🌻Ah yes, the traditional Groundhog Day letter
Better late than never ❤️
I love the “Christmas letter” tradition. As much as I love smiling faces on a postcard, there are lots of people that I love that I just don’t get to catch up with very often. If we’re old friends, do I even know where you LIVE?? What are you even DOING?? Let’s catch up. I’ll go first.
Andy and I moved to Kansas City MO in January 2021 (just missed our 3-year move-in anniversary on Jan 6th) from Milwaukee. Andy was offered a job with the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and I was ready for a change of scenery at my job, too (that’s a story for another day).
After we moved, and before he even set foot in the new office, his job was converted to full-remote. This had potential to be a mega downer (umm, why did we move?) except luckily, we love it here. At first he was a program specialist, which was essentially an administrator organizing grants for research funding. He’s transitioned to a new role now, “business manager” or somethingerother, leading the Grants Modernization Initiative that will get his whole agency organized with updated software and process systems.
I’m still writing. When we first moved, I was doing mostly freelance science journalism, and over time have transitioned more and more into consulting and marketing (still science communications, still a lot of writing). I’ve got my own LLC for freelance work (Funkyard LLC!) and am also helping run a marketing agency specializing in science, Lunaris Creative, which was founded by two of my favorite co-workers at Discover magazine. It’s amazing, I love my job.
Kansas City was not a big adjustment — many shared vibes with the other mid-size Midwestern cities we’ve lived. It’s just different enough to keep things interesting: century plants and mockingbirds, railroads and old stockyards, and the occasional hint of a southern accent (it comes out on the word “like” if you’re wondering). Neighbors literally brought us cookies when we moved in. We can walk to a creek, drive in 10 minutes to literally anything we need (including downtown). It only snows enough to shovel a couple times each year. Summer is hot but spring and fall are long and delightful.
The best thing about KC is the people. We found a church a few months after we got here (shout out to Athens — I think that’s me on the website banner, blurry in the foreground), and have been regulars since their first post-COVID in-person service, Easter 2021. Andy’s now the Deacon of Prayer, and I’m the Deacon of Music, Andy leads a single guys life group, and we both co-lead a group for young married couples. Singing with the worship team is an absolute delight. But most of all, it’s the terribly charming and loving bunch of people that immediately made us forget that we ever didn’t know anybody in town. (Athens services stream on Facebook and YouTube if you ever get a hankerin’ for a sermon).
We traveled quite a bit in 2023, I count 13.5 trips — each delightful in their own but as a whole maybe a bit much (I was really feeling it about mid-year).
San Diego for a conference + Joshua Tree National Park (Jan)
Tampa to visit friends + Disney World (Mar)
Eastern Sierras for a wedding + Reno (May)
Chicago for Supernatural Convention (Jun)
Cleveland for work (Jun)
Beaver Lake, Arkansas with friends (Jul)
Indianapolis for GenCon (Aug)
Cedar Rapids, Iowa for family reunion + Columbia MO for a concert (Aug)
Washington, DC with friends (Sep)
Gainesville, FL for football game (Nov)
Naperville for Mom’s choir concert (Dec)
Naperville for Groves family Christmas (Dec)
Minneapolis for Funk family Christmas (Dec)
It was also the Year of the Deck! Andy built a deck. Almost entirely by himself. He did an absurd amount of research and then designed it and built it. It’s gorgeous. We’ve got shades up and a little living room patio set, it’s a delight. I’m sitting on it right now (55 degrees and sunny on Feb 2nd)!
I also picked up reading this year. That sounds silly to say, but for years I’d been mostly collecting physical copies of books and not reading them, slogging through bedtime reads, and otherwise never reading for pleasure. Around July, I joined a book club in hopes that my problem was simply choosing the wrong books — I think I’d been gravitating toward books I “should” read like literary classics or sciencey non-fiction, but they hadn’t been grabbing me. I also figured I should stop buying books since I was on such a long string of not liking what I bought. So I splurged on a Prime Day Kindle, got not one but two library cards (apparently multiple library options is a thing here??), and discovered the joy of the Libby app.
I hit 39 books last year, most of which I read in July or after. My top 3 reads were: Everything Sad Is Untrue, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, and Leaders Eat Last. I also read a very long book: The Bible! For the first time all the way though, so that’s noteworthy. Maybe I’ll tell you what that was like another day, too.
Samson (almost 3) and Gideon (almost 2) are absolute joys. Gideon is ready for the racetrack and Samson is a rhino with hip dysplasia but they love each other, and us, dearly. These are dogs, by the way, if you’re new here :)
Looking forward: We’ve deemed 2024 the year of the homebody. We’ve spent three years making our home cozy, we’re ready to enjoy it. We just want to calm down a bit, spend less, rest more than last year. Not in an antisocial way, though, come over and join us!! We’ve got everything that’s good. See you soon.
Happy Groundhog Day!
Please be encouraged to reply, I betcha I’d love to hear from you.
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Whaaa! I just read 'Everything Sad is Untrue' last year myself, and loved it (I mean, how could I sleep on the story of an Iranian growing up in the Plains States). I got to hear the author, Daniel Nayeri, talk at the Children's Book Conference in Milwaukee last summer; he gave a great and characteristically meandering talk. I also recommend his latest, 'The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams' - a nice little historical fiction romp through Silk Road times and era, also appropriate for youth readers too
I've been living in Minneapolis since 2019 and am in my 5th year of my pharmacology PhD at UMN. Hey its looking like I'll defend a year from now which seemed impossible! I'm studying neuropharm of cocaine addiction.
I actually traveled to quite a few of the same cities as you in the past year and a half. Including Neuroscience in San Diego (ngl skipping a day to go to the zoo was way better).
I think a lot about how you told me not to do a PhD when I mentioned it the first time I was applying way back in 2016. I even tell prospective students the same advice just to see their response. It is an insane thing to do and was insane to try to do during the pandemic. I'm thinking about going into science writing myself but am leaning towards journal editing or medical writing. I am so sick of bench work...