For those who haven't received an on-paper copy, here's a web version of the "flip side" from the Dickerson-Zimmermann family bulletin sent out with our holiday cards this year, written by Paulette Dickerson. See DickersonZimmermann2004 for the obverse.

Paulette weighs more now than she did when she started dieting a few years ago. Her housekeeping rivals that of the Collyer brothers despite the fact that she has been tossing things for the past year and has rented three storage lockers. The yard is a weed-infested wilderness and the house remains a "pit of despair."

Mark, after years of training, continues to place near the bottom 10% of every race he enters, and in fact finished dead last in one recent event by more than 35 minutes. He is counting the days 'til retirement (currently two thousand four hundred thirty-seven, approximately) and hoping he is low enough on the totem pole to be unaffected by any fracas in, about, around or through the federal government. Mark's key to success is based on the popular Whack-a-Mole game; his motto is "Keep your head down."

Merle, who took Drivers' Ed. three years ago, has not yet passed the test for his license, has been known to spend his bus money on video games and walk home from the Metro. The best part of his day, since we cut his lunch money in half, is "scoring cheap ramen, dude." To all the folks in the front row of class, yes, he did dress himself today and he is sorry if the improbable color and style combinations are distracting you.

Gray's ability to remember names is constantly improving. She is now able to say "Hello"; walk away; go to class; come out and then say to herself, "Hey, that was Bob!" In a futile effort to reduce the sea of shoes on the floor of her bedroom, Gray recently loaded them onto an over-the-door shoe rack. When the supports snapped and everything crashed to the floor, she told us "It's a miracle no one was hurt." She did not, as some have reported, see Elvis's face in the debris.

Robin spends his days reading online comics instead of doing his classwork on time, has been buying a whole cake every three weeks to take up to his dorm room and, when he finally gave Gray the instruction sheet to the calculator he loaned her this semester, there were only two language options... Spanish and Portuguese. Unfortunately, Gray is studying Hindi.

Flopsy the Rabbit has learned that if she rings the bell in her cage someone will give her a treat, thus becoming the first rodent on the planet to invert Pavlov's experiments with dogs.</td></tr></table>

And a cheery image of a neighborhood tree infested with this year's brood of 17-year locusts:

(see also DickersonZimmermann2002 (11 Feb 2003), DickersonZimmermann2003 (18 Dec 2003), ...)

TopicHumor - TopicPersonalHistory - TopicProfiles - 2004-12-22

(correlates: Dickerson Zimmermann 2004, DickersonZimmermann2005FlipSide, Spam Patrol, ...)