one can survive off of nothing but Ramen dishes - Ramen & Kudzu was probably the greatest creation to result from this experiment.


Now, Brad being familiar with Jay's deep love of salt-flavored Noodles* visited the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum when he was in Japan. And he brought back a sampler of "gourmet" Ramen. This Ramen isn't anything like the Ramen that Cup of Noodles or Maruchan sells. Instead of a packet of Salt to flavor some old dried noodles, this Ramen had a liquid pouch and noodles that were akin to the fresh noodles that you buy at a Gourmet Foods store (but vacuum packed.) We actually didn't know what to do with the pouch at first. In case you're wondering the liquid is a broth concentrate that you prepare like soup, independent of the Ramen to allow the removal of excess noodle starch during preparation. Some of the boxes even had herb packets with non-salt herbs!

This has of course opened up a new world of Ramen for Demaris and Jay to explore. This "Brave New World of Ramen" has led us to the 100s of brands of Ramen available at Uwajimaya ranging in price from $.19 to almost $4/packet. If you don't have a convenient Asian Grocery (say you live in the middle of Missouri) and are interested in an exciting new hobby, we recommend you visit the Ramen Depot.


A souvenir from a trip to Eugene to attend Gerd's (now Dr. Gerd) defense. As always Eugene never fails to exceed one's expectations. As you can see nothing's changed since we left. Not even the math skills. (2 X $6.50 is not equal to $10.00. But then perhaps in "Eugene Script" it is.)

To Ancient Egypt!

*Ramen packets often claim to be Chicken, Beef, Shrimp, etc. flavored. In fact, the only flavor they have is salt flavor.