In
the last few years we had become homebodies, traveling so infrequently
that Steve lost his American Airlines frequent flier status.
This year was different.
This year, it seemed like we were away more than we were at home, though,
in retrospect, this might not have been literally true. Nonetheless, we
were very busy. And the cat sitter had a booming business.
Following his shockingly well-received commencement
address at the College
of Creative Studies in 2002, Steve was invited to teach a class on
Autonomic
Computing at UCSB. This involved
several trips to Santa Barbara, accompanied by Helen for the experience
of it all. Shockingly, the class was also well-received, so Steve has been
invited to do another class next year, and Helen has been invited back
for all of the accompanying good times. We have become regular invitees
to CCS soirées in both Santa Barbara and New York. (It turns out
that the current UCSB Chancellor
knew friends of Helen’s sisters when they were all kids in Taiwan. Weird.)
We (in various combinations) went to Seattle (and/or Redmond) twice,
to visit both Helen’s mother and Microsoft
Research. We spent weekends in Annapolis helping Helen’s nephew Ed
get married, and in Connecticut and Long Island with friends during the
summer, and spent Thanksgiving in Maryland with lots of people and food.
We went to San Francisco three times (we think), combined with trips
to Sun Labs and IBM
Research in Silicon Valley. Twice to Raleigh (these without Helen,
sadly) for business stuff, and a week in southern England for both business
and pleasure (this one with Helen), including several fun days in London,
our
second-favorite city.
Oh – and we had vacations as well. A great week with friends Steve
& Pat in Boca and then in Key West applauding the outrageous performance
of a family friend there. A week and a half in an isolated little cottage
on the coat of Maine with nothing to do but stoke the fire and eat too
many lobsters. Two and a half weeks in the British Virgin Islands with
absolutely nothing to do. Do we detect a theme here?
Helen continues to volunteer at the Horticultural Society and (since
our Maine trip) has done enough knitting to put whole provinces of China
out of work. Steve continues to try desperately to make massive computing
systems simple (and
write his stupid Weblog). We continue
to throw the very best parties in New York City. And our cat continues
to sleep most of his life away. Some things never change.
And Steve is once again an American Airlines AAdvantage Gold member.
