Merry
Christmas 2001 Merry
Christmas 2001
Wednesday December 19, 2001
924 Kelly Road West, Boulder, CO 80302
For our Address next year in Maine click here.
Dear
Friends,
The house in Prospect Harbor, Maine* continued to be the center of a lot of our energies in 2001. Bill and I were fortunate enough to spend from July to December there. We’ve decided that we do want to live there year round. So we have a lot of work to do here in Boulder to get the Boulder house ready to sell. We have been here 11 years now. Hardly seems possible.
I end 2001 in a quieter, more peaceful and happier state than I have for many a year. Being able to spend the summer on the water certainly contributed. Water has an amazingly tranquil effect on me. I feel very fortunate that we are going to be able to live out our days with the North Atlantic in the backyard. Waking up to sunrises over the water, spending evenings sitting in the swing with Bill watching the moonrise across the harbor, or in front of the fireplace—can’t beat it. Bill and I have also had a chance to spend much more time together than we have in all 12 years of our marriage. I am happy to report that we are both enjoying it very much.
We have had a lot of company this year. Julie Noolan and friends from S. Australia, my sister Chris, my niece Kathleen, Florian Cvak--a friend from Vienna studying in NYC this year, John LaFlamme-a neighbor from Kennebunk, my brother Howard, his wife Maryann, Sr. Eileen Conheady--a friend from U of C days, and her sister Eileen, Mary LaPlante--Bill’s business partner, Pat Cameron and Neil Wilson--friends from Open Text, Regina Shea—a friend from Graduate School, her husband Tom Shea and her mother Anna Kram….have all found their way to our door. And, we have wonderful neighbors. Even some from Rochester!
We hope you get there next year and in the years to come. There is blueberry pie for all guests, lobster on request. Rides are available to the West Quoddy Lighthouse and Bog and/or Bar Harbor. Or, a guest favorite, you can just sit in the back yard and watch the tide go in and out.
As you may have guessed by now I am no longer at Open Text. My position was eliminated at the end of April. I spent a good part of the Summer realizing that I can’t work—at least for the moment. The doctors concluded in March that my back wasn’t fixable at least with “currently available technology”. So I am on a regime of exercise to strengthen my back and heavy-duty pain medication to control the pain. I can’t sit very long, or stand very long, or deal with a bizarre range of sequential tasks, from connecting three hoses together—our yard is long—to long division in my head. I mostly walk for exercise and have taken hundreds of pictures of the area with my digital camera. Water, flowers, rocks, sunsets, sunrises, waves. The light on the water is truly special.
And, I make pies and crawl around in the garden. It’s fun to be cooking again. This is fortunate since in the off-season the closest restaurant is 30 miles away! But the kitchen is great to work in and has a view of the harbor. Bill has been making killer homemade bread and pizza, while I specialize in pies, dinner, etc. The ~ 1 acre yard had been neglected for years, so there was a lot of clearing, limb chipping, bulb planting, and mulching to be done. And, after years in the mountains where flowers are hard to grow we are both pouring over flower and seed catalogs.
Bill is busy with his company Fastwater, and with his writing. His third book, “CyberRegs” was published in August and he is hard at work on another. He has an exercise routine that is greatly facilitated by having an ocean in the back yard and a National Park within bicycling distance. He drags his new sea kayak down the yard and paddles off to explore the many harbors and bays near us. Or, he hops on his bike and does a 15-mile spin to Acadia and back.
Rachel is back in Boulder for the year, deciding on a new college. She really liked the art portion of the curriculum at SVA last year and did some wonderful new things with her art. But there was just not enough of a liberal arts curriculum. She is working this year while she picks a new school. She has an apartment in town with a friend. She also has a new dog, Dominick, a pit bull/shar-pei cross from the Boulder Humane Society. He is 2 ½ years old, very cute and clever, and at 50# seems quite small next to our two canine codgers.
Nicol, having taken last year off, went to Drake University in Iowa in September. She started a double major in Drama and Education and really liked the classes but had decided by October that Iowa was not for her. She is back tonight to continue her college studies at UC Boulder.
They will both be up to the house for Christmas and it is nice to be back in town with them.
The dogs, Spike and Maggie are 11 ½ and 10 respectively and they are slowing down. But they are game for a car ride whether it is an hour of errands with me or clear across the country with Bill. They drove quite contentedly from Colorado to Maine and back this year in the VW van. It took them a while to figure out the flat, grassy yard in Maine but once they discovered the marvelous back scratching opportunities it offered they were sold.
Wishing you and yours all the best this holiday season and for the New Year.
Love,
Pauline and Bill
*
For more detail re all this Maine house business, see last year’s Christmas
letter at: http://www.angione.com/Pauline/december_23.htm
This
letter is also on the web site if you don’t’ want to type long URL’s. Go
to:
http://www.angione.com
Click on Pauline. Click on Prospect Nov 2001 or Christmas 2000, etc.
It is always good to hear from you via email or snail mail. Address after April 2002:
Pauline
V. Angione & Bill Zoellick
92 Main Street, Prospect Harbor,
ME 04669-5005
207
963 2242
207 963 2023
Cell: 207 632 4962