News from CA

Most of our news here isn't about here. Dara just arrived in TN this morning. G'pa Dick is back in the hospital w/pneumonia. Randy&family are on a plane to Russia for a two week trip, initially to hook up with Kate's graduating class back there. Garrett is in Ottawa, returning tomorrow. He attended Jody's prom up there. Kyla is back working at the same lab at Stanford, being paid this time, and trying to play polo with the Stanford club as much as possible. She's captain of the women's polo team for the coming year. Dara and I had a brief stint as empty nesters, as dutifully reported on the Beatty Blog. But, all good things must come to an end ;). Seriously, it is great to have Kyla and Garrett around for the summer, and we keep wondering whether it will be the last one. We're still trying to figure out some kind of family trip to do before time runs out. I recently returned from a trip to India. You can check out some of the pictures here.

I know what you mean about "Is this thing on?" You know, Paige, I enjoyed the initial Beatty Blog exchanges enough to do the same with the Harris side of the family. I figured everyone was online, so it would be a great way to keep in touch. However, it's mostly boiled down to a few people contributing. Surprisingly, my brother in Front Royal, who has never been much of an online person, has been the most active besides me. My father refuses even to sit in front of the computer, but my tech savvy mother ends up printing it out for him. He's been in pretty bad shape, so it has been a way to keep in touch, and he enjoys it. My personal opinion is that if people aren't in the habit of what I would call "casual posting" -- making frequent posts commenting on stuff you read, trivial things that happened, etc -- then you start to feel this pressure to say something significant, and it becomes less of a way to keep in touch and turns into more of a "Christmas letter" forum. And it's definitely hard to keep up a one-way conversation on an ongoing basis :). As much as I gently prod people about posting, for some people it just seems to be more of a burden and less of a fun thing to do. It's a bit of a chicken and egg thing, though. If someone posts often, others will chime in -- as long as anyone is reading, and I know people here read it! I'm also sure Dara will (once again) set up G'Pa Dick's computer so he can find the blog, which he seems to have trouble doing.