Another busy year has slipped by, with Jacob and Quincy moving further toward taking charge of their lives and Stu and Melody transitioning to the next phase (whatever that may be!). Although we left many things undone, we have found that the best of friends overlook the dust and the worn patches to share in the good times. I find myself with increasing faith that cobwebs and garden weeds really are less important than spending time engaged with family, friends, community, books, and our beautiful New Mexico. Both Jacob and Quincy are in school in Oregon, Jake in his last semester at Willamette University in Salem. He picked up a second major in Rhetoric and Media Studies last year; as part of this program, he spent a couple weeks in Puerto Rico learning about the area from a professor who grew up there. He has loved his time in Oregon's capital, but he graduates in May (his other degree will be in Biology) and will spend the spring semester working on a thesis for each of his majors. He is looking at graduate schools and would like to stay in the Pacific Northwest.
Both kids live in great places to visit: Quincy is in Ashland, Oregon at Southern Oregon University. She is taking on increasing roles in SOU productions as a technical major, and Stu and I have enjoyed seeing the shows she has worked on. She is thriving intellectually in her classes and is also enjoying her first year living in an apartment. Ashland is home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and SOU tends to feature many of the Bard's works. This Winter Quarter, she will be an Assistant Master Carpenter on A Midsummer Night's Dream, and we hope we will be able to trek to Oregon to see it.
Stu has had a very busy year, closing out his office in the Chemical Engineering Department in preparation for his July move to the Family and Consumer Sciences program. He is part of the Food Science and Technology faculty, and this move puts him in a department that is more aligned with his research interests, has ties to the local agricultural industry, and creates tastier products. (Google NMSU Chile Brownies, and you will get an idea of one.) But his biggest obligation this year has been his service as NMSU Faculty Senate Chair. With state budget cuts continuing and leadership at NMSU settling in after a period of turnover, it has been an interesting year. He ends this service in May, and I suspect it will be a relief to revert to being just a faculty member again.
This will also give him more time to show me up on the local biking trails. Southern New Mexico has about a gazillion acres of desert with nothing but rattlesnakes and thorned plants, so naturally we took to mountain biking this year. While I seem to be discovering all the different ways to come home bruised, Stu approaches each trail like an applied physicist, gracefully managing his momentum and sailing up and down narrow trails, over the many rocky and sandy patches.
Like Stu, I also switched work places (although in the same job) and have enjoyed another year working at NMSU in the student affairs branch. With a change in leadership in my office, I find myself, despite changing jobs fairly frequently, in the strange position of actually being able to contribute to institutional memory. I think it is really the gray hair that makes people think I have been around for a long, long time. I continue to be the crazy woman who commutes by bike, and logged just over 5,000 miles this year on one bike or another.
With two kids in college, our travel has focused on family. We spent time in DC with my dad and brother in June, and took them both to their first national soccer game in RFK stadium (US beat Jamaica, 2-0). We visited both kids this year at their colleges, and spent Thanksgiving on the Oregon Coast with a houseful of family and friends. We had short weekends in Colorado and longer ones in Delaware.
We wish you all the best in 2012.
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