<html> <head> <style> .hmmessage P { margin:0px; padding:0px } body.hmmessage { FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY:Tahoma } </style> </head> <body class='hmmessage'> Here's hoping that everybody's holidays have been just WONDERFUL, and that the New Year becomes the best one of your life!   You probably don't know it, but pianotech was instrumental in changing the whole course of my life.  Murray had a stroke; I couldn't leave the house, because he refused to get medical help for a week and he would fall down at a moment's notice, crashing into furniture, appliances, anything nearby.  During the hours he slept, I started reading pianotech.  I met some of my best friends there, and re-joined PTG, after a 7 years absence.    When I lay awake at night, ready to grab him before he fell out of bed, I re-examined what I was doing with my life--and started studying audiology.  Three months earlier we had gone to the convention in KC so our apprentice would have the advantage of learning from greater teachers than us.  We sold the earplugs we wore for tuning as a way of trying to defray the costs of us all going.  There, in Kansas City,  I was stunned to hear the pleas for help with hearing from many prominent techs.  My father had had hearing problems develop after he started tuning, but I had never realized it wasn't just him.  The seed was planted there in Kansas City. Pianotech watered and fertilized it and today, seven years later, I am finally a certified Occupational Hearing Conservationist, a licensed Hearing Instrument  Dispenser, AND a piano technician!   It was the wonderful friendliness, willingness to help each other, great humor, comraderie, and caring of the great people on pianotech that changed everything. Thank you all, and Happy New Year. Diane Diane Hofstetter </body> </html>