(Pictures: Tom & Judy with Steve & Linda at the Lightscape exhibit in the LA County Arboretum. Members of our walking group posing with NOBUNTU after their performance in Caltech's Beckman Auditorium.)

Tom and I wish our friends near and far a wonderful end of year and a healthy 2023!! We hope you all survived (or better avoided) COVID and it variants, plus the various viruses that left people with the flu, colds, stuffy noses, and general feelings of unwell.

This was a year of ups and downs for the two of us, son Jason, and Tee - Judy's brother. I am happy to say that as I write we are all well and coordinating year end activities.

Surviving life in the era of COVID (and related viruses) for Tom and me means socializing with friends. We began pub night meet ups twice per month and we walk 3X per week with friends who are the nexus of our social life.

In January we had two house guests, retired educators and friends of a member of our walking group. Our friend had a house guest also. We all went to the local Monet immersive exhibit, the first such for Tom and me.

In April, we celebrated my birthday at our favorite French restaurant with Jason, Tee, Brenda (neighbor) and "daughters," Teodora and Stephanie. We also took our daughters to an Italian restaurant for the cinco de mayo. In June we had a rare and welcomed visit from Tahina of Madagascar whom we met when he was working in the NASA Exoplanet Institute at Caltech in 2012. He finished his doctorate at the Université de Montréal in 2018. He is currently a post doc in the Astrophysics department at Arizona State University.

Of course we gathered for Jason's 41st birthday in November at a restaurant convenient to the four of us. We took two 12-year-olds, Christian (grandson of a life-long friend) and Nathan (Christian's best friend), to the Natural History Museum for its dinosaur exhibit and lunch. When possible, we attended the monthly JPL retiree luncheons, a nice way to keep up on old friends and co-workers. In a similar vein, we attended the 61st reunion of my high school graduation class in September. Judy also attended the reunion of her HS' cross-town rival, Muir, hosted by a long time family friend. Of note, the documentary "The Segregation of John Muir High School" made its debut on public television during this period. My cohort went to segregated public schools, so the movie's description of a well-integrated Muir HS was not in our memory.

In August, Tom and his truck helped a local charity begun by his haircutter. Valerie gathers school supplies from local stores and stuffs backpacks for students in Pasadena Unified School District. The backpacks and supplies are donated or bought with donated money. The packs are grouped according to age/grade and the supplies therein are age/grade appropriate. Tom hauls this truckload to Farnsworth Park and helps place them on various picnic tables where families come to receive the supplies. In December Tom worked as one of several judges of entries in an "Innovation Fair" in Pasadena Unified School District. Of note (IMHO) was the "re-engineering" display where students had disassembled various gadgets and appliances. Also, science-fiction writing by students from the recently named Octavia Butler Magnet, a dual-language and STEM middle school.

I wrote college recommendation letters for five students at Arcadia High School. All five students were smart, motivated, interesting and a delight to recommend! The best part was interviewing each of them.

Live performances we saw this year: Cirque du Soleil, Alvin Ailey, Celtic Women in concert, and the Pasadena Playhouse season which included Uncle Vanya. Some gal pals and I went to Caltech's Beckman Auditorium to see "Nobuntu," a female a capella quintet from South Africa. They were riveting! We stayed after the performance to have our picture taken with them.

Although we were basically house-bound, we took a day trip through Pasadena City College extension to Joshua Tree National Park. The real highlight of this year was our first attendance at the annual CSI Con: Center for Skeptical Inquiry Conference in Las Vegas. Tom and I volunteered to check in attendees and to do crowd control during book signings. We got to meet Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson and see an interview of Penn Gillette (of Penn & Teller). We promised ourselves that we would not drive to Las Vegas again: parking was expensive and you don't use your car. Jess, daughter of an old friend, and Amy, her wife, live in LV and we four visited over dinner.

Medical appointments dominated our calendar and medical problems took us away from several planned activities. Tom had cataract surgery (one eye) in March and the second in April. He spent time in the hospital May 23-June 1 for a second stent and November 21-24, both times for heart related issues. Overall he is doing well and walks regularly without becoming breathless. (Note he almost spent Thanksgiving in hospital.)

Tee, my brother who is never sick, was in the hospital May 23 and November 21-22; the latter included surgery. Tee is well and now understands the purpose of annual checkups and the ills of the aging process!

July 12, while wearing flip flops and hoisting a chair onto the back of our truck (parked in a slanted driveway), I fell and sustained a hairline fracture on my left pelvis. The pain was excruciating! I spent ten days in a rehab hospital, got very good care, and was told that the average recovery from such an injury was three months, but for "a woman of my age" (a phrase I came to loathe) probably four months. I was on my feet in six weeks!

I continue as a participant in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuro-Imaging longitudinal study and I participated in a short-term study: NoMAD: Development of Novel Measures for Alzheimer's Disease Prevention Trials. The goal is to help develop better ways of testing memory loss. This study will compare a new memory test with a well established memory test.

2022 was a sad year as we lost many friends near and far: an old family friend from my teens, a beloved co-worker from JPL and so many high school peers. The saddest was the passing of the son of a long time friend. While all who knew him were aware that his time was short, his departure was still a painful schock. His mother, a dear friend, continues as I have always known her: elegant, gracious, intelligent. She moves forward in spite of the pain.

Tom and I hope for fewer visits to doctors and some travel in 2023. We wish our friends good health and good times!

Happy New Year! Tom Wolfe & Judy Nelson