xmascard 08: credits, comments, ani and bob news for
2008
- Notes:
Ani quit her dream job as a talented analytical chemist in Big Pharma 5 minutes from home after enduring
an
office bully supervisor situation that she got stuck with after an ugly
re-organization. The Monday morning after our fall break return from Provo
island, Turks and Caicos. [ani's Villanova Masters in Chemistry brought her
and bob together.]
bob is suffering from boomeritis? A right shoulder rotator cuff tear occurs
traveling to Rome after doubling the statin dose in January (simvastatin =
zocor). Before the MRI bob tries the conservative approach with physical
therapy, but ends up with more pain and reawakens the 14 year old left
shoulder rotator cuff problem. Then his left hip becomes chronically
weak/painful. The MRI reveals a small tear convincing bob to go for the
surgery. For a split second, he then felt the beginning warning weakness in
the right hip. Sending bob to Google to read about the muscle/joint pain
side effects, and stop the cholesterol meds to see if the pain will go away.
Just in time for the surgery. Forcing early action on the Christmas card
sketching. Done by December 10. Under the knife: December 11.
meanwhile greed in the financial world built on tricky (deceitful even)
balloon mortgages and unregulated unstable financial instruments collapses
the economy, with the biggest wave of bank foreclosure on homes since The
Depression.
To meet the early deadline, we did some partial sketch tracing. The
dog was used in
xmas87, itself ripped off from
Idleness is the Devil's Workshop
Sketchbook (1981). The Santa came from
xmas2001. The reindeer from
xmas2005. Recycled imagination.
The signoff "hope, love, compassion" was ripped off from recent junk
mail from Witness for Peace.
- Photos:
front and back photos of ani and bob dressed up
(Nicole Miller and Joseph Aboud, purchased before the income reduction) for
friend
George Coyne's Mendel Award Dinner September 2008.
back casual photo fall break October 2008.
back food photo of December
lasagna.
- Remembrances:
so many people took a hit this year all over
the world, there should have been some, but where to start?
Etc.:
- The color of the paper this year was ivory.
- This annual enterprise was sent out to over 500 recipients all over the
world. There was no time to cull the list before label creation. Next
time...
- Postscript:
Bob's surgery recovery was only hard the first few weeks and the difficult
process of getting the arm working again went much faster than feared
although at 2 months it is still only partway there. However, the hip
remained problematic, maybe the statin side effect is unrelated, maybe not,
who knows, this is difficult to diagnose.
After 20 years as a wage slave in the pharmaceutical industry, Ani has taken
a "sabbatical" from work and is taking Spring Semester Italian II at
Villanova free as a faculty spouse, having skipped the Fall Semester Italian
I (she was still working), which requires some effort to catch up by
simultaneously ingesting the first half of the textbook. Big Pharma giant
Pfizer bought Ani's former employer Wyeth (before GSK), promising to throw
thousands more chemists out of work in the philly area, making the prospect
of finding a job befitting her talents increasingly remote for the
foreseeable future. As if things weren't bad enough in that industry before
the financial collapse!
Congratulations! No one ever reads our news and you made it to the very end.