Greetings to all! Gunther here. Kara (she’s the dog) and I travel around with the Laubenthal’s. They are recently retired and will be traveling a lot. We are looking forward to seeing lots of new things with them and sharing our experiences both on the road and off.

Neil Laubenthal was a Windows System Administrator and is also a retired Submarine officer. Even though he worked with Windows computers, he prefers Macs and will assist folks with their computer issues though that is somewhat like the Maytag repairman, he’s pretty lonely…he’s been working part-time for the last year so he’s eased into being a bum. He’s also the primary photographer in the family.

Connie Laubenthal was a Medical Laboratory Scientist who ran the Medical Laboatory Evaluation program for the American College of Physicians. She also served on a workgroup for the CDC, a technical committee for the Califirnia Health Care Foundation, and wrote many articles for various professional publications. She is particularly looking forward to retirement after her high pressure career (assuming Neil doesn’t put her back to work) (I’m working on it he says).

They are going to celebrate their 35th anniversary this year, so are ready to start this next phase of their life together (if Connie doesn’t throw/push Neil off the back deck first).

Connie just had minor foot surgery last week and just got off of crutches. Neil is really glad of that since he had to bring everything to her before that. Now she’s just clomping around the house with a big ‘ol boot.

In about two weeks we’ll be taking our first trip to the Outer Banks in North Carolina (well, maybe…since Hurricane Irene visited down there there might be this little problem). More about that later!

TTFN!