The Card

About the pictures
The Texas capitol with this year's Christmas tree and fireworks. It never happened but should have. It's cobbled together from a couple of photos. Sometimes we need to see beyond the real to dream of what is possible.

The one below is what's inside the card..

Shannon and I don't do a lot for Christmas. This year, we're hosting a friend and his daughter for dinner, and we've given money here and there for worthy causes that impact our local community. And since it's a lean, scary year, that's about it.

No presents to speak of. We only bought something for Shannon's nephew. He's autistic, and his birthday is also Christmas day, so he gets short-changed usually. He doesn't understand that hard times mean no presents, so I put together something special for him.

The one thing that we do, and hope to continue doing, is Christmas cards. They're also locally oriented. Some go to people around the country, but the majority stay here in the area. For the people that live somewhere else, I want to show them what Christmas is like here in Austin and why I love living here so much. For those in the metro area, my goal is to remind them of the beauty all around them.

It's not much, I realize, but people seem to appreciate the effort that went into it. And if they had seen Shannon laboriously signing all 80 of them, they'd appreciate it even more.

Now, it's time to start planning next year's