1999

1999 marks the second time I used Mailmerge and the first time I changed the font to Comic Sans (although for whatever goofy reason, Comic Sans doesn't work on Wikis), what would later become my favorite font for publishing fun stuff like top ten lists and Stupid Consulting Tricks and other stuff I stole outright from David Letterman. Then everyone started to use Comic Sans, but I'd like to point out this is 1999 and I was an early adopter before I became hackneyed and irrelevant.

This is also the first letter to go 2 pages (front and back). From this year onward, that was the default and it was always my largest struggle to keep the word count down enough to fit on a single sheet of paper. Thank goodness I didn't save early drafts or you guys would find out that fully 2/3 of my jokes suck. Enjoy!.

 December 1999, Christmas

 Friends and Family,

 Hello to everyone! I guess I’m starting a tradition of writing these letters with my Christmas cards. I guess I’ll have to make a tradition of sending out Christmas cards too, yikes! I started by rereading last year’s letter. Sheesh, I did a lot last year, and now I’m wondering where the heck this year went… I’m writing this letter not on a plane from England or anything fancy, but sitting in my breakfast room looking at a much-too-fat dove peck at the rain-soaked lump of bird seed stuck in the feeder. Fritz the cat is looking on longingly; if only he could work the window latch… The birds generally ignore him, even when he’s outside looking through the bars of the deck railing. I guess if birds came in little brown kibbles he’d be more energetic about going after them.

 The breakfast room is attached to my new house in Reston, VA. I moved in back in May. I really like the house and Reston; it's a mile from our new office. We can see the lake in the winter and have a private view of trees in the back during the summer. Sarah says this just reinforces my bad habit of going out on the deck in my underwear to sip coffee and read the paper, but I think it is wonderful. We spend lots of time on the deck and in the family room off the kitchen. In fact, my next house will have nothing but family room, kitchen and deck. We really like the house and are steadily filling it with stuff. We just got our dining room furniture too, so we’re going to start having people over to eat more than 2 at a time. I was beginning to feel a little like Noah the entertainer.

 I'm racking my brain trying to remember what I did during the first half of the year. We spent just about every weekend for what seemed like 16 months renting U-Haul vans and moving stuff from storage to the new house. Maybe we were abducted by aliens? If we’ve been acting strangely let us know. In April we went on a cruise to St. Martin (where I got nothing free. What a crock!), St. Bart’s, Nevis and other exotic ports of call. We were on a Windjammer Barefoot Cruise. 98 guests and 30 crew on an old, 236-foot-long sailing ship cruising around the Caribbean for a week. We didn’t wear shoes, I took no electronic devices, didn’t even wear a watch, for the whole time. It was the only way to cruise, not at all stuffy like a regular cruise ship where you have to wear a suit to dinner. I don’t even wear suits to the office anymore. For the Captain’s Dinner on our cruise you had to wear two things: (1) a clean T-shirt, (2) underwear. Everything else was optional. We had a ball. The hardest thing about coming back was getting used to the ground not rocking back and forth. That and not having rum for breakfast.

 On the work front, the last six months I’ve been working in-town at a company called Cable & Wireless. They are a challenging company to work with and much in need of help. There’s a chance I will get to go to the UK to work on other pieces of their business next year, but nothing is planned right now. I'm going out to Phoenix for the few days before Christmas. I’m looking forward to seeing Mom and Chad since I haven’t had the chance to fly much this year (only 35,000 miles!) and haven’t gotten out to Phoenix at all. The airlines, once my friends, now turn up their noses at me like a sorority sister whose boyfriend I stole. I have no idea where the metaphors come from, but some you’ve just got to with.

 We’ll be flying back on Christmas Day. Then we’ll start fortifying the house for Y2K. Our sandbags are packed and I’ve got my electric generator ready to roll. Actually, on the New Year, we’re going to a party downtown with some friends and then coming home that night, so not too much planned. Hopefully it won’t be the end of the world, or I’ll feel bad about not doing something, but I think we’re pretty safe.

 I’ve been designated as the Y2K contact for my project. Every project has to have a Y2K plan (in fact every individual was supposed to draft up a personal Y2K plan. Mine was “Hunker down”) and ours called for a single point of contact who the client could call if they have any Y2K-related problems with their systems. My job is to be available at any hour of the day or night so if they call I can tell them I’m sorry but we can’t come help them. For that I get a pager? I asked if I could just leave a Post-It on their desk before I leave on Thursday, but they gave me some lines about “client commitment” and “responsibility” or something. All I know is it shoots my plans to go out looting with my militia buddies.

 Some friends of ours are going to Belgium for New Years. Cause you know when you think “Belgium” you think New Years. You also think tainted chicken meat, benzene-flavored Coca Cola, yeasty beer and Jean-Claude Van Damme. But the idea of being stuck in Belgium if there are travel problems didn’t appeal to us. Some other friends are going to the Bahamas and spending the holiday on a sailboat. The thought of being stuck in the Bahamas if there are travel problems did appeal, but I’m afraid the wind might stop working on January 1, or something. So we’ll just stay put. If anyone would like to come over and stay at our place, let me know ahead of time so I can give you a map to the minefield.

 For anyone who may not have heard, in September I was promoted to Associate Partner at Andersen. When I told Pop Pop the news, he recommended I just leave off the ‘Associate’ part and just tell people I was a Partner now. I think the shark-suited lawyer types with the oft-broken noses who made me sign the paper that specifically told me not to do that would be, shall we say, disappointed if I did. It should be a fairly short time to Partner now, though, so at that point, we’ll all be happy.

 What does this mean to my day-to-day job? Exactly nothing. It’s a funny thing working as a consultant. No matter what you do to your own company your clients just care about their company, their success. Consulting would be just great if it wasn’t for all the clients.

 Well, I see I’m coming to the end of page 2, so I’ll wrap it up. I wish you all a wonderful New Year, the last of the millennium. Please be safe, and happy. We hope to see you all soon.

 Love, ''''''



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