Living Happily Ever After
Volume 4 - December 1997
Future is shaping up nicely
This year brought about some events which will have a dramatic impact on
what Caroline & Liston will be doing for their initial careers. The first
news came in April when Caroline was accepted into graduate school for
Speech-Language Pathology at Florida State University (the greatest
university in the country). Caroline had been taking classes part-time as
a special student last year, but needed to get accepted this year to
continue in the field. Obtaining a M.S. degree is a prerequisite to
certification as a Speech-Language Pathologist. She is having a wonderful
time being a full time student and is looking forward to graduating in
August of 1998. A few days after we received Caroline's good news, Liston
accepted a job working full time as a system administrator at the FAMU/FSU
College of Engineering. The job offers a wide range of opportunities to
learn and fine tune skills which are in high demand throughout the world.
These skills include administering unix systems and managing an Oracle
database. Future work includes constantly upgrading the computer system
and building a college-wide academic advising system. In addition to
working, Liston has also taken several computer science classes that may
lead to a graduate degree.
Gotta love those conferences
As part of Liston's job, he benefited from a trip to San Diego for the
Annual USENIX conference for Network System Administrators in late
October. The week-long conference provided some excellent opportunity to
learn about the latest and greatest technologies. Perhaps the best part
of the conference, however, was getting to meet all the "stars" in the
unix field face-to-face. Of course, Liston took time out to enjoy the
sights in San Diego and the wonderful weather. He really like San Diego
and saw everything but the zoo.
Caroline also managed to attend a Conference for her profession when by
returning to Boston in November for the American Speech-Language and
Hearing Association (ASHA) convention. It was much colder in November and
she even got to see some snow flurries and snow accumulating on car
windows. The convention was a good time to meet people from her field and
catch up with old friends.
Unable to Stay Put
Yes, amazingly enough, we have managed stay at the same address we were at
last Christmas. However, we will be moving to a different part of
Tallahassee on the Monday after Christmas. We have enjoyed our current
residence where we got to be the first tenants, but we have discovered a
really awesome place on the other side of town. The new residence is twice
as big and provides lots of space to entertain guests. If your travel
plans have you driving through or near Tallahassee, let us know and we may be able to put you up for the night. We would surely enjoy the company.
Let's hear it for technology!
In addition to providing Liston with a great job, technology continues to
spread throughout the world with more and more friends getting on line
with email addresses and homepages. If you have recently gotten on-line
with an email address or homepage please let us know. Caroline's
permanent email address is careb@pobox.com and Liston can be reached at
bias@pobox.com. While you're out surfing the web, please check out the
Bias family website that Liston created at www.bias.org. It contains
links to our personal homepages.
Heading Due North for the Summer
Our big trip of this year was going to Maine in August. We spent several
days staying with Liston's Grammy in Bar Harbor, then a couple of days
with Liston's cousin Allison in Boston. On our way from Boston to Bar
Harbor, we stopped in Salem to go to the Witch Museum. It was really cool
wandering around in the little town. We were surprised to learn the
hysteria surrounding the Salem Witch trials only lasted a couple of
months. Before visiting Salem, we both thought the events spanned several
years.
While we were in Bar Harbor we had a wonderful time whale watching,
kayaking, tandem bicycling (boy were our behinds and legs sore after
that), and putt putt golfing. We also enjoyed visiting with Grammy, Aunt
Esther, and the Mc Kinney family. Grammy took us for Tea and Popovers at
Jordan Pond in Acadia National Park. We got to see the sunrise from the
top of Cadillac Mountain (1st place in the country where the sunrise can
be seen in the summer months) at 5:15am, and Caroline even got to try
Lobster for the first time. Can you believe we had to wear jackets in the
evenings. It sure was a nice change from those humid August nights in
Florida.
On our way from Bar Harbor back to Boston we stopped in Freeport and
Kittery to check out the outlet malls and the L.L. Bean store. Talk about
shop 'til you drop... we got some great deals.
We finished out or trip by spending a day with Allison showing us around
Boston. We got to see the site of the Boston Tea Party, Liberty Square,
Fanial Hall, Quincy Market, Cheers, the Boston Common, and we saw about a
million Dunkin Donuts (they have more of those than McDonalds).
Travel Tidbits
Scattered throughout the rest of the year, we managed to put some
additional miles on our vehicles. We spent Easter at Cape Canaveral with
the Bias family. In early Spring, Mom Brown came up for a week and went
with Caroline to visit Gillian in Panama City Beach. They went to the zoo
there and everyone got to feed a giraffe. In late Spring, We also had to
go to Indiana due to the death of Grandma McKillip. Although we went for
a sad reason, we greatly enjoyed visiting the family. We even got to
watch cousin Mindy's video of Kendra before they even knew whether she
would be a boy or a girl (she had the baby in October :-) And for
Thanksgiving, we drove to St. Petersburg to spend the holiday with Mom
Brown, Bee, and Bee's family. We enjoyed visiting and eating lots of
turkey, Scottish Trifle, and Thai food.
Enjoying the Visitors
Not only did we get to go visiting people this year, we had the pleasure
of hosting some of our dear friends from Oklahoma State University. Lili,
Jason, and the Cardenas family (we didn't know we could fit so many people
in our place) stopped for a night on their way to Disney World and Busch
Gardens. It was awesome to get to see them and try to catch up a little
on all of life's happenings. We look forward to a return visit when we
have even more room to entertain.
Extracurricular Activities
Even though we have been extra busy this year with work and school, we
have found time to take advantage of being students at Florida State
University. We continue to frequent sporting events such as football and
basketball. We have enjoyed going to all the football games and look
forward to seeing FSU basketball make a run for the final four. We have
also enjoyed keeping up with the success of Oklahoma State University and
their football program (OSU's going Bowling!). Regrettably, we have not
made as much time as we would like for volunteering. With some help from
Liston, Caroline has managed to find time to co-chair the annual Panhandle
Envirothon for high school students held in March.
A look at the future
We look forward to spending Christmas with the families in St. Petersburg
and Orlando (Cape Canaveral). This year is going to be unique on the Bias
side with all of Liston's Family on his Mom's side coming together from
around the country to share in the festivities. We plan to be in
Tallahassee till at least this August and will probably stay till August
1999 when we hope to move somewhere warmer :-)
Pictures Included in Newsletter (click on pictures for larger image):
Caroline and Liston stand near site of Boston Tea Party which occured exactly 200 years before Caroline was born.
Caroline and Grammy Paquet get ready to enjoy popovers.
Caroline can now add giraffe feeding to her resume.
Date Posted: 12/16/97
bias@pobox.com
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