The Adventures of BJ and Tony Morris

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Christmas 2007

Dear Friends,

We hope this season finds you happy and healthy! We have had a very good year. Tony is still working at Lockheed Credit Union. BJ has had a slight change in employment. Worldspan was purchased by Travelpot, so she is doing the same job for a different company now. So far it is looking like a good change. She gets an extra week of vacation and some extra holidays! Just like Santa, we are getting older and fatter! The older we get, the more we understand why Santa makes a list and checks it twice. If he is anything like us, it is because he cannot remember anything anymore. The older we get, the more lists we make. We have grocery lists, address lists, task lists, packing lists… The lists go on and on… Here are a few of our lists from 2007: 

2007 Top Ten European Travel Highlights
10. Shannon, Ireland to look for retirement property in County Clare in January.
9.   Shannon, Ireland to look for retirement property in County Clare in February.
8.   Shannon, Ireland to meet with a Real Estate Agent and the Planning Commission in February.
7.   Shannon, Ireland to meet with an Architect in March.
6.   Venice, Italy with friends and then on to Limavady, Northern Ireland for a surprise birthday party in April.
5.   Shannon, Ireland to pay the Architect and look at other property in May.
4.   Vienna, Austria with friends in May and again in July to rent bicycles and ride to Budapest, Hungary.
3.   Dublin, Ireland with a friend to celebrate her 60th birthday in August.
2.   Frankfurt, Germany to attend our daughter’s mother’s wedding in October.
1.   Amsterdam, Netherlands for Thanksgiving with our niece and nephew.

2007 Top 10 Domestic Travel Highlights
10. New Orleans, Louisiana with friends for a Muffletta in March.
9.   DelRay Beach, Florida with a friend to celebrate her 40th birthday in May.
8.   New Bern, North Carolina to look for retirement property on Pamlico Sound in June.
7.   Amelia Island, Florida to the Worldspan Golf Tournament in July.
6.   St. George Island, Florida to visit friends in August.
5.   Raleigh, North Carolina to visit our nephew and drive to the coast to look at property in September.
4.   Phoenix, Arizona to the Delta Ladies’ Golf Tournament in September.
3.   Dauphin, Alabama to a friend’s beach house to celebrate her 50th birthday in October.
2.   Richland, Georgia to judge the Pig Fest BBQ Contest in November.
1.   Hartwell, Georgia to a family wedding in November.

2007 Top Carribean Travel Highlight
1.  Tortola, BVI with 9 friends to visit a friend who lives there in August

2007 Top 10 Friends and Family Highlights
10. Niece Lauren played Shelby in her school’s production of Steel Magnolias (and did a better job than Julia Roberts!)
9.   Nephew Jonathan graduated from North Georgia College in May and married his high school sweetheart two weeks later.
8.   Great niece-dog Roxy was adopted by Jonathan and Megan.
7.   Niece Emma became a teenager and got her first cell phone!
6.   Cousin Lora married her beau Kelly. They met at a Hoschton City Council meeting!
5.   German daughter Carina’s birth mother got married. Carina came to visit us twice this year! 
4.   Friends Clay and Jenny got married. Actor Edward Hermann was at the wedding!
3.   Nephew Jared joined Sigma Chi Fraternity and completed his first year at North Georgia College (living in an apartment on his own!).
2.   Niece Lauren was on the Homecoming Court for the 2nd year in a row!
1.   Tony’s mom had a car accident and totaled her car but thankfully she is okay!

2007 Top 20 Lessons Learned
1.   Tivo is good; a big screen TV so you can read the Tivo menu is better. Each member of a couple should have their own remote. It solves the problem when one person walks out of the room and leaves the remote out of reach.
2.   A small lightweight laptop is essential for travel. It’s important not to drop it. Also, hugging a laptop that smells like burned plastic and crying will bring it back to life. It would be better not to plug in the wrong power supply.
3.   Just because you can surf the internet from your phone in a foreign country doesn’t mean you should. $.04/KB doesn’t seem like much until you find that you’ve used 9216KBs. If you’re not good at math, that is about $370.00!
4.   An Irishman might run you off the road, but he’ll pull you out of the ditch.
5.   It is a small world. Keep your eyes open – you might see someone you know at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Ireland is an even smaller world. Everyone there knows each other.
6.   It is nearly impossible for an American to get planning permission to build a house in Ireland.
7.   Sometimes insurmountable obstacles are good things. It is best not to own a house near the Shannon Airport if the airline on which you have benefits no longer flies there.
8.   The Euro is really strong against the dollar. The pound is even stronger.
9.   It is very crowded in St. Mark’s Square in Venice on Easter.
10. Rental car insurance is always a problem in Ireland, but enough arguing will get you what you want.
11. It is really hot in Vienna in May and hotels rarely have air conditioning. Take a small battery operated fan. You probably won’t be able to sleep naked if you are sharing a room with other people.
12. If your digital camera or DVD player stops working, try dropping it from a 6” height onto a solid surface. It works! REALLY! And if it doesn’t what do you have to lose, it wasn’t working anyway.
13. Never, never, never try to take a bicycle loaded with a backpack up an escalator. Who needs a tattoo when the steps of an escalator make such an interesting looking scar?
14. Don’t consolidate multiple people’s duty free items into a single box for ease of transport. Customs doesn’t like that.
15. Don’t turn your car around in a field across from where the owner has been relaxing with a case of beer in his above-ground pool with his buddies all afternoon.
16. Cows have no upper teeth. A cow lounging in the road might be a bull, look for the bling before deciding to get in the car with a Tortolan.
17. The ocean water in Tortola is so salty that you can float without a flotation device!
18. When attending a German wedding, just laugh politely when everyone else laughs.
19. Don’t rely on the English side of a Dutch website. You will wind up in Rotterdam when the Ark is in Sliedrecht.
20. Don’t wait until the last minute to write your Christmas letter! We learn this lesson every year but it never sticks!

Merry Christmas to You and Yours!

BJ and Tony
www.bjandtony.com
bjandtony@bjandtony.com

 www.bjandtony.com
bjandtony@bjandtony.com