“becky hickmott” – Google Search
My mother alerted me to the fact that my sister, Becky, was recently featured in the newsletter for the Canterbury (New Zealand) District Health Board. Becky recently began a new position for the health board as Professional Development and Recognition Program (PDRP) Facilitator. Cool! I miss my sister and her family a lot and wish that we could be together more often.
My brother, Dan, digitized many family photos a while ago. I’ve chosen a few to show here.
Below is a photo of all of my family members on the afternoon of our wedding in January 2000, including my six brothers and sisters and almost all of my nieces and nephews and one of my cousins. This is the last photo taken that includes all of my siblings and parents. My sister, Becky, is married and lives in New Zealand, so it is very unusual to have her in a recent family photo. And then my father died almost exactly two years after this photo was taken.
First row from left to right: Dan (brother), Ben (nephew), Keegan (son), Pelle (nephew), and Nils (nephew); Second row: Lars (nephew), my mother with Kerstin (niece) in her lap, my father with Bjorn (nephew) in his lap, and Sam (nephew from New Zealand). Third row: Debbie (sister), Bradley (cousin), Linda (sister-in-law), Jeff (brother), Jocelyn (niece), Tim (brother), Petra (sister-in-law), Kevin (brother), Britta (niece), me, Michele, Becky (sister from New Zealand).
Here is a photo of my mother and father on their wedding day in September 1958:
This photo is of Grandma McCallum, my mother’s mother. I was really close to her and miss her even to this day. This is the last photo taken of her not long before her death in October 1982. The baby in the stroller is Nils, my oldest nephew:
Below is a late photo of Grandpa and Grandma McCallum, the only grandparents I ever knew (my paternal grandparents both died before I was old enough to remember them):
I like this photo of all of us kids (except Donny, my parents’ third child, who died of unknown causes at 18 months of age). Left to right: Dan (#6 and twin to Debbie), Kevin (#1), me (#8) in Kevin’s lap, Tim (#2) with Debbie (#7 and twin to Dan) on his lap, Jeff (#4), and Becky (#5). At this point we still lived in Nebraska:
My Kiwi brother-in-law, Martin (top), along with some friends, pretending to do a Maori war dance called the “haka,” on a beautiful beach on the North Island:
Finally, here I am for my third birthday:
One of the highlights of my travel experiences was a trip to Fiji on the way back from New Zealand several years ago. My friend, Kevin, and I stayed in a small hut near the beach on the Coral Coast of Viti Levu, the largest island in the Fijian island group. The place we stayed at was Tambua Sands Resort. It was a beautiful spot. We enjoyed snorkelling in the reef, visiting with local people, and travelling around the island. Our idyllic trip was rudely interrupted, however, by the approach of a major cyclone, what we in the U.S. would call a hurricane. To make matters worse, Fiji’s only working radar system conked out and we were not really sure when the island would be hit. I was pretty scared, I can tell you! It all ended ok for us in that we got on the last flight out of Nadi before the cyclone hit. Below is an article about the devastation caused by the cyclone shortly after we left. I was recently going through some old files and ran across this clipping. Reading it reminds me of how serious our situation was. The takeoff of our flight was real interesting…we were in an Air New Zealand 747, heading out into a cyclone, with no radar telling the pilot where he should go. So he just flew around in low circles for about an hour until he could find a break in the clouds. I have seldom been so nervous.
I was pleased to see reference to an extensive bibliography of sources of information about open source software and libraries, posted to the oss4lib-l discussion list last week. It is written and maintained by Brenda Chawner of the School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. It even includes a reference to one of my own articles. Yeah!
P.S. Michele and I have (somewhat jokingly) thought about applying to this school in NZ for my PhD and moving to that country, my favorite place in the whole world. That way we’d be relatively close to my sister, Becky, and her family in Christchurch, which would be great!
I have found that “when it rains, it pours.” Well, sometimes, anyway. We have had an appliance crisis lately, with the washing machine and dishwasher both down and out. After struggling with what we should do, pay for repairs or buy new, we decided yesterday afternoon to go ahead and buy a new washing machine from Fisher & Paykel. It is an excellent machine, the most energy efficient and largest capacity of any on the market here in the U.S. Although it is pricey, the energy savings in one or two years will more than make up the difference in price if we had purchased a cheaper machine. Fisher & Paykel is based in New Zealand or Australia, I believe. My sister and her husband in New Zealand say they are excellent. We are still unsure about the dishwasher but figure the washing machine was more important to have in operation again. The new one will be delivered this afternoon and we can then start washing clothes again!
Last weekend Michele and I went with the kids to some nearby garden centers to look for hanging baskets for the front porch. We found a place called Ritchie’s Greenhouse near Muncie that had fantastic plant stock, some of the nicest I have ever seen. And, just about everything was on sale. Needless to say, I got pretty excited. To my surprise, Michele also got excited and told me to just go ahead and purchase whatever I liked. I’m like a kid in the candy shop when it comes to garden plants! We settled on four beautiful hanging baskets filled with apple blossom begonias, each mixed with spike plant and cascading ivy for contrast. We also bought several large-sized perennials such as daylilies, delphiniums, russian sage (I’ve always wanted one of those!), and lupines. I love lupines because they remind me of the South Island of New Zealand where they grow in wild profusion in the foothills of the Southern Alps, near Mt. Cook. (Anyone who has seen the recent Lord of the Rings movies will remember the gorgeous mountain scenery in the movies. Those scenes and backdrops are mostly the Southern Alps of New Zealand.) We also bought some annuals like spider flower (cleome) and some lovely wave petunias.
On the way home, with a van full of plants, I was on a “high.” That’s when Michele told me, “Guess what, that’s your Father’s Day present!” What a great idea!
On one of my trips to New Zealand, I was travelling with a friend, and we had a stopover in Tahiti during the early morning hours on our way from Chicago to Auckland. We were also scheduled to make a stop in Fiji later on. I was dead tired and not thinking clearly when I looked out the window of the airplane as we landed and remarked to my friend: “I’m really glad to get a chance to see Fajiti!”
I was looking out the window toward our backyard one day recently, when I noticed movement near the door to our garden shed. I thought at first that it was just the groundhog again, the one that lives under the shed. But when I looked more closely, I could see some different colors and knew that it wasn’t the groundhog. I decided to walk out there and take a closer look. To my surprise, as I got near the shed, I could see that it was two little kittens, one gray and the other black and white, playing just outside the door. They were no more than a month old, I’d guess. When they finally saw me, they both scurried away into hiding. Now I know that we have a family of wild cats living in the shed, in addition to the groundhog! Keegan is now learning to play the alto saxophone, and seems to be enjoying it a lot. His first band concert will be in early December. Tristan continues to run around the house with tremendous energy. He doesn’t like it when he can’t keep me in sight, though. He gets very upset when I am not here. Brinley is putting on weight, and her skinny little legs are filling out! Michele says she takes after my side of the family because she makes lots of funny noises. A few days ago, I was joking around with Keegan and Tristan while they were having breakfast, singing silly songs. Tristan finally said to me in a shaking-his-head-at-my-stupidity tone of voice: “Quiet, Daddy!” Yesterday, I heard from our lawyer that the appropriate court papers had finally been filed in support of my adoption of Keegan. The next step will be a visit from the state department of child and family services. I am very glad that after several months of frustrating wait, things are finally moving along. Yesterday, we got a package from my sister, Becky, in New Zealand. It included a gift for Brinley and a letter with some photos of her family. It was great to hear from her! I often regret that we live so far away. Her children are nearly full grown now and it is sad that I have missed most of their growing up period.