Traveling...

Jake is getting back from a week of traveling to visit grad schools. His travels took him to Washington State University, Montana State, and Oregon State. He really liked all the schools, so now he has a decision to make!

In the meantime, Stu and I are on a plane heading to Medford for a weekend with the Q. More later...

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December 24, 1999 to February 13, 2012

RIP, Annie.

Our beautiful, feral, orange-eyed puppy died today. We exercised the omnipotent human option, thus sparing her a longer passing from cancer, which she was diagnosed with in early January.

She was probably the worst dog I will ever miss. Before she died today, she menaced the 18 year old cat and snacked on dirty cat litter. That's just the way it is.

Good friends

One definition of good friends: people who, when you just saunter into their homes on a Sunday morning, ask if you want coffee or tea and welcome you at their breakfast table. Even if you have been out sweating over miles of trail and road.

Time again to train for Bataan. Stu and I have been walking into town on Sunday mornings and showing up at random friends' homes for breakfast. This week we headed west from home into town and went south around A Mountain. Between biking and walking, we are getting to know A Mountain pretty well. Seems like it should be about time, after living in town for over 20 years!

We might have to take a week off -- Stu tore a ligament in his right shoulder and will have it repaired on February 20.

Chateau McGee, 2011 Vintage

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.

Otter Rock, Oregon

We arrived at the cottage last night in the dark and it is dark still, about 14 hours later. I think the sun will eventually try to come up, but the clouds are so heavy and it is raining so hard that we might not notice.

Good thing we found things to do in Newport that are inside. Rogue Brewery also has a distillery, so we will probably visit there today. And we have to go visit the internet since there isnt one around here.

The seals in the video were by the waterfront in Newport. Loud and lazy. Just like my aim for this trip!

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Oregon pt 2

Lunch with Jake, dinner with Q, and most of the state of Oregon in between. People here are football crazed, and I think there was a game in Corvallis at OSU. But maybe not, because it could have been U of O. At any rate, the ducks are playing, fearsome mascot that they are.

All the rain seems to grow many coffee places. One of my favorites is in a double decker bus in Salem.

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In Oregon

The sun is trying to come out right now. Weather report says this is the only day we even MIGHT have sun during our visit here.

Fall colors are beautiful. Jake awaits us in Salem and Quince farther down the road in Ashland.

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