July 4th... 1997

Happy 4th of July! I hope that you had a day as wonderful as ours. We did lots of pre-camp errands in the morning before going to a BBQ in the afternoon. Perfect! Our day today was actually not unlike the way we spent our 4th of July 10 years ago. Then, as now, we were celebrating more than just the country's birthday. Today we were celebrating a friend's birthday and welcoming another friend home. Ten years ago the 4th was our farewell to Long Island.

Looking back it's hard to recall exactly how I spent June of 1997 beyond remembering that I was very, very busy. We packed up our apartment - well, actually the movers did that. I just supervised. I arranged with my school to complete the work for my MLS at another university. One of the oddest things was quitting my job and realizing that, in a neat twist, I'd been there exactly 7 years and 2 days - just long enough to get fully vested in all of the profit sharing etc. That was certainly lucky!

We finalized the purchase of my shiny red car and arranged to install an alarm in it. Hah! In NY car alarms were ubiquitous but in Virginia - not so much. That thing turned out to more of an annoyance than anything else, especially when it rained. It was super sensitive and storms would set it off. My neighbors loved us when the siren would blare in the middle of the night which it did regularly.

During that month I said a lot of good byes too. We had a lot of family and friends in New York and it seemed that every minute was spent saying good bye to somebody. The culmination of our farewell tour was a barbeque at my in-laws house (where we stayed for a week or so). Everyone was there and it was great. The next morning hubbo, the drama queen and I drove off in cars loaded with the few things that were not in storage. As we drove south I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of adventure. It was so unexpected and exciting to be moving so far from home. Washington, DC was not totally unfamiliar but still pretty new to us. We'd been there before on vacations and always enjoyed it. We just couldn't wait to start this new chapter in our lives.