(IT'S NOW A) HAPPY NEW YEAR

Though things are now going well, the new year did not have an auspicious start. Jill, Gabriel and I all contracted a strain of the Norwalk virus on New Year's Day. We're not completely sure of how we got it, but we have theories. The critical issue is how frighteningly quickly and stealthily it passed on to others. I can see how this virus would wreak serious havoc on a cruise ship, the commonly associated venue for infections.

Gramma Judy, Gramma Dianne, Andrea and Jim Ed all contracted the illness due to their contact with us, most likely Gabriel, immediately after our New Year's Day exposure. The virus is passed through vomit or feces and, well, Gabriel is quite the manufacturer of both. Contact with him and his spit-up is what likely passed the virus onto others. Luckily, Charlotte and John were spared the malady.

In all, it took roughly three days to near-fully recover from most symptoms. Dehydration was the longest-lasting problem with associated headaches and weakness. Some have reported residual intestinal distress several days following, but mildly so. I missed two (and a half) days of work and worked from home another full day just so I wouldn't possibly pass it on to coworkers, particularly Jerry because Sue is in her third trimester, plus Emma and Henry are particularly vulnerable.

All is much better now, though, and things seem to be normalizing. We're now hand-washing Nazis when it comes to contact with food (we were that way before - 3rd world travel!) but particularly before and after playing with Gabriel.

Happy New Year!

MOM & DAD MOVE INTO HILLSBORO

The move from the Vancouver apartment was quite a success and a day early to boot. The biggest bonus, however, was the fact that Jim Ed and Andrea volunteered to help with the move and contributed greatly to its speed and ease.

Between 9am and 3pm, about 95% was loaded and moved to Hillsboro, though we did run into heavy rain during the drive over. Unloaded was a cinch, but we did get the tail end of the showers moving through. The wettest part was loading our nice, Tigard washer and dryer set into the UHaul. All in all, it was a great success. We had a barbecue dinner (Reo's Ribs - good pork ribs, shoe leather chicken) that night, but unfortunately, that is likely when the virus was passed. Sorry!

Mom's still moving in, just got her Dish Network yesterday and is waiting on Dad's return for more heavy lifting. Congrats on the new home!

I still don't have the new address (SE Maple in Hillsboro, OR 97123) and neither have I their new phone number immediately handy.

FAMILY DINNERS

We had a very nice dinner Monday night at Jin Wah in Beaverton courtesy of Charlotte Wachdorf. Jin Wah is our favorite Chinese restaurant.. The owners are an ethnically Chinese couple from Vietnam, so fresh Vietnamese and Cantonese style food, particularly seafood and all day dim sum (yum cha, actually), is on the menu in addition to standard Szechuan and Hunan cuisine. Their dim sum is the closest in quality and variety to what we enjoyed on our trip to Hong Kong last year.

After dinner, we returned to our house for a game of Rummy Dum-Dum (Wachdorf tradition). Koke managed to win, apparently his second in a row "Boston Redsox win again!"

We'll likely all return to Jin Wah in the near future: Charlotte admitted that even though they didn't have Egg Fu Young on the menu, she enjoyed everything about her meal. That's saying something.

Last night, Gramma Dianne came over for Shepherd's Pie (Cottage Pie, technically) and to visit little Gabriel. She had endured an all-day satellite TV installation - was he union?

We had a nice dinner and Gabriel enjoyed his Gramma's visit. He giggled and laughed quite a bit for her, so that was fun.

HEADED TO THE O.C.:
MAKE THAT A 2X2 ANIMAL STYLE WITH A SHAKE

I've been given a quick job to do in Santa Ana, Orange County and will be down there at the end of the week. I'll overnight Thursday and head back on Friday evening. I'm looking at the residential market in Santa Ana. Should be fun, though I'm interested to see how many stops at In N Out I can make.

JILL HEARS FROM VANESSA

Jill's old friend and matron of honor Vanessa called last week to chat and catch up. She's starting a new career in Los Angeles working her way up to do make-up and fashion design, a long-time ambition. Jill was quite excited and hopes to talk to her more in the future and do more catching up. They go way back, the extent to which there are photos from high school that Jill won't even let me see.

Congratulations and best of luck on your new endeavors, Vanessa.

ANOTHER ROOT CANAL

Tom emailed to say that pain and suffering have not been monopolized in Hillsboro. He had to have a root canal redone because of infection risk to his jaw. I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say he's happy it's all over with and recovery is ensured.

GAY MARRIAGE AND PARENTING

Although Mass. and San Francisco get a lot of gay marriage press, the fact is that Oregon, specifically Multnomah County (Portland) issued many gay marriage licenses prior to the November election. Our own Measure 36 abolished the practice. People flew in from all over the country to take part in the County's politically corrupt experiment.

Who marries whom is an important debate, but I find it a bit of a distraction from the real issue: children and child-rearing. I firmly believe that a male father and a female mother is the God-ordained and biologically-intended family structure for reproduction of our species. Arguments to the contrary are, in my opinion, nothing more than self-absorbed claptrap disguised as a humanist, egalitarian civil rights movement (ask the Black community what they think of the civil rights comparisons!) that has nothing to do with the welfare of children and everything to do with the politics of homosexual self-esteem.

But aren't there studies that suggest homosexual parents are either just as good or better than heterosexual parents you say?

Why yes, but as this article so ably explains, those studies have come under harsh criticism from not only conservative critics of homosexual family structures but also noted social scientists that support alternative family structures.

The bottom line is that respected social scientists from both camps on the issue find previous research on welfare of children with gay parents to have no real scientific merit (read: not objective, not reliable, likely designed to have a pre-determined outcome) and must be viewed with strong skepticism.

In fact, "research" to date has focused on male-female parents where one was actually gay and pursued that sexuality after marriage and the children came along. Disclosure, participant bias, absence of control groups, unreliable data and unreliable resulting analysis predominate. There is also little to no real study of the effects of out-and-out same-sex couples, the hot topic of the marriage debate.

Check out the article and decide for yourself.. at the very least, the real debate is in extremely early stages and pro- arguments have extremely little merit even in the eyes of sympathetic scientists.