Holiday Message 2015

Katie continued to forge her burgeoning career as a sportswriter. She currently is covering the NFL for SBNation.com and works as a general copy editor there one day a week. She also recently landed a weekly radio spot talking NFL topics on Monday mornings with TSN 1290, an all-sports station in Winnepig. During the spring and summer, she shifts her focus to baseball and the Yankees. She is a writer at one of the leading Yankee blogs, River Ave. Blues, and can often be found tweeting insane Yankee facts and stats from the couch on a nightly basis. Earlier in the year, she was contributing a weekly MLB/NFL column at The Cauldron (which formed a partnership with SI.com in the fall), but left that gig in December.

Mike completed his first full year as a senior program manager at Systems & Integrated Systems (SIS) right here in Vergennes, VT.  He continues to work on the Boeing 787 fuel and sensing systems.  Towards the end of the year a long-awaited reorganization was finally announced, and Mike is now focused exclusively on the manufacturing side of the business as a production program manager, a lateral move that will allow him to get deeper understanding in this area.  Mike also made several trips back to CT to complete the required courses towards becoming an ACE (lean) Practitioner.  Finally, Mike was the chairman of the Veterans Employee Team (VET), organizing participation in the Vergennes Memorial Day parade, Flag Day event, Veterans Day luncheon, and Oktoberfest to support Wounded Warrior.

In December of last year, Mike transferred from command of a hardware-equipped Coastal Riverine unit to a more traditional augment unit supporting Joint Enabling Capabilities Command (JECC) in Norfolk, VA.  The unit is a “flex drilling” unit, meaning he only has to travel to Virginia two or three times per year for regular drill weekend.  However, the unit supports the global response force (GRF) and has elevated training and readiness requirements.  This past year alone Mike completed the 2-week planners course, three joint employability weekends, a one-week mission readiness exercise, and a one-week joint exercise in Alaska.  This sequence of deployability training allowed him to stand “alert” for the final quarter of the year (1^st quarter of FY16).  He also pursued, and was allowed to attend the UK’s two-week joint operations planning course in Northwood, England.  Within the unit, he was initially assigned to Operations Department, where his role evolved from staff officer, to Current Operations Officer, and finally to Operations Department Head, responsible for managing the budget and writing orders for a unit of 45 members.  In November, he was selected to be the unit’s Executive Officer, the 2^nd in command.

After seven years, Mike finally returned to teaching skiing.  In the preceding year, Mike meticulously visited and interviewed with a few different ski schools in northern VT.  Jay Peak stood out for its “Jay Way”, development, ski school methodology, and of the famous tram and terrain.  At two hours from Vergennes, it was just far enough away to justify a small condo to facilitate weekend excursions, where Mike taught on Saturday and then skied with Katie on Sunday.  Mike and Katie got some desperately needed new alpine skis.  Katie’s alpine skiing progressed considerably, enabling their great northern ski vacation in March.  Winter 2015-16 is off to an incredibly slow start, but we’re hoping for a big “El Nino” winter here in NorVT.

Our first year in our new home (2014), we took our brand new home for granted and spent our free time adventuring around the local area.  In this our first full year we got serious about making some home and yard improvements.  The first major project was air conditioning.  Using a UTC employee discount, we installed a “mini-split” system that adequately keeps the house nice and cool even on the muggiest days.  Next up was landscaping.  We added a couple trees on each side of the house for shade and wind protection, a variety of bushes and plants along the south side to cover the foundation, and a hedge in front of the pullout.  The next step was staining the front and back decks.  The final project was a stone patio and hot tub in the back yard.

For our annual ski vacation we decided to try something new and head north of the border.  Mike had been eyeing a Canadian Rockies trip, stringing together resorts of the Canadian Rockies and the Powder Highway, but put it off a couple times due to the daunting logistics.  But we finally pulled it off by committing to a 1.5 week vacation.  Starting in Alberta, we rented a car and drove west through Banff National Park and Roger’s Pass, skiing and staying at Sunshine Village, Golden, Kicking Horse, and Revelstoke.  On our first day at Kicking Horse a little climbing accident resulting in a bruised face for Katie and broken ribs for Mike, but we soldiered on.  The highlight was 3 days of snowcat skiing at Retallack Lodge in Nelson, BC.

Enjoying our time north of the border so much, we spent another week in Canada for our summer vacation.  After a weekend hosting Alice and Gary in Jay, we simply headed north of the border.  We spent time in Quebec City, Montreal, Mount Tremblant, and Ottawa, and drove through the Adirondacks on the way home to VT.  We liked Montreal so much we headed back up for a ski film festival in the fall.

Our adventures in Vermont didn’t end.  We hiked additional portions of the Long Trail, attended the Stowe Brewers Festival, Champlain Valley Fair, and other events, and spent some time discovering downtown Burlington.  With a new base of operations in Jay, we did some more hiking and climbing in the Northeast Kingdom.  We ran in the Jay Peak Trail Fest for the 2^nd time in a row, and Katie won her race (and kicked Mike’s butt in the process).  We also hosted Gary and Alice as well as Robert and Bonnie for weekend getaways.  We’re looking forward to more visitors next year!