And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap

Well, this is my 17th edition of my holiday letter, a tradition I learned from my dad. Mostly, I just want to reach out once a year and say hello and try not to lose touch in this fast-paced, far-flung world. I’m not sure I’ve ever had less to report! I considered skipping a year but decided to stick with it just for the sake of it, which is pretty on-brand for me.

What a strange year! I hope that you and your families are healthy and safe. I know it's been a frightening and difficult year for so many people. I’m fortunate that my family has been able to stay healthy and I’m able to work from home.

Remember the before times? I only barely do. In January of 2020 I participated in Dry January and also a challenge to do 12 whole minutes of cardio a day. Here’s a thread about how cranky it made me and how I don’t recommend it. :) 

I had been sticking with the running club on Tuesdays and Sundays and was training for the Nashville half marathon when all the road races were canceled. Many thanks to my virtual KBFR texting team for motivating me to get off the couch occasionally! My last road race was the Cambridge 5-miler in February. Here’s me after that race:

Later in the year I got used to running in my face covering. Here’s a snowy day-after-Halloween run:

In March, like so many offices, our Dimagi office in Cambridge closed and we shut down work related travel for the year. Since then I’ve been mostly working from home, with occasional trips outside for a jog and lots of Netflix. Like many of you I’ve worn pajamas for months at a time. I experimented with feeding myself a couple different ways like perfecting pancakes (bake the batter in a cake pan for 8 min at 350° F) and making homemade ice cream in a mason jar (much better if you swap the heavy cream for half-and-half).

Although it was a slow year for my hobbies, it was a busy work year at Dimagi. I told you in the 2015 holiday letter about my first project, building contact tracing apps for Ebola. This year ‘contact tracing’ got a lot more attention than it has in the past and we did the most work we’ve ever done in the US. I’m proud to work at an organization that is assisting with pandemic response.

Here’s me at a meeting with some colleagues one of the last days before the office closed:

It was a year of big milestones for my nieces. Lindy graduated from high school (virtually) and started college remotely this fall at UNC Charlotte (from the dining room table). Kate graduated from UNC Greensboro and has started her first year of teaching dance in a public elementary school in Graham, NC (between Raleigh & Greensboro). I think being a first-year teacher is probably pretty hard. I think teaching dance over zoom to kindergartners has been a real challenge and she is looking forward to meeting some of her students in person soon.

I hope in 2021 we can all get back to seeing each other more and more of what we love. I’m suggesting to my mom we redo Thanksgiving and Christmas once we’re all vaccinated. She’s been isolating in her home in Louisville, KY with her dogs since March and is hanging in there but is certainly looking forward to seeing people again.

I still enjoy watching the NBA and had a lot of fun watching the Celtics in the playoff bubble in Florida. (If you follow me on twitter then you know most of my tweets are about Marcus Smart.)

This is the least I’ve played ultimate in 20 years and I miss running around on a field and seeing everyone. My year ended on a high note with something of an impromptu reunion call with a few of the wonderful friends I played ultimate within Ambush over a decade ago. You can match these same beautiful faces from my 2004-2006 holiday letters. I guess were it not for the pandemic we might never have had a reason for a reunion conference call, so that is a tiny silver lining from all this.

Most years I close the email by saying something like, ‘if you swing through Boston, be sure to let me know and we’ll grab a coffee or beer’, and that doesn’t really seem to apply this year. But who knows? Maybe we’ll all get vaccinated and travel will start back up and if it does I’d love to see you in person sometime.

 

Wishing peace on earth to all.

~Courtney
@CourtneyMFK 

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