Christmas Letter 2001

Welcome to our family and friends. It's been a year that won't soon be forgotten.  We'd like to share some of the things that have been going on in our lives.

We started off the new year by getting a crash course in temporary parenting.  We took care of Jeff's three boys while he and his wife Linda celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary with a trip to the Balsam's in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  While they went cross-country skiing and ate fine food, we watched kids videos and went sledding down a makeshift path next to their driveway (only after the boys finished their homework).  They were really well behaved and didn't take too much advantage of their aunt and uncle!

We didn't do any exotic traveling this year (we didn't see any wild animals, unless you count our cats).  We started off by taking a fun week-long Holland America Caribbean cruise on the M.S. Amsterdam with Jim's brother Ed and Tom in February.  We traveled to the US Virgin Islands, St. Martin (Dutch side), Puerto Rico and the Bahamas.  We were surprised when Jim's parents showed up to see the group off in Ft. Lauderdale - they were visiting Aunt Grace in Boca Raton and drove down. Carol insisted on going horseback riding in Puerto Rico and wound up spending the ride convinced she would fall off the horse. The ride started with the leader telling Carol "Oh, don't do that, you'll make him run fast." And since Carol couldn't figure out exactly what on earth "that" was, she remained terrified throughout the trip! An experienced horse rider she is not. And how is it that the horse knows that?!

Each day of the cruise started out by one of us running downstairs to get the daily trivia quiz so we could all start working on it.  We submitted using a different name each day (OK, maybe we were beating the system just a little...), and won 5 out of the 7 days!  On one of the last nights, we won a "name that tune" contest which was all television theme songs, beating a team from New York who had been our nemesis most of the week.  We clearly have no life and watch WAY too much TV. (But we justify it but believing that we're supporting Carol's brother Jack's career, since he writes for television.) And we knew we had been completely obnoxious in our glee over winning a silly trivia contest when someone who'd obviously been there spotted Carol later and said "oh you're the *TV* people...." like we all had some kind of strange contagious disease.

Shortly after returning from the cruise, Jim resigned his job at Mint Technology to take a consulting position at Paradigm Works, Inc. in Andover, MA.  Paradigm Works was founded in September 2000 by a couple of senior people who left Mint.  We now have about 30 employees and have worked at over 1/2 dozen different client sites.  Jim's client work took him to the Minneapolis, MN area a couple of times, including a side trip the Mall of America.  Paradigm Works is doing well despite the current economic environment, and ended its first year in the black!  We are also a proud sponsor of several miles of Interstates 93 and 495.  You can see one of our signs on Route 93 northbound between Route 125 and Dascomb Road in Andover, and another on Route 495 northbound between Routes 117 and 111 in Boxborough. So if you see Jim dodging 18-wheelers to pick up trash on the highway, you'll know why!

To celebrate the company's first year anniversary, they took us out on a Charles River cruise along the Boston and Cambridge shorelines.  Jim even won a digital camera on that cruise, so you have his employer to thank for having more pictures this year!

In late June, we welcomed another furry addition to our house. (The cats run the house; we are just their servants.)  Timmy was about 10 months old when we adopted him from Kitty Angels, a no-kill shelter.  Timmy had been living on the streets in Lawrence with a feral cat colony.  Kitty Angels captured the cats with the intention of neutering them and putting them back out -- they can not possibly place all the feral cats they find out there, and some can't be adjusted to people.  However, someone spotted Timmy and thought he had potential -- they were right!  He's quite the little cuddle bug.  It took about a month for Toonces to get used to him, but they seem to like hanging out together now, and Toonces often takes him out driving. Timmy loves to sit in the window, feeling the fresh air and listening to all the sounds outdoors. And he thinks the Christmas tree is one big ol' cat toy (how nice of us to put a tree with all these hanging things on it for him to play with! Both of the cats keeping taking ornaments off the tree as fast as we can put them back on.).  In case you're curious about the name, we're pretty sure he was named after a cartoon character on South Park.  We couldn't think of a better name, and he got used to this one, so we kept it.  We are one step closer to being that crazy couple with all the cats.

We spent the first week of August returning to Bar Harbor, ME.  We stayed at the Inn at Bay Ledge on Frenchman's Bay where it turns out Ray Romano ("Everybody Loves Raymond") and his family had been a few weeks earlier with his brother Robert (of course) who got married there (OK, it's not really a brush with fame, but we needed to find some way to work a famous person in here!).  We saw some pictures of their stay, and it turns out that his TV family is based in reality - he really has twin boys, and his mother really does play the piano.  We took a whale watch cruise out to Petit Manan Island to see the puffins, then went further out into the ocean to see finback whales, shearwaters and the occasional seal (Ray did not join us on the cruise). The people running the boat claimed we saw 8 whales, but we were convinced it was just the same whale moving around.

On September 15th, we celebrated Carol's 40th birthday in the wake of the September 11 attacks.  Unfortunately her two brothers were unable to fly to be there (Mark manages a health club in Washington D.C. and Jack lives in Los Angeles), but many other wonderful friends and family members celebrated with us  Next spring we'll get out the ladder to remove the last remnants of helium balloons from the trees.

Carol spent a week in October at a Maine Photographic Workshop, where she learned that to take nature pictures, you actually have to leave the house and GO OUTSIDE (who would've thought?). The workshop was fun and the instructor great, but alas, after a week of photographing lighthouses, woods, and harbors in Maine, real life intruded, and she had to go back to work. Speaking of work, Carol had her second successful year running her business, Marketwise Innovations, doing market research and marketing consulting primarily for high tech firms. 

On October 21st, we celebrated Jim's Dad's 65th birthday at the Mile Away restaurant in Milford, NH.  Jeff, who had been in Orlando, FL for a medical conference, flew back just in time to catch the tail end of the party.  Dad's brother Dale and sisters Elaine and Claire ("Cookie") flew up from Long Island in Uncle Jimmy's private plane, and were escorted from the Nashua, NH airport by Jim, Carol, Ed and Tom.  Thanks, Mom, for arranging everything, and keeping it a surprise!

In November, we took our one-year-postponed trip to Orlando, FL for the Thanksgiving holiday.  We spent most of our time at Disney Epcot (aaah, Disney... "would you like a cup of coffee? That'll be $20 please"), but went to Universal a couple of days (both Studios and Islands of Adventure).  And we spent some time at Disney MGM studios and had breakfast with the Winnie the Pooh characters at Disney's Magic Kingdom (we had no trouble muscling those little kids our of the way for our shot at a picture with Pooh).  Hmmm, now we're not so sure exactly why Jeff was in Orlando in October.

Drop us a line!

Well, that about sums up the last year. Please feel free to drop us a line when you get a chance. You can use the form below or just send us E-mail.

Love, peace and success -- Carol, Jim, Toonces and Timmy!