26 Dec 1989
Hello to all! Well, this isn't a tacky Christmas letter, because we didn't get our act together in time for Christmas. So you get a tacky New Year's letter instead. This year, we have finally come to grips with the fact that we are tacky, deep down and to the core, and so we won't even apologize for the formness of this letter. Nice try, Ann....
This has been the year of the wedding (not ours; that was a long time ago). We had many good friends who got hitched, and we attended four of the weddings. This allowed us to fly to Houston twice (yea! for frequent flyer mileage, which got us both flights for free!), drive to Columbus (Ohio) once, and host a party at our house for friends coming to Boston for the wedding of our ex-housemate (Richard Wells).
In case that wasn't enough travel, Alan's parents gave us a NEW (well, 1987) CAR!!! (It was behind Curtain Number Two -- thanks Monty!) So we made the trek from Texas to Boston one more time. (Gee, and I thought we swore we weren't going to do that in four days ever again! That will teach us to make vows we can't keep.) This time we got to visit friends along the way, so it was much more pleasant than our last northward driving marathon.
For our anniversary (#3) this year, we did a highly unusual thing...we took a vacation by ourselves! We went up to a Bed & Breakfast place in Spruce Head, Maine, and spent a weekend exploring the Maine coast and an abandoned island. It was a very peaceful place, and provided a much needed rest, since Alan had just passed his final qualifying exam before the thesis.
Other action packed and thrilling activities included cross country skiing to a hot water spring in New Mexico, learning to play Bridge, hosting a Chicken Fried Steak Party (for those who didn't know what they were missing), going to the November rally for reproductive rights in Washington D.C., attending the Santa Fe Opera, seeing nine incredible folk singer types in two vibrant and moving evenings of entertainment, visiting Baltimore in the spring, "backpacking" (this is the Northeast, after all...) in both Vermont and Acadia, Maine, acquiring a table saw and seeing a three hour selection of computer animated shorts (I bet you thought they still made them from cloth...) at SIGGraph.
Graduate school continues to be its usual endearing self. Alan is working on his apparatus for his thesis experiment which should run in February. Sarah is in the middle of collecting her thesis data, and expects to graduate either in May or September of 1990. (Real World? Who said "Real World"???) Actually, if all goes well, we will both be doing postdoctoral work after we graduate, to better prepare us for getting jobs in the same city later, and also to put our careers on the same schedule.
The Cats and We (a soon-to-be-released Broadway musical) are still silly at 40 Bartlett Ave., Lexington, MA 02173 (617) 863-0258, and wishing you the happiest of New Years.