2003 Christmas letter

Hello Everyone,

Here is part 2 of my 4-year gap in my Holiday letters. I promise not to get too far behind on these again. Although I wonder if anyone is really going to read them anyway now that they are going straight online and not being mailed out along with a Christmas card.

2003 started off with me having a job, living with my wife Maria, graduated from college, and still only having a motorcycle for transportation.

The year didn't begin so well due to the fact that in January my 1999 Honda CBR-600F4 was stolen while parked at work. I had just gone over 60K miles on it which is pretty impressive for a sport bike and I had hoped to continue on. With the money I received from the insurance I went and put it down on a new 2003 Honda Accord LX 4-door (family car). I still had an old '86 bike but it wasn't running all that great so I was stuck in the car most of the time. Just one more step of me settling down into family life I guess.

The next couple of months weren't very eventful as I recall, then in May we took a weekend trip up to Santa Barbara. We decided to ride the train up and it was a nice change of pace to do things without a car. Our hotel was across the street from the beach and a short walk to downtown. We also went horseback riding on the beach nearby and had a very nice relaxing time.

In June, we went to Maria's sister Nohemi's Baby shower. This was her second child, the first one was already 13 and had just arrived recently in the US after growing up in Guatemala. Jose's (new baby's father) family did a great job putting on the party with lots of great food and entertainment. Not to long after in July I attended the San Diego Comic-Con for a day with a ticket I got from my friend Kevin. This is one of the biggest conventions in the world and it is almost overwhelming to go for just one-day and I only got to see a glimpse of everything but it was still a great time.

It was time for some big changes and at the end of August I quit my job at NASI and started a new job at The Vendare Group in Sherman Oaks as a QA Tester. This was more like what I had been doing at eToys several years ago and it seemed like a better industry to be in with more future opportunities and room for growth. Around the same time we were house hunting and finally found a place that we liked and accepted our bid. So in September we moved into our 2-bedroom, 2 'bath, Townhome in Glendale only about 5 miles from where Maria's apartment was located. It is in a small complex with only 12 units and has a 2 car garage on the ground floor, the living room and kitchen on the second floor, and the 2 bedrooms on the third floor. There are a lot of stairs but it is a real comfortable place in a nice neighborhood.

We settled in and began decorating our new place over the next few months. In November, I had a small fender-bender at the entrance to the parking lot at work and was amazed at how easily modern cars are damaged in an accident. For Thanksgiving we had Maria's two sisters and brother over, which we would have never been able to do in the old tiny apartment. It was a lot of work getting everything ready but it was also nice to be able to sit down for a meal with everyone at once and feel like a family. Instead of turkey, it has become sort of a tradition to make chicken using a Salvadorian recipe with a tomato based sauce that turns out amazingly tasty.

In December we had several Christmas celebrations starting with my new jobs Holiday party which happened to be on the same day as my birthday. Next, Maria and I drove up to Hilmar to have an early Christmas with my parents, sister and nephew. This was the first time Maria had been up there and I got to show her one of the places I grew up and lived at in the past. After returning home we had another dinner with Maria's sister's and brother on Christmas Eve in our new townhome. Nohemi's new and cute baby, Jeffrey, was there again and of course he was the center of attention.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Love,
Bill