Lord, thee I love with all my heart;
                                I pray thee, ne'er from me depart,
                                  with tender mercy cheer me.

December 27, 2025

Dear Friends and Family,

Here I am writing my Christmas letter a little late again.  My excuse
this year is that I was sick with a nasty virus, starting the Saturday
before Thanksgiving and going on and on, and my energy level is only
slowly recovering.  I don't know what it was other than "upper
respiratory" and presumably not COVID, as I tested negative twice.  I
missed Thanksgiving dinner with friends, three weeks of work, and a
trip I had planned to see my brother Bill, who is having some serious
health problems.  Thankfully my sister Mary was still able to go and
see Bill for the planned week.

Yet today I am feeling very blessed, as I am feeling well enough to
play guitar and sing for church tomorrow as previously planned.  The
verse above is from one of the hymns I'll be leading.  Right in the
midst of the post-Christmas season comes New Year's, and we'll be
recognizing that tomorrow with a solemn look back at the past year and
the times to come.  Also, I have been able to reschedule my December
trip to see Bill and his family for mid-January.

Looking back at the year, there were lots of blessings.  I finished my
recovery from 2024's broken hip.  I can walk well and I've been on my
bike again, though only for short rides, mostly over to Stanford watch
sporting events.  I'm a bit creakier than I used to be, but mobile.

In May, I made a circle trip to visit Mary and Milwaukee and Bill in
the Boston area.  Mary also came along with me to Boston.  We packed a
lot of visiting and activities into two weeks!  At Mary's I ordered a
new computer and printer for her and got them set up.  We also did a
lot of yard work -- as well as doing some fun things like having
dinner outdoors at a beer garden in one of Milwaukee's parks.  While I
was at Bill's, my sister-in-law Nancy got me to take quite a long walk
with her, which was great for my hip rehab.

I spent my usual week at Bible camp in the summer, helping to organize
things and serving as music leader at camp, playing guitar and uke and
singing, along with several other folks I eqnjoy making music with.
This year I bought a nice new portable sound system, with enough
inputs for everyone to plug into.  It worked well and I heard a lot of
positive comments about it.

Work is still ever changing as Broadcom continues to push us into
doing things using different software tools, etc., etc.  Some changes
are for the better, some just different.  The pay is great, though, as a
result of Broadcom's stock having gone up tremendously over the past
couple of years.  I'm no longer thinking of retiring in the short
term, but it won't be too many more years.

In the home tech area, I got rid of cable TV (Comcast in my area) and
switched to pure streaming over internet.  There are several companies
now that have streaming TV packages that are quite suitable as cable
replacements at a lower price.  I went with Hulu Plus Live TV, but it
was a tossup between that and YouTube TV.  So far I am quite happy
with the service and especially with paying a lot less to get all the
channels I want, even though I went with a faster tier of internet
service than I had before, using AT&T fiber to the home.

My cats are still a lot of fun.  Tulip has grown so much and is super
playful at about 20 months old.  She doesn't like to be picked up, but
loves to sleep on my lap or snuggled up to me.  Cillian is still super
affectionate when he's in the mood, and super rambunctious when he's
in that mood.  I get lots of snuggles but also lots of scratches.  At
the moment I have cat TV on for them to watch (birds and squirrels),
to help keep Cillian from attacking my legs because he wants me to
play with him instead of typing this letter.

                                Christmas and New Year's blessings,

                                Tim Mann