December 23, 2000
924 Kelly Road West
Boulder, CO 80302
USA
Dear Friends,
The
biggest news for this year is that we bought a house in Maine. It is in Prospect
Harbor, North East ("Down East") of Bar Harbor and near a part of
Acadia National Park. It is a three story Victorian, beautifully made, carefully
maintained, with a 172’ lot line along the back that is on Prospect Harbor
itself. Less than a mile away is the open sea—the Atlantic. The long-term plan
is to move the Angione/Zoellick operations to Maine. If you have web access, you
can see pictures at: http://www.fastwater.com/Bill/Prospect/prospect_harbor_house.htm
But the best way to see it is to be there. The house has 11 rooms, so even with an office for me, an office for Bill, and bedrooms for the family that leaves two guest rooms. We are looking forward to having you all come and visit.
Bill
and I decided that we couldn't spend a Fall in Maine without doing some official
leaf peeping. So we drove to the
East end of Maine--near Campobello, and East Quoddy in the new VW Camper with
the dogs for a long weekend. The water was beautiful, the blueberry barrens were
scarlet and the hard wood trees were doing their thing in the color department.
It was truly splendid.
During
that drive Bill took a turn down the road to the Schoodic Peninsula spotted a
house with a For Sale sign in the yard. It
was love at first sight. We had been talking about finding a bigger place in
Maine where we could spend more time without falling all over each other, have
room for company, and see the water from the house. And we had realized from
even a bit of looking that we would have to go “Down East” to find it. But,
we hadn't expected things to happen so quickly.
We put the Condo in Kennebunk up for sale the day before the election and
have tightened our belts until it sells.
This all happened while we were out in Kennebunk after Bill had dropped Rachel off at college in Manhattan. She is at the School of Visual Arts and likes having art as the focus of her studies, but has yet to come to the point where she really enjoys NYC. She is back having a Colorado cure for Christmas.
Nicol decided to take a year off, stay in Boulder and work at the grocery store she had cashiered at in high school. She has been promoted to Manager of the Day at an affiliated store and has been pleased with her progress in the commercial world. In the meantime, she was able to retain all her admission status and financial package at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa and will be heading out there as a first semester freshman in Fall 2001.
I had back surgery this Summer. After months of physical therapy, injections, etc. that still left me with incredible pain in my back and legs, I took the plunge and did the surgery thing. It was microsurgery, so I was able to fly out and join Bill and the dogs in Maine only two weeks later. The main therapy at that point was walking, and Kennebunk is certainly a good place to do that. My back is better. Although we aren't quite out of the woods on that, we are getting there.
Otherwise I am still at Open Text, and still doing a lot of work related travel as I represent Open Text with major companies in the computer industry. It is fun to pick up the newspaper or a web magazine and have so much of what they are talking about be both familiar and very relevant to what I am doing. Open Text continues to grow--we were 187 when I joined, and we are now > 1,000.
For those of you who count length of Pauline’s job stints, we are reaching some kind of record here--it was four years this past November!
Bill is busy writing. He is finishing another book on web patents, copyrights, privacy, etc. It is due to go to the publisher before Christmas. It keeps him more than busy, and without sleep, but he is happiest when he is writing so it is a good thing. His book “Web Engagement” published this Summer by Addison-Wesley is doing well and he is already working on plans for "the next book". He’s also a partner in Fastwater, and despite the recent dips in the economy, it is doing well.
Spike is 10 1/2 and has recently discovered Dragon Bone as a way to deal with the every day anxieties of being an older dog! He loves having Bill home so much and really likes the views from the VWVan. Maggie is 9 and as playful, nuts and willful as ever. She is interested in everything and is probably one of the main sources of Spike's anxiety--she long ago established herself as the alpha dog--but the two of them get along fine and hang out together most of the time.
There are pictures from the past year as well as Bill’s Christmas letter at:
Click on Friends Letter ’00 for Bill's letter. Once there, click on Pictures.
It is always good to hear from you via email or snail mail.
Easiest to reach me at: pauline@sugarloaf.net)
And check out: http://www.angione.com
We have been changing it quite a lot lately.
Wishing you and yours all the best this holiday season and for the New Year.
Love,
Pauline--and Bill, Spike and Maggie