2014 Retrospective

Remembering: 
Polly (April 1948 - October 8, 2014)
Terry (April 1944 - October 12, 2014)

Move 1

After Jeff & Terry's wonderful hospitality in Chevy Chase, we moved in with Lowell through Air B&B for almost 3 months. We loved South Reston: the great outdoors, driving to work through the neighborhood, Flippin Pizza nights, Lowell's back yard.

View from Mt. Ralph

Travel

So much skiing; Sam & Julia's wedding; Shenandoah spring & Glen Manor Vineyard; beautiful May visit to Chicago; some family time in TN; Tim and Meaghan's wedding (see Mt. Ralph pic above); Lewes weekend and Delaware breweries; Michigan - always love it; Grand Teton - fantastic hiking and our longest hike - 19 mile loop by Lake Solitude and up and over the Paintbrush Divide; WV - hiking in streams, essentially; and a late fall trip to Arizona - the beautiful desert, especially, the desert botanic gardens

Arizona State view

So many awesome walks in DC: 

• From Ballston to Dupont Circle
• From Chevy Chase to Silver Spring
• To Chevy Chase from downtown on several scenic routes
• Beer crawl with Todd around the National Mall

Reston Area Highlights: 

• Cross County trail - hiking to Oakton and almost to Dogfish Head
• Lake Fairfax Loop
• Roller blading on W&OD and finding Old Ox Brewery off the trail 

  

  Frank (on blades) at Old Ox
• Other fun: Zumba, Charlevoix 5K; Turkey Day 5K

Team SCORE at Reston's Turkey Day 5K

Culture

Serial podcast, Andrew Wyeth exhibit at National Gallery; lots of good Netflix streaming movies; Women of Vision exhibit at Nat'l Geographic; Politics and Prose night (a book reading, walking in the snow). Good concerts: VH show at Tally Ho, Robbie's son opening for him, and more.

Matt Scannell of VH

Food Highlights - nowhere near everything, but...

• Dinner at Dino's Grotto - met a woman from Newfoundland! 
• Le Pain Quotidienne
• Cristiano's in Upstate NY - pizza with sweet red and green peppers and 'shrooms. Delicious! Hooked on garlic knots; they were a perfect snack with beer after skiing -- don't forget to add some Parks & Recreation!
• Soffritto's in Delaware
• Lancaster's Hammond's pretzels
• Zucchini hash
  

  

  A fine summer breakfast

Animal antics
Always - the nephew and niece kitties. Frank saved a turtle on the way to work one day, not to mention all the frogs we dodged in Lowell's driveway; the baby fox in South Reston; Lowell's ducks, chickens - oh, the trauma! And our new neighborhood cat, R/Pasta 

Wonderful and Unexpected: 

• Heather brought me Edward Gorey post cards from the Gorey House on Cape Cod. Love him. 
• Don't forget the conference call spoof. Funny!

Move 2: Buying a house in Reston and living close to Emily & Jeff! The yellow jackets, camelback crickets, and ants made it their home too.

Jeff & Terry working in the new kitchen in August

Susan's Work Highlights:

• ESC coaching continues. Thank you, Sherry.
• ESC-US - thank you to my favorite Study Group!
• Thank goodness for the Bethesda library - loved working there and walking there! Fantastic winter walking!
• Great experience with Amy and the Standards for Excellence Institute
• Nonprofit Capacity Conference and potential partnership with Shira
• Connections with Isaacson Miller
• NTBTF in May - reuniting with my beloved ESCers
• SCORE - Fantastic Leadership Conference; great to visit chapters; really interesting people (a history of weaponry); fascinating clients; WE Think DE program
• Encore Conference and visit to Phoenix

  

  Susan's proud accomplishment

Saving skiing to the end because skiing gets a lot of blog love.

Skiing

New, East Coast Places:at Jeff & Terry's and around Chevy Chase + further afield at Osceola Tug Hill, Lapland, Gatineau and Ottawa (where we met an exceptionally friendly French Canadian man)

Border Crossing Drama:

On the way to Ottawa & Gatineau, we were flagged, our car searched, questions flew: "When were you last in Canada?" and "What do you do for work?". When we said we were going skiing, the agent wanted to know where our skis were. We pointed them out in the back seat! Cheeky, I guess. She told us to pull over and go in to the office. We encountered another unfriendly Canadian (an oxymoron, we thought). He said, "You drove all the way up here for skiing?". I chuckled and said we were "pretty intense" about skiing. He was not amused. The job question came up again. I said "consultant," and he asked suspiciously, "What kind of consulting?". Two other agents searched car. They asked if they should expect to find anything sharp. We said, "Just the tips of our ski poles." A few minutes of anxious waiting later, we were on our way to Ottawa and Gatineau!