"Work is a
necessary evil to be avoided."
- Mark Twain
Christmas 2002…
Eric started off the year unemployed following the demise of the company formerly known as Teligent. So that he could search for jobs and do some independent consulting from home, yet still feel the positive vibe of an office environment, one of the upstairs bedrooms was transformed into a small cubicle with marginal lighting. For even more authenticity, empty water coolers were brought in, rugs were stained with coffee, a broken copier was purchased, and the toilet paper was changed to single-ply.
It soon became apparent that except for attaching soup cans together with string in Afghanistan, work in the telecom industry was going to be pretty tough to find. In order to make things happen, Eric would have to take matters into his own hands. Several ideas for start-up companies were thrown about including cologne for dogs (Mort Poisson) and edible office supplies. Neither worked out.
Finally in February, along with several entrepreneurs from the DC area, Unison Wireless was born with the aim to bring high speed wireless internet access to the masses. Unfortunately venture capital is hard to come by these days and despite holding numerous bake sales and auctioning off some signed Hall and Oates albums on Ebay, we are still about $4,999,995.13 short of our goal. Unison continues to make positive strides and hopes that 2003 will be a successful year.
In March, after seeing how much success Eric was having being unemployed, Michelle decided to try that career path as well. She left Worldcom after six years of service. Her timing, in hindsight, was brilliant, given the accounting scandal that later hit the company in May. Hopefully we’ll still be able to keep the house in the Caymans. Like Eric, Michelle set up a home office - this one downstairs in the library/plant room – so that she could work on landscaping ideas (translation – yard work for Eric).
So there we both were at 43556 Jackson Hole Circle, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We had breakfast together, gardened together, shopped together, exercised together, and watched TV together. The next day Michelle decided she needed to go back to work. She quickly found a position at Cable and Wireless as Director of Account Services and started at the beginning of June. Michelle has been in the fortunate position of actually being able to hire new employees and has built a brand new 15-person account services team since joining. In November, the Cable and Wireless executives took a fresh look at the books and announced a number of initiatives to help avoid the financial difficulties that have befallen many of the other telecom carriers. Chief among these new initiatives is a plan to diversify, and as such, the company will soon be known as Cable and Wireless and Discount Mattresses.
Eric, meanwhile, began slowly turning into a premature retiree- taking sailing and golf lessons and spending hours manicuring the lawn. Before buying the plaid pants and moving to Florida, however, he came to his senses and decided to get a job that would require him to at least get dressed in the morning. He began a long-term consulting assignment for Ericsson in September, where he is helping the company develop test equipment for cellular phone networks. Eric also continues to work on business development for Unison Wireless and other small consulting projects on the side.
Now that our employment merry-go-round has been clarified, on to what everyone really wants to know… did Eric finally beat Paul Murphy in the Charleston 10k race this year? Well, we are glad to report that yes, Eric did beat Erin Murphy’s father in this year’s 25th Anniversary Cooper River Bridge Run. Now some of you cynics (and French judges) out there may claim that technically Eric didn’t beat Mr. Murphy since Paul failed to actually run the race, but that’s just sour grapes. All in all it was a great weekend and we had a record turnout this year – 16 total, including new runners Dr. Richard “Flubber Shoes” VanMeter, Jackie “Where’s the Martini Bar” Ting, Steffan “I Think I’m a Kenyan” Wassvik, and Lisa “I Got Up for This?” Rogers. And to clarify, Mr. Murphy unfortunately came down with pneumonia a couple days before the race, but vows to be ready to go next year (he might also want to avoid opening any unmarked letters beforehand… wink wink).
Although we did curtail our travels significantly this year, the annual Miller Travel group trip still went off without a hitch. We rented a large villa in Costa Rica overlooking the Pacific Ocean and were joined by eight others. Highlights included floating in the infinity pool, sport fishing, swinging over the jungle canopy on a pulley, floating in the infinity pool, volcanic mud baths, and fending off insects of unusually large size. The trip also featured the first ever wedding on a Miller group trip - Lorraine and Rikard Lundquist were wed on the beach below our villa at sunset and the “reception” was held poolside under the stars. Absolutely perfect! Of course this meant that we would also be a part of their honeymoon for the remainder of the week, so strict parameters were set regarding the use of the pool and other public areas.
Rich, Ken, Eric, and Ted went on the second annual guy’s weekend in August. We stayed on Ken’s boat and played Dungeons and Dragons and ate Doritos until the wee hours of the morning for three nights straight. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.
In family news, Michelle’s sister Suzanne wed John McLeod in June in Camden, SC (MUCH different than Camden, NJ). The family moved to a new house complete with a frog pond, which is great fun for budding biologists Kelsie, Madison, and Grayson. The NJ Millers are keeping busy with church, entertaining, baseball cards, skydiving, and keeping Pop-Pop out of trouble. The Noonans moved to Hershey, PA at the end of the summer and we visited over Thanksgiving. Michelle’s mother Danielle added four red sheep this year to her ever growing farm. She was forced to return three of her goats, however, as they began eyeing the cats hungrily after having eaten just about everything else in sight.
Speaking of cats, Oliver and Charlie are all doing great. Both have put on some addition pounds this year (haven’t we all!) and are now on the Catkins diet (sorry, couldn’t resist). As for Shiko, throughout the spring he continued to outsmart Eric by finding new escape routes out of the back yard (we even caught him watching Hogan’s Heros reruns one night). After discovering him on the community golf course one day chasing someone’s ball, we decided that we better do something before he was on the receiving end of a nine iron. So the vet recommended that he undergo that procedure which shall not be mentioned to curb his wanderlust. It seems to have worked and we haven’t had any escapes since. Every time Shiko leaves the vet now, though, he does a thorough inspection to make sure he didn’t leave any other parts behind.
Happy holidays and hope our paths will cross in 2003!
With love,
Michelle, Eric, Shiko, Oliver, and Charlie.