Happy New Year! Well, it's almost as if 2000 was just another year, isn't it? For all the ex- citement and Y2K panic that we lived through at this time last year we might have thought that 2000 was going to be different. I'm not sure about you but it seemed like any other year to me except for the fact that I kept writing 199_wherever I needed to fill in a date. Quick study that I am, I was able to avoid this by about July. But,now that I'm in the right mode getting 2001 on paper should be a piece of cake...To all of you who got up to the guest house this past year I want to say thanks and to all of you who didn't, I hope that 2001 will be your next visit. I always look forward to seeing veteran visitors, catching up with their family news,job switches and other passages. Of course, this was my year to switch as I left the classroom to spend more time at Clearwater among other things. I kept pretty busy over there painting t! he house and other buildings, cutting and splitting a dozen cords of wood for visitors to use for a cozy fire and doing the many things that come up throughout the year such as plumbing repair, carpet shampooing, yardwork and window washing. I even had a little fun during the year digging some razor clams, mushrooming and steelheading. 2001 will see more projects get started. Some may even get finished. I've got quite a list of things that need doing and, sadly, no excuse for not doing them since I'm no longer tied to a normal work schedule. Losing a very good reason not to do projects that need doing is a terrible handicap to the prognosticator. Quick! Give me a good reason not to rebuild the deck before the busy summer season.