Happy Holidays!
(We have lots and lots of pictures this year. If you click on the underlined words below, most of them will take you to full photo albums :)
2010 has been a whirlwind of activity for Susan Jane and Paul, here's a quick look back at the year for the Browns.
As in years past, Susan Jane continues to be very busy with work. She is a staff attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center and focuses on public interest litigation involving public lands, forests, and threatened and endangered species. In February, SJ argued an important case in front of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle, Washington and for the first time, Paul was able to go and watch the whole proceeding. Usually, oral argument in the appellate court is limited to 15 minutes per side; but for this case, the court heard argument for about an hour and a half. This is a very rare occurrence and Susan Jane won the day! You can read press coverage of the decision here. Also exciting is that you can listen to the entire hearing here. Susan Jane also has been working closely with the Blue Mountains Forest Partners, a collaborative group based in John Day, Oregon. One of her newest cases has her working with private land owners in southern Oregon to challenge a proposed liquefied-natural gas (LNG) terminal in coastal Coos Bay as well as the 234-mile pipeline planned to distribute from the terminal. This is a new type of case for SJ, and she has enjoyed getting to know the people she is helping. Susan Jane continues to maintain her contacts in Washington, DC - she was able to return to DC in May, November, and December to lobby on her issues and catch up on what was going on back east. Many people in the environmental community are watching DC closely to see how the recent election will change the climate there.
After three and a half years in the same group, Paul decided to try a new role at Intel. In August, he joined a new team working on products for the Digital Home group, including the newly announced Google TV and Boxee Box products. He's done a ton of traveling for work this year, including Poland, China, Taiwan, India, England, and France. Paul kicked off the year in Las Vegas at CES (where he'll also be in 2011), he was able to return to Purdue to teach a class and has been in Arizona almost every week since early August. This year Paul will earn Silver level on Marriott Rewards, Gold on Hilton Honors, MVP on Alaska Airlines, and 1K (100,000 miles) on United - good thing he doesn't mind traveling! He loves his new job (who knows more about "digital homes" than Paul? :), and he is really enjoying his new team. In fact, after 14 years at Intel, Paul is working with many people he has worked with before - for a company with 80,000 employees, Intel can feel like a small family at times.
Paul and SJ have done a fair amount of additional travel. SJ went for extended hikes in January, July, and the highlight of the summer hiking season - an amazing trip to Yosemite National Park in September! Yosemite in the early Fall was beautiful, and surprisingly not too crowded. Paul made it back to Chicago a few times to visit with his niece and nephew. We had friends visit us in February and went hiking with the.m to Mount Hood. For our anniversary, SJ surprised Paul with a hot air balloon ride! Paul's grandmother came to the US for the first time in 20 years, so Paul went back to Chicago to see her. Then SJ's parents and their friends came out to visit and we spent a long weekend in Brookings, OR - taking amazing hikes in the giant Redwoods of Northern California. Paul was able to take his mom to Israel in late August and they had a great time visiting the sites. While there, they saw the Lebanese, Syrian, and Jordanian borders, walked through underground tunnels in old Crusader forts, floated in the dead sea, saw amazing Holy sites and walked on 2000 year old streets under the city of Jerusalem. It was like being Indiana Jones for a week (if Indiana Jones traveled with his mom :) - it was an awesome trip and a great chance for Paul to spend some quality time with his mom! SJ made it back to Colorado Springs in October and December to spend time with her parents. For Paul's birthday we flew out to New York to visit some friends and see the sites. We went to the Rockettes Christmas show, we saw Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera, and spent a day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We even went to Barcade on Paul's birthday. It was a great trip! With all this travel, we now use a special app on our phones just so we know where we are one day to the next. We sure keep our dog sitter busy! :)
Working with our favorite travel agent, we have finally settled on our itinerary for our sabbatical trip next year. We leave for Egypt in mid-May and will see Cairo, the pyramids, and take a cruise down the Nile. Then we head to Jordon to see Petra and over to Israel for SJ's first visit to the Holyland. Then we'll take a short break in Johannesburg and post some pictures from the first half of our trip. From there we head up to Tanzania where we'll visit four separate national parks including the Serengeti (where we will also take a hot air balloon ride!). Finally in late June we'll head from Tanzania to Botswana to visit the Okavango Delta and Victoria Falls. In total, we'll be gone about 45 days! Our detailed itinerary is available here - if you are interested in following our trip, bookmark that page and check back closer to May. We've already started preparing for the trip and are incredibly excited about all of the amazing things we'll see!
After only a year, Paul got his braces off in February - so far he has been good about wearing his retainers even when he travels. :) In May, Paul's dad came out to Portland and we built a shed for a friend. Then some friends helped Paul paint the outside of our house and garage. Unfortunately, we also had to rebuild and reside the garage because of some ant and water damage. We did spend a little time in Portland together this year, including participating in the Portland Bridge Pedal again. This is one of our favorite things to do in the summer - all the bridges in Portland are closed to cars for a morning in early August and there's nothing but bikes as far as you can see. In early September, we had a Rock Band party with a real band. We also were lucky enough to go to a Oregon Ducks football game when Stanford came to town. The Ducks have had an amazing year, it's easy to get caught up in all the excitement. :)
Susan Jane had a fun weekend in October for her birthday, meeting up with 5 of her friends at Breitenbush Hot Springs. Paul built a MAME arcade cabinet in his spare time this year, and it has been a fun addition to our Rock Band parties. The new version of Rock Band came out in October, so naturally we had a Rock Band Costume party. After we returned from our New York trip, we ended up spending a full week in the house together for the first time all year! It took about 30 minutes before we decided on several major projects that needed to be done, including repainting our living room and bathroom. We hosted Thanksgiving for some friends this year, and the next day our friends were back to start moving furniture and putting down drop cloths. Never a dull moment around here. :)
Sadly, we had to let Lorax go to the Big Dog Park in the Sky in early August, not long before his 10th birthday. Since we don't have children, our dogs are as close as we come to that sort of bond, and it was very difficult to make that decision. He had been sick for a year, lost about 30% of his body weight, and despite multiple insulin shots and glucose tests per day, we were never able to stabilize his blood sugar once we found out he was diabetic. He kept up a great attitude almost to the end (and was a great supervisor when we were painting the house in July), but
finally it was clear to us that he was no longer able to keep up with all the things he liked to do. We still miss him every day, and the house is a lot quieter (and nicer smelling :) without him.
Meanwhile, Luca has been rejuvenated as a single dog (nevermind that he is asleep in almost every photo). We adopted Luca about 18 months before Lorax, and it would seem that he has been waiting these last 10 years to really enjoy life. He is more active than he has been for years, constantly going up and down the stairs, bringing us toys to put peanut butter in, and following us all around the house in hopes that we'll drop something on the floor that he can eat. He is not a very good watchdog, but he is quite adorable just the same. He had some minor plastic surgery in October (some lump removal and a teeth cleaning), and is as alert, bright, and happy-go-lucky as we've ever seen him.
This year has been quite an adventure for both of us and we are very excited to see what 2011 will bring! We hope that you are happy and healthy as well and wish you the best in the new year! Please let us know how you're doing by filling out the survey below.
(extra thanks to Wally, Kim, Andrew, Tanya, Josh, and Sarah for your help on all our home improvement projects! :)
If you would like to see many more pictures, click on any of the links above or visit our Picasa page here. Pictures 1, 3, and 6 on the left courtesy of Lesley Adams.
Love,
Susan Jane and Paul
susanjanebrown@yahoo.com
prbrown@yahoo.com
(if you'd like to see Holiday letters from past years, just click here)