xmascard 07: credits, comments

• Notes:
  Bad news from the US toy industry in China this year just in time for a Christmas card theme. Of course nobody will go on trial for outsourcing all those jobs leaving ordinary American working people worse off than ever.
  
  Of course the real world class criminals will never go on trial. They are part of the power arm of the so called justice system. People like Bush, Cheney, Kissinger.
  
  There are not even enough people working for the US government toy oversight agency to fill a jury, compared to thousands of people in China overseeing their American outsourced toy industry.
   
• The trial aspect of this year's card theme came to bob as the US Federal District Court Jury Duty system had him in its crosshairs, pulled the trigger 2 weeks before Christmas, and the gun misfired—a Christmas miracle! Freed after 4 hours rather than trapped in some long trial possibly far from Philadelphia. After a relatively pleasant experience of serving 6 days in May for a malpractice trial in the local county system. We let the doctor off.
   
• Oh yeah, global warming. Our theme from last year bears fruit: Al Gore gets the Nobel Peace prize. World conferences seem to get serious about the next step after the Kyoto accords. Naturally the US is still dragging its feet.
   
• Finally we got to see the film Ratatouille about a rat chef in Paris named Remi, pretty cute, so he became the lawyer in Santa on trial.
   
• Photos:
  An unusual (for us) Thanksgiving Day long walk in the cold for exercise while a more ambitious in-law went running. The cute deer are actually potential unwilling but deadly suicide attackers on the nearby roads—the ongoing clash of civilization and Nature which for the moment Nature seems to be losing, but in the long run...we are probably toast.
  
  New Year's Eve was spent as our last night of a week long all-inclusive Christmas to New Year's Day beach vacation in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. The black flag wave situation kept us in the beautiful swimming pool instead of the sea/ocean. The food was pretty good.
  
  We experienced a weather miracle the first two weeks of July when ani came to Italy to join bob and we spent a week touring Ponza, Amalfi, Positano, Capri and Naples, including nearby Ercolano, the other Pompei, with spring-like temperatures, blue sky and sun instead of the usual July heat and humidity typical of this part of Italy.
  
  Upon our return we were actually able to find an outside table at a relatively authentic Italian restaurant in Westchester, PA called Limoncello Ristorante, a theme which characterized our Amalfi coastal journey, photo by our dinner partners John and Gulnur.
  
  One photo that did not make the cut for the back page this year was our return from Rome import photo. Figuring prominently in the photo is the Perugina Nero Frutti delle Americhe dark chocolate covered cashews, Brazil nuts and almonds. A product to die for (chocolate nut lovers only) but not available in the US a year after their discovery in the Fiumicino Duty Free shops. 3 packages impulse snatched in summer 2006. 15 in summer 2007. then bob made a special trip over after Thanksgiving to pick up 10 more packages. Mostly to give away to friends and family. We're nice people...
  
  who by the way are still cooking and baking...see our ongoing not quite food blog.
   
• Remembrances:
  Ebony Nicole, 14 year old daughter of Evan (who works for Villanova's IT department and was a math major alumnus from bob's department at Villanova), and an innocent casualty of America's unfortunate everyday violence who had such a promising future, cut short by an insane event.
  
  Etc.:
• The color of the paper this year was ultra lemon that sort of goes with the limoncello theme of our summer excursion to the Amalfi coast, remembered with a local visit to a restaurant with that name.
  The stamp was again the lavender wedding stamp but now 41 cents, again no real Love stamp available at the new rate. For international mailings we are now doing the generic 90 cent stamp.
  For the first time we found (special order) peel and seal envelopes (at twice the cost of the usual ones) to make the final step easier in the production process.
   
• This annual enterprise to sent out to about 460 recipients all over the world now costs over 400 some bucks for photocopying, envelopes, stamps, address labels and return addresses. Confirming our negative profit status. Sure it would be better spent helping some just cause, but this is still the price of bob's desire to stay in contact with a lot of good people.