Comments:
After graduating from Michigan in 1970, I moved to Richmond, VA, and taught math in high school for a year (hated it). Then I started work as a computer programmer, an occupation I enjoy to this day. After many years of contract work, mostly for large telecoms, I put my skills to use in the clinical trials field, programming statistical analyses of data collected during drug studies, first for a contract research organization (CRO) in Charlottesville, VA, and now for the global vaccine maker Sanofi Pasteur, in Swiftwater, PA. This is by far the most interesting work of my career.
While in Richmond, I married, divorced, married again, had my two children, and divorced their father in 1997. Then followed two very interesting years living in the Washington, DC, area on my own. I took up tower bell ringing at the National Cathedral, sang in a large chorus in McLean, volunteered as a facilitator for two organizations for people coping with divorce and separation, and met many interesting and accomplished people. In 1999, browsing the Yahoo Personals led to a meeting with Jim Swihart, with whom I have finally got this marriage thing right. Jim was finishing up a career in the foreign service with the US State Department when we met, and I moved with him to Colorado Springs when he took up his final post, as political advisor to the head of what was then the US Space Command. We loved living in Colorado, and would still be there if either of us could have found work there after Jim retired in 2002. Instead, we moved back to Virginia so that I could work (full-time for the first time in 20 years) for a CRO. This job was a good training ground for me, but 3.5 years was more than enough, and I took the better-paid and somewhat easier position I now have in NE PA, in 2006.
We have a lovely house with a fabulous view here (thanks to Jim, who does everything for me), and I do (mostly) like my job, but it is to travel that I most look forward. Having missed out on the foreign postings of Jim's career, I have been catching up ever since our honeymoon in 2001, which included my first trip to England. We have been back there several times since, usually travelling one way by ship, and have also had lovely trips to Austria, Copenhagen, and most recently to Berlin, a city where Jim worked for four years before the Wall fell. My current employer has also provided the opportunity for travel: I have gotten to go to our office in Lyon, France twice, for several days, and managed to spend a weekend in Paris with Jim on one of those trips. We have also recently opened an office in Beijing, and a trip there is still a possibility.
My daughter Kristen lives and works in LA, and we see her usually twice a year. My son still lives in Virginia. Neither is married, and I do not have grandchildren of my own, although my youngest brother, a late bloomer, has provided me with two nieces who may as well be. My father died a few years ago, but Mom still lives in Lansing, where we visit her and two of my siblings who are still there. Jim's mother lives in Maine, and he also has two grown children, and several siblings spread across this country. So we do find ourselves on the road often, visiting family. In particular, we enjoy his three-going-on-four grandchildren.
When not travelling or working, we enjoy reading, taking long walks, biking, a little skiing, and I am still singing in a chorus. Jim is a self-described political junkie, but resists my attempt to push him into active participation; we do both vote, at least.