Last year I became semi-retired - I continued to offer consulting services even after I started to receive CPP benefits. This year, Mira joined me in the ranks of the semi-retired - she now provides project management services. It can get hectic with Mira busy helping her clients and me busy helping my clients. But our health continues to be good - I have not fallen from any more ladders and Mira maintains the shape she had in her 20's.
Our new year began with a "high tea" on New Year's Day. The Borodins, the Friesens and the Roosen-Runges joined us for our version of a high tea. In preparation, we investigated what high tea means. Several explanations are available on the web. One appealing explanation is that high tea is served at high tables which requires guests to circulate, not sit at a low table only talking to their table-mates.

Our first major event of the year was to go to New York City while the Christo Gates were up in Central Park. It was quite an event with a high level of camaraderie present throughout the park. From my point of view, it was a successful event, but I'm not sure that it should be called a work of art. As an interesting aside, the previous month we visited a show in Toronto of plans for Christo events. It turns out that all of the Christo events are financed through the sale of plans for the events. The "plans" can be quite elaborate. No commercial sponsors are allowed. While in the city we had a chance to have dinner with Barbara Deller. We met her years ago at Arowhon Pines and try to see each other once or twice a year.
Doris, Mira's sister, and her husband Zoltan visited us again in the spring. For many years we celebrated Christmas with Doris, Zoltan, and their family. They're still our closest relatives, but this year (2005) we will be flying out to the West Coast to see Mira's brother Otto who now lives just outside Seattle. It promises to be an interesting trip, visiting friends in Vancouver, seeing Otto and his family, seeing Mira's other sister Marie who will be flying up from California, and visiting our good friends' daughter Jill Borodin, who is now a Rabbi in Seattle.
The spring was also time for us to prepare for our trip to France. Mira has finally convinced me to travel a bit more widely than we did in the past. Last year it was Italy. This year it was two weeks in France. We started with a week in Paris. We did the standard tourist things and saw a gaggle of museums in the city. The second week in France we flew to Toulouse where we met Priscilla, an old friend from our time in Cleveland. The three of us shared a car and a farm house in Pradine for a week. It was "interesting". Unfortunately, the temperature didn't fully cooperate and we got more heat than was desirable. Still, it gave us a taste of what life is like outside the big cities.

After our return from France we were, at last, free to spend time in our cottage on the lake in Beausoleil. During the spring we seemed to have little free time, and certainly did not have much time to spend at the cottage. The Borodins came up for a quick visit when they were not occupied with hockey or baseball, and when Allan was not off doing research in different parts of the globe. This year, Don and Eshrat were able to spend a day with us in Beausoleil, and we spent a day with them at their boat in Parry Sound. It was an interesting concert at the Festival of the Sound. Eshrat is now on reduced load in the Computer Science Department at York and Don has moved from Canada's fusion research project to more short-term energy plans. We also enjoyed dinner with the McNivens at a local resort, who then came back to our cottage for desert.
Life at the cottage continues to be rewarding. This year the community decided to clean up the rotten docks on common community property. We were a primary beneficiary because the dock that was removed was just across a short span of water from our cottage. The view is much improved. The Stirlings visited for the first time this summer with their five year old son and nine year old daughter. The many puppies next door and the numerous fish in the lake, just asking to be caught by the kids, were a positive feature of that visit. Alas, the puppies have now grown to full throated hunting dogs. Some have been sold, but enough remain to cause a serious noise pollution problem in the community. I'm hoping that something will be done before spring and open windows become necessary.
This fall a combination of business and volunteer activities has kept us quite busy. Mira spent several weeks helping the National Ballet School move into their new space, and continues to spend time helping an Eaton Centre tenn ant undertake an on-going series of small projects. All of this in addition to her work with the Canadian Association of Women in Construction and volunteering with the Gardiner Museum. I've had three trips to Calgary this fall, with more likely in the new year. November was also the time for the itSMF Canada National Conference that was held in Ottawa. That's important because I was the conference chair with overall responsibility for the program and for the conference's bottom line. It was a successful event, but tiring.

My volunteer work continues. I'm on the Boards of CIPS Ontario and itSMF Canada. My large professional concern is with IT Standards of Practice - I'm involved in Ontario, Alberta, and nationally. The IT field is changing, with a growing requirement to follow Best Practice Standards. And the standards are evolving, with new versions of several important standards to be available in the immediate future. I view my work on emerging Standards of Practice as a kind of capstone on my professional career. In parallel, both Mira and I plan to continue in our semi-retired ways in 2006.

Bob Fabian
December 2005
Toronto, Canada

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