Ruth Finkelstein:  

Life I presently live in Texas (since 1992). I work for the University of Texas Medical Branch, periodically go back to Cleveland Ohio to visit and at least once a year get to Rockville Maryland to see my brother's family. I spend my time with civic volunteering, mostly with the performing arts (I recently began acting and singing professionally again), write short stories and continue to be fascinated by life....I have wonderful feelings and memories of our class, what a great, although tumultuous year that was. I forgot to mention what fun it is living on the gulf coast. I have lived here for 13 years and have had an evacuation plan in my head, but never had to execute it until recently. The fears evoked by the Tsunami and Katrina made all of us very skiddish down here so when it looked like Rita was going to be at least a category 3 and headed our way, I got out of Dodge. Now I don't know if you remember or if you ever knew that I have an inner ear problem that does not allow me to drive a motor vehicle (any of you remember that I threw up a lot as a teenager whenever we drove anywhere?). Well one of my friends, her 65 lb lab, her two cats, my 21 birds and three feral cats loaded up her car and off we went to get out of harms way. Hers is a small car and the cargo also included suitcases, feed for the animals, water for all, kitty litter and lots of wine....fortunately, the evac plan works and I hope I never have to resort to it again, but next time, we will use a larger car. Happy Holidays everyone. Captain's Log November 28, 2010 - things have changed since the entry above which appears to have been written in 2004 since I mention hurricane Rita. Since then we have had hurricane Ike and it was a doozy. Since then I also married (for the first time). I never really wanted to but I got hit by a cosmic brick. The man with whom I was co-habitating woke up with seering chest pain and after 10 days at his bedside in the ICU I understood that I needed to stop pretending to play house but really do it. That's how it's always been, I can be so dense sometimes so by saying two little words, "I do", I introduced five new words into my vocabulary: wife, mother-in-law, stepmother, grandmother and dog owner. Amazing. We were very fortunate in that the storm that flooded every s...Expand for more