I have been married for over 38 years to Anita, from whom I stole a chair for my then main squeeze who had come to see me while my mother lay gravely ill in the little hospital where Anita was the weekend receptionist. Anita's main interest in me was as a means for meeting my brother, whom she did not know to be happily married. Ah, what a start! We have three wonderful children, one of them having married into the family, and two beautiful granddaughters.
I left my job at VisionAIR explicitly to move to Albuquerque, where our daughter had been trying for years to get us to move. "What?!!! Leave our beautiful Atlanta forest for the desert of New Mexico? We don't think so!" But cooler heads prevailed, and move we did. We love it here. When I step out in the morning to pick up my newspaper, I check out the mountain about ten miles east of us to see what it looks like this day. Every day it's different. And then, on the way home from church, on a clear day I can see Mt. Taylor, about 65 miles due west. Try that in Atlanta!
One of the hard things to give up moving from Atlanta to Albuquerque was the great choral music I had been involved in, both in the Michael O'Neal Singers and in the Roswell UMC Sancturary Choir. But all is not lost. Anita and I sang for a year in Quintessence, a small ensemble group with a great tradition, and one season with the Westside Community Chorale, when we produced Handel's Messiah with three other choruses and a professional orchestra. In the spring of 2008 I'll be singing John Rutter's Mass for the Children with the University Chorus, part of the Continuing Education program of University of New Mexico.
Albuqerque is rated by Men's Fitness Magazine as the fittest city in the USA. And one of the reasons for that is the incredible amount of outdoor activity--biking, hiking, geocaching--to be found here. Our son-in-law Gregg and I have enjoyed grabbing our Garmins and a couple of pages from Geocaching.com and heading out to the Sandias for a little hiking, a little puzzle solving, and a little male bonding. And just to put in a little plug, if you want to see what else there is about the Duke City to like, check out ItsATrip.