29 November: Mt. Olive, Illinois - We spent the Thanksgiving holiday driving but enjoyed turkey at Subway for lunch. Arrived at Don and Ann Stalcup's Thursday evening following a veggie dinner at a country buffet, spent the night reminiscing with this good friend and mentor of many years. - arriving at sister Carol's early Friday afternoon. Carol is a pretty impressive woman: she made a delicious catfish dinner, and showed us the tongue and groove hard wood flooring she made and laid herself out of the trees on her property after retiring as a PhD. biologist professor. In addition, she is preparing a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner suitable for a low-fat, sugar-free diet tomorrow. Snow and ice are forecast for for the next few days. Once the weather clears up we may drive to York, PA for a few days to visit the Mennonite pastor, Papa Bear, and his outstanding family.
24 November: Volume four (the third Rambo book) is finished in pdf format and ready to go to the publisher in a few days. The websites were updated onto Google who decided two of them violated their rules and they shut them down. Evidently... copying the html from the aol site and pasting it into the Google website erases the inherent Google html. After filling out the form for "You removed my website" we are waiting to hear why it was in violation. That, too, will cook for a few days. Time to take a break for Thanksgiving with sister Carol and the family.
21 November: The Rambo index is complete, the bibliography is almost finished and the next volume is almost ready to send to AuthorHOUSE.
It was fun, fun, fun reading Lil'Mak's trail journal and enjoying the trail photos; yet harrowing to read Kat's journal about frozen shoes and sleeping bags that are too light for the harsh Georgia mountains as they approach the summit of Springer Mountain today or tomorrow. Hoping to hear of their arrival soon (Hooray! Kat called en route to Michigan a few days later having arrived safely.)
12 November - Interviews with delightful MIT early admission applicants are completed and sent to MIT. Days and nights are filled typing away on the Rambo genealogy. The indexed second volume was mailed back to AuthorHOUSE two weeks ago; indexing the third volume of five hundred pages is well-over half finished with hopes it will be ready to mail in a couple of weeks. Thanks to Spruce for answering some punctuation questions.
When working intensely it helps to drink a lot of coffee and take Sudoku breaks... lots of them - keeping Sudoku puzzles in the bathroom. The challenging Sudokus based on logic and very, very hard are great. The ones that are are guessing games aren't any fun at all. Copies of the most difficult ones have been copied to be mailed to Dick Richards.
AOL removed its web hosting pages. The Rambo sites and other personal Ron Beatty pages have been moved to Google web sites - but Google Search has not yet found them. Here are links:
http://sites.google.com/site/rsbeatty
http://sites/google.com/site/rambofamilytree
Nephew Eric's coin website is now changed from AOL to Google, too.
Update on the calcium tomography tests: calcium levels in heart arteries doubled from the same tests five years ago. At that time they were at 90 percent for having a cardiac event in two to five years - now they have doubled across the board despite following a stringent heart healthy eating plan and hiking 440 miles last year and 1500 this year. All other indicators (C-reactive protein, total cholesterol and blood pressure) are excellent; but following the restrictive eating plan will continue: no meat, milk fats; no white flour, no sugar and lots of vitamins. Weight is being maintained at 175 with daily walking.
