Anyway, here is our Christmas letter for this year. See, since we're so gosh-darned busy (really, we just don't care...) we print out this common letter and put it into all of our Christmas cards instead of writing a lengthy personal note. Yay for Christmas! It's not great, and it never is. Some of you will get this in the mail at some point Some of you won't. Really, does it matter?

Here's the letter:

Happy Holidays from Blimp City!

In most cities, seeing the Goodyear Blimp is a fairly rare occurrence, one marking an important event in sports or politics. In Akron, we're more likely to see blimps on any given day than to not and now we almost take them for granted. It's hard to believe that this year marks our second Christmas in the Rubber City because it seems like the time has just flown by, though more like a jet than a floating blimp.

The year of 2006 has been busy and challenging in many regards. At the start of this year, Andy had just finished his first semester at Kent State, while Amy had been working at a no-kill not-for-profit animal shelter called Pet Guards in nearby Cuyahoga Falls. We've both been saddled at various times with what seems to be impossible amounts of job projects and schoolwork. And of course, there have been some times when it seems like we've been perpetually broke. Through all of this (and oftentimes because of it) we've been blessed with a number of positive experiences.

January was certainly one of those financially lean but enriching times. In our search for inexpensive (read: free) entertainment, we ventured to the Akron-Summit County Public Library and found it to be (perhaps) unparalleled to anything but the mythical library of Alexandria. Now, it's not uncommon for us to have 20 or 30 items checked out at a time. It was also poverty that led us to a new diversion: hockey. Before stumbling across the Kent State hockey team, which offered free admission, Andy had never actually watched hockey even though Amy had enjoyed it. With that first game in January, hockey has become something of an obsession for us, and we've attended every Kent State home game since.

We brought Lucy, a three-legged shepherd mix into our home as a foster pet in January. Despite being a great and well-behaved older dog, no one who visited Pet Guards wanted to adopt a 5 year old, three-legged dog. Predictably, even though Lucy originally moved in as a foster pet, she joined the family permanently in February when Amy made completed adoption paperwork mysteriously appear one day.

February and March were pretty exciting times. On Valentine's Day, Amy was given a big promotion at Pet Guards to Shelter Coordinator. This meant she was now in charge of the adoptions, oversaw all of the animal care and supervised the shelter volunteers. In early March, Andy traveled to Chicago with a vanload of his colleagues for the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers. At the convention, he accepted a student award for his presentation. He also introduced a handful of his colleagues to Ed Debevic's, a retro restaurant where the waitresses are downright mean as a matter of ambiance.

At the end of March, we were on the road again for two small trips during Andy's spring break. The first trip was to Salt Fork State Park in southeastern Ohio, where we had won a stay at the lodge courtesy of the local NPR station. The next weekend we drove to Niagara Falls, which Amy had never seen, for a brief overnight trip. Of course, our modest accommodations allowed us to be roomed next to a number of American college students who had crossed the border to take advantage of Canada's lower age for purchasing alcohol. Luckily we were still far enough away from them to still get a good night's rest.

By the middle of May, Andy's second semester was finished. During the summer, he took on two teaching assignments, one in Kent and one at the distant Tuscarawas campus of Kent State in New Philadelphia. Daily trips to New Philadelphia, just over an hour away, were not terribly pleasant riding in Pedro the VW Bug (which has absolutely no air conditioning) during the hot and humid months. He also enrolled in two classes as a student, meaning that his summer "vacation" was pretty busy.

Despite having a busy summer, we still found some time for fun. We became frequent visitors to the Akron Dog Park with our herd of four-legged (well, with the exception of Lucy) friends. We also enjoyed some of the amenities that the Akron area offers, including minor league baseball, zoo and downtown festivals. We also managed a few hikes in the Summit County Metroparks and the nearby Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We celebrated our second anniversary on July 9 with a nice dinner out. In late July, we took a nice long-weekend trip to Toronto with our friends Kory and Amy during a very hot and humid time. While in Toronto, we visited a number of museums and the zoo. We also dined at several vegetarian restaurants.

In August, the summer semester was finishing up for Andy. Amy, having decided to return to school at Kent State, left Pet Guards for a more school-friendly job as a front desk attendant at the Quality Inn & Suites in Kent which she found through our aforementioned friend, Kory. Andy's friend Jon visited in August for a Tom Waits concert in the Akron Civic Theater downtown. Toward the end of August, we visited our family in Indiana one last time before the new semester, amazingly coming back to Akron with a different car. We bought an older Volvo (which we've named Virgil) in Indiana as a replacement for the Impala, which was doomed with an early expiring of mileage on lease. With the new semester, Amy returned to college with two classes, trying to get her proverbial feet wet before diving in. Apparently insane, Andy took four classes instead of the standard graduate load of three.

In September, we embarked on a mission to live a healthier lifestyle. We took part of a tradition sponsored by the Metroparks called the Fall Hiking Spree, where participants hike eight of fourteen featured trails to earn a hiking stick and commemorative shield. Autumn is a great time to hike, and the Metroparks are really an outstanding collection of parks. We earned our sticks and shields, and hiked several more trails than the bare requirement. We also decided at this time to become vegetarians, after much consideration. It finally just seemed odd enough to us that we actively rescued animals and then ate other animals for dinner. The health benefits are also nice. Since we became vegetarians, Andy lost 40 pounds and Amy lost 25.

The rest of the autumn was marked mostly by ridiculous amounts of time devoted to work, and recreation times spent hiking. Looking back, it seems as though we put our heads in the sand sometime in early October and emerged around Thanksgiving. For Thanksgiving, we returned to Indiana for some family time. While driving back to Ohio, we found a confused little white dog in the road. To prevent her from getting run over by an approaching semi, Andy coaxed her out of the road and into the Volvo. Of course, Maggie, as this little fox terrier mix has come to be called, was pregnant. Deciding against taking her to a shelter where she would be killed, we took Maggie home with us and got her hooked up with Rose's Rescue through Kory and Amy, a local organization that helps dogs find homes. We worked it out so that if we would give her (and her eventual puppies) a temporary home, they would pay the vet bills until all of the dogs could be adopted.

After Thanksgiving, we again buried our collective heads in the sand to finish our semester. And really, it's a good thing we did, because we both did very well in our classes. In her first semester back at school, which is usually the hardest, Amy did well enough to make the Dean's List. While Andy's grades were good, most importantly he finished to papers for publication and got an excellent start on his dissertation.

The week after finals, the one before Christmas, we ventured to Indiana to visit our immediate family. It's not the best situation to visit before or after the actual holiday, but with Amy's job we had to adapt a bit. While we were at home, Maggie's time came and she gave birth to eight puppies. Yep, we now have 12 dogs living in our home (very temporarily!).

We've made it to the halfway point of our adventure in Akron. With the end of this semester, Andy is halfway through the PhD program at Kent State. This spring will be the last semester in which he'll take classes, after which he'll spend a year writing his dissertation, which is a really long paper of original research. At this time next year, Andy will probably be jumping into the job market so that he can get an appointment as a professor by August of 2008. Amy will be taking more classes this semester, aiming to accumulate a decent amount of credit before we move to another school.

We'll be spending Christmas in our new home, the Blimp City. Our holiday activities will mostly consist of cheesy holiday movies on television and nightly drives to see Christmas lights. If anything, it will be peaceful, which after the hectic year we've had is more than welcome. Hopefully, yours will be just as peaceful and relaxing.

Happy Holidays!

Andy and Amy Shears