Wyatt Underwood's Homestead

Yes, this is a different photo, but that's not all I meant. It shows her engaged in one of her enthusiasms, her PC. She uses it in her business and as a reference tool, and in her volunteer work with the LAFD.

She maintains the CERT-LA website, an international treasury of information and resources for Community Emergency Response Teams. She's a committed supporter of those teams, and of the Los Angeles Fire Department's work promoting and training them. (They invented CERT, and FEMA took it national. It's such a good idea that other nations have adopted it.)

Books are another passion of hers. History and language, science and computers, mysteries and science fiction and fantasy. Oh! and historical novels, particularly involving Ireland or women who changed their times.

Lindy must read a couple of mysteries every week, and she chooses writers who make you care about the people in the story. Of course plots need place and circumstances as well, but Lindy prefers stories that develop around the character of the protagonist and the characters of other persons in the story.

Lindy taught me to love figure skating. Oh, neither of us skate. But since our first winter together in 1982 and the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, we've watched wonderful artists and athletes like Katarina Witt, the irrepressible Scott Hamilton, Rosalynn Sumners, Christopher Dean and Jayne Torvill, before them the gossamer Peggy Fleming and the ethereal Dorothy Hamill, and since Caryn Kadavy, Tai Babalonia and Randy Gardner, Brian Boitano, Denise Beillman, Rudy Galindo, Barbara Underhill and Paul Martini, Jozef Sabovcik, Ekaterina Gordeeva who transcended gravity while she skated with her late husband Sergei Grinkov, Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko, Kurt Browning, Jill Trenary, Elizabeth Manley, Midori Ito, Todd Eldredge, Tonia Kwiatkowski, Paul Wylie, Elaine Zayak, Elvis Stojko who also motocrosses and masters martial arts, Josee Chouinard, Maia Usova and Yevgeny Platov, Victor Petrenko, Anita Hartshorn and Frank Sweiding, Nicole Bobek, Jenni Meno and Todd Sand, Surya Bonaly, Renee Roca and Gorsha Sur, Kristi Yamaguchi, Calla Urbanski and Rocky Marval, Elizabeth Punsalan and Jarod Swallow, Oksana Baiul, Philippe Candeloro, Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler, Yuka Sato, Gary Beacom, Chen Lu, Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski, Sarah Hughes, Sasha Cohen, Timothy Goebel, Michael Weiss, Maria Butyrskaya, Irina Slutskaya, Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman, Tatyana Malinina, Naomi Lang and Peter Tchernyshev, Rory Flack Burghart, Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz, Dorota Zagorska and Mariusz Siudek, Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao, Yevgeny Plushenko, Alexei Yagudin, Todd Eldridge, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, Barbara Fusar-Poli and Maurizio Margaglio, Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat, Lucinda Ruh, Susanna Rahkamo and Petri Kokko, Alexei Urbanov, Ilia Kulik, Elena Bereznaya and Anton Sikharulidze, Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev. (And so many others it's almost embarrassing not to list.)

She's a whiz with a VCR. She has several of them between the cable box and the television so she can tape shows while we watch another, or (more likely) tape them while we watch none. And she can program either the VCR itself or the VCR+ tower. None of her electronic devices blink 12:00.

Lindy loves to know things and she loves language. We've collected half a bookcase of reference books. Some of them she uses professionally, proofreading for clients who count on her to know spelling, grammar, and practice. She also uses her technical knowledge to their advantage, correcting misuses of terms from engineering and science.

You can probably tell: I'm delighted with her, proud of her, and very glad to be with her.