December 24, 2009 Dear Friends and Family, And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord." At my church's Christmas Eve song service earlier this evening, I was one of several lay readers, reading the familiar passage that begins with the words above. This is an unusual and fun Christmas for me. Instead of going to Milwaukee and enjoying the snowy winter weather as I usually do, I'm staying home in sunny northern California, and my sister has travelled here to spend the holiday with me. Christmas Day is also her birthday and so I baked her a cake earlier today. Some highlights of my year: In March I threw a 50th birthday party for myself. The party also served as a much belated housewarming for my townhouse in Palo Alto, which I bought just over 5 years ago. It was a great afternoon with many friends and co-workers filling the house with conversation and laughter. In July I spent my usual week at Bible Camp, followed by a week to rest up and do things around the house. This year's Bible study theme ("Fireproof") and the lessons that went with it struck me as great material for a song, so for the first time in more years than I care to count, I sat down and wrote a new song from scratch, to use as the camp theme song. It went over quite well. If you're interested, you can listen to it on the music page of my web site, www.tim-mann.org. I had another fun musical experience in September when the VMware house band Elastic Sky was asked to play for the party at the end of our annual user conference, VMworld. The main entertainment at the party came from the band Foreigner -- so we can truthfully say we have opened for Foreigner! We practiced hard for this gig and got a lot of compliments on our performance. There are videos of our set on YouTube; you can find them by searching YouTube.com for Elastic Sky, or use the links on the music page of my web site. I've continued to be active in working on genealogy. I got help from an expert in reading the old church records of Armsheim, Germany, where the Mann family originates, and we found quite a bit of information there. This enabled me to get in touch with third cousins from several different lines that immigrated to America separately from my great-grandfather and who I didn't know about before. One set of cousins had visited Armsheim a couple of years ago while doing their research and sent me a booklet about their trip with many pictures. Time to close this now. I wish everyone a blessed Christmas and many blessings in the new year! Tim Mann