April 3 - Last night, john judged six science projects at the Greater Kansas City Science Fair. He has mentored and judged science fair students for the last 15 years.

Before the judging, john met up with an old friend from Honeywell (then Bendix King), Brian Poindexter. Brian is now Project Manager at Garmin for automotive products (Nuvi, for one). During dinner, Brian was on his Blackberry a lot. He explained that Garmin has three plants in Taiwan. Once the engineers there know you are available in the evenings (their daylight), the email messages to him are non-stop. He is a very non-politically, low-key individual, and john greatly enjoyed reminiscing with him.

While judging, john met a science fair student who was trying to improve the stability of SpaceShipOne, designed and built by Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's company. john was more than just a little interested, as he and Gary Hamilton had gone to Scaled Composites and met with both Burt Rutan and Dick Rutan. They also had been given a ride in a "LongEasy", an experimental plane designed by Burt, with their chief engineer, Mike Melvill. Mike later became the first civilian astronaut to fly SpaceShipOne. To read more about that experience, please goto: www.zenpond.com/gary.html .

April 3 - john and joyce also received an email from Basso in Bernin, West Africa:

"Back on the net
During the month of January my mail box disappeared from the network, and I was obliged to open a new address. It was hagnounbasso@yahoo.net. I sent a message to you but you did not read it due to the fact that you protected your mail box against spams. Your mail inviting me to let my address near an anti-spam company arrived, but when I read it, it was too late to be taken in count.
Despite that, each time I go to the Cyber I continued to open my former mail address until last week when it came back with 32 messages in the box. Among them were 2 messages from you. As I am back on the net, I will try to keep in touch with you. So, I will resume to using my former net address which is: "AGNOUN BASSO Honoré".
Next time, I will watch your new paint at the site you tell about.
Take care and friendly greetings to Joyce, Tucky and anyone around there.
Bye bye,
Basso

April 5 - The master bathroom remodel is finished except for the lighting. That should happen on Monday. After that, john will post some photos of the remodel below. The weather outside is near-perfect today, so john will begin to bring zenpond out of winter. Actually, he and joyce have started doing that already, but the large waterfall stopped during the coldest days in February. john took a short analysis, and it looks like the problem is where the 2 inch hose connects to the pump.

john is still painting, and attending two art classes a week. One class may post their paintings on this site on a special page called 50plusart.html.

April 15 - Okay, john and joyce won't talk about today being the last day to get your taxes in. They won't talk about that.

john and joyce DID just get a new email from their friend Basso, in Benin, West Africa. Here is his email:

"You are very lucky to being in a theatre guild. Here in Benin I don’t know about that kind of thing. I can say that there is a national theatre, but I don’t know how somebody can manage to enter the group. May be I will try to find out the way to join.

The real problem in Benin, in Africa in general is the cost of life. The prices of items are going higher and higher, even the basic products cultivated in the country. The farmers say that they need to elevate their products prices in order to be able to buy manufactured or imported objects. The consequences are that prices continue to go up, and life is getting tougher and tougher, despite the Governments’ efforts. There were demonstrations in Congo, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Egypt, and other countries against the expensively high cost of basic products. Benin has not yet known about those riots, our government has injected billions of CFA Francs to come in aid to the populations.

As usual the weather is the same around here. It is hot always. We are feeling that it is very hot because the rains are one month late already. Temperature is permanently between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius. That means it is hot. As rains are late, it is sure we will have severe floods in Cotonou this year. As I said, the interior of my compound is enough high that I cannot be flooded. The troubles come when we go outside for downtown. We will support it as usual.

Take care and a big hello to Joyce and Tucky. I will give you my impressions after I view your paintings on the site you told about.

Basso"