Annual Report for 1998
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Hargrove Annual Report for the Year: 1998

Snail Mail: 6100 Bend of River
Austin, TX 78746-7201
Phone: (512) 327-5611

1998 proved to be another fine year: Jim and Linda traveled to places near and far and passed a modest birding milestone; Charles made a surprise move; and Claire, well Claire studied a lot.

Jim and Linda’s Travels:

It seems as though each long weekend was an excuse for another trip this year. We began in April, right after Easter, with a long trip down the coast, starting in High Island and finishing in McAllen with friends Peter and Elaine Bono and Dodge and Lorna Engleman. Lots of good birds, a great spring outing.

Over the Fourth of July, we went to the Davis Mountains, for some more birding, some good celebration in Fort Davis, and excellent food at the Veranda Bed and Breakfast. There, we finally tallied two birds that had eluded us for years: Montezuma Quail (see picture) and Zone-tailed Hawk. We failed to see the Elf Owl for the nth time, but did get a look at a herd of about 40 javelinas, including several young. Fort Davis is a great place to go in the summer. It’s a lot cooler than Austin.

Labor Day found us in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where we visited our former foster children, Rosalind and Bubba, and Rosalind’s children. The motel swimming pool was a popular attraction. Managed half a day of birding and sightseeing and almost missed our plane home. Traffic on the Interstate was a harrowing 70mph bumper-to-bumper drive.

Thanksgiving we went to Dallas to cook dinner for Claire. She found out at the last minute that she wasn’t on call over the weekend, so we had a great time. Along with plenty of eating, we indulged in computer animation, starting with Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, then Dreamworks’ Antz for comparison. We liked A Bug’s Life so much we rented the video of Toy Story for further comparison. Jim won the family game of hearts on the last hand, when Claire dumped the Queen on Charles.

Our big trip of the year was another tour with VENT to Cape Town and Madagascar in late October – early November.

Cape Town: We stopped off in Cape Town on the way to Madagascar. What a beautiful place! The climate is wonderful, reminiscent of California, but with a strong wind, "the Cape Doctor," that blows away all the smog. We spent two days in the Cape area enjoying a magnificent hotel and restaurant, Hotel Alphen. It’s a converted farmhouse built about the turn of the last century. The building we stayed in was dated 1906. We both tallied our 2000th bird the first full day there. Jim’s was the Zitting Cisticola, a birder’s delight. It is a small gray-brown bird identified mainly by call. Linda’s was a Pin-tailed Whydah, a spectacular species with flowing ribbon-like tail feathers.

Madagascar: Our first view of Madagascar from the window of the plane was not promising. Red barren hills of the southeastern desert stretched to the horizon, reminding us of the surface of Mars. When we landed, the pervasive odor of wood smoke reinforced the message from friends, "Go before it’s too late." The forests are being converted to ash, the hills cleared for firewood, as overpopulation claims another victim. Madagascar split from the rest of Africa 160 million years ago, when the super-continent Gondwanaland broke up. The island’s long isolation gives it a unique ecology: 80% of the plants and animals found there are endemic, found nowhere else on earth. The African mainland has one species of Baobab tree; Madagascar has twelve. Over 1000 species of orchids can be found on the island. The island has five endemic families of birds, and of course, the only surviving lemurs in the world. We sampled as much as we could, reveling in the chance to see 11 different lemurs, several chameleons, strange flowers and trees, and 144 different species of birds.

Linda still loves her job as a nurse practitioner for two family practice docs in south Austin. Jim confesses to be amazed that someone could like the same job for so many years. She has taken to mentioning her status as breadwinner a bit more often than last year. She remains active in the Austin Area Nurse Practitioners Alliance. She managed to pass along responsibility for the newsletter by accepting a position as recording secretary. Jim helps out a little with the membership list. She is still active in the Lost Creek Book and Gossip Society, especially when the book is by Barbara Kingsolver.

Jim loves his life in semi-retirement. He spends mornings studying the stock market, which consists mainly in watching Linda’s stock picks hit new highs while his languish. Linda has never forgiven him for selling Amazon.com for a quick profit. He spends his afternoons endlessly revising his novel, a rambling murder mystery about a socially inept computer wizard and his super-birder friend. Jim’s tennis game improved after he had his eyes fixed by LASIK surgery. He has reached a plateau where he is competitive with people old enough to be his father.

Charles visited us in Austin, where he fenced in the Nationals, coming in respectably in the middle of the pack despite having the entire family watching. Something about Austin must have appealed to him, because on August 30, he strolled into the family room unexpectedly and announced that he was moving back. He stayed with us temporarily, but will be in his own digs by the time you read this letter. He and Jim set up another computer in the office and managed to network both to the Internet using a cable modem, a feat of mind-boggling complexity. Charles now has a job thinking up questions for Trivial Pursuit. If you think you’re good at TP, drop us a line and we’ll send you some questions rejected as too difficult. When not working on trivia, Charles keeps busy transcribing letters George Egan Ward, great-great-great-uncle. The letters describe his adventures in Alaska during the 1898 Gold Rush, from which he never returned.

Claire continues to slog her way through medical school at Southwestern in Dallas. Whenever we try to talk to her on the phone, she is either studying or trying to catch up on sleep. She is now into her rotations and is quickly discarding specialties as each one comes up. Psychiatry: Those people are crazy! OB: Too many children having children. Medicine: Six patients with liver problems! I’m a liver magnet. We are waiting for an assessment of Pediatrics, Surgery and Family Practice. Claire now complains that the school is her life and Princess Moonbeam, her cat, is her Significant Other. Somehow, she managed to work trips to Seattle, San Francisco, and Portugal into her schedule, all using the kind of cut-rate deal she always finds.

Hope you have all had a happy holiday season. Thanks for waiting patiently for this annual letter. Come see us anytime!

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