It’s 20 years ago today, what are you doing?


I’m working at Nasdaq’s headquarters on K street in DC. Home is a one bedroom apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan. In the living room is a Baldwin Hamilton upright.

My parents and all their siblings and spouses are still living. Even my maternal grandfather is hanging in there.

My last big trip was Rio de Janeiro for Y2K. If I was going to get stuck somewhere while the computers stopped working, it was going to be somewhere warm.

I was 31. My mother was only 58.

In just the last couple weeks I started dating this cute chick named Rachel.


And you?

February of 2000 ...

I'm living in, well, the house I'm currently living in. I'm 43. My two sons are 5 and 7. My mother is ill and contemplating moving up to Virginia from Miami, which she does.

I still consider myself a trade/development economist. Here is an example of my recent work:

Investment During the Great Depression

My piano is the Howard/Kawai starter grand my parents purchased for me when I was 15.

"Trips" with two early primary school kids are mostly driving to the Blue Ridge mountains for some hiking. Well, and we also had started them on skiing in the winter.

I was living in San Francisco, married to my first wife. My kids were almost two years old. I was general counsel at a mid-sized investment management firm that had been bought by a huge German bank, and we were halfway through the golden handcuffs of our buyout. My ex and I were in the process of completely renovating our flat (teardown to the walls and then moving some walls around, adding windows, etc.). One of my grandparents was still alive. My dog (I'll always have dogs in my life, but that dog was MY DOG, and always will be) was in his prime, chasing balls in Alta Plaza and swimming in the Bay.

A very, very different life. There are things I miss about it, but I'm definitely happier and more content now.

In the same house as today. Had a very lucrative long term contract with an Indiana health system working out of my house where I literally had nothing to do for a month or two at a time. My daughter was in first grade and we spend a LOT of time together after school. It was a very blissful bonding time for us.

We were doing our first sabbatical at the Airforce academy. I was actively looking for a grand piano, (with lots of advice from the very first piano world website!) and we would rent a Uhaul (and put one of our cars on an auto transport behind it) just to move the charles walter back to Idaho with us in May, while the rest of our stuff went in the moving van. Our kids were in grade school.

20 years ago.... Um... Gee that was a long time ago!

I was still living in Japan, in Feb of 2020 I was actually interviewing for a position at the board of ed/city hall in the town where I lived, which I ended up getting and starting in March. In that position I did a sort of combo job teaching English in elementary schools and also doing translation and outreach type work for the mayor's office.

We had been married for a year 11 months at that point, I had been playing piano for ... 9 months I think, and I did not yet own an acoustic piano.

Wow, it's so interesting to think back on that!

If you had told me that mr. Sk and I would end up back in the states, I would get a PhD, a TT position and a grand piano in my living room, I wouldn't have believed you!

Was living closer to Keystone in a small condo. Was semi-retired at 52.
If I looked out to the left I could see the mountains.
To the right I was looking into an Irish themed bar that was much too close. It was not there when I bought the place.
Was skiing over 50 days a season.
Would meet "the gang" at happy hour on Fridays and often other days.
Was dating a guy who skied winters and worked summers.
Hard to believe I have been getting away with living in a place I love for so long. Moved here in 1994.

February 2000

I’m a stay-at-home mom, kids have just turned 12 and 7. We’ve all been taking piano lessons for 2 years. We have a sweet tinkly Wellington upright piano, refurbished by local Martha Taylor of Immortal Piano.

Mr. AM is taking guitar lessons. We’ve both just read Noah Adams’ book, Piano Lessons. I have no idea that Mr. AM is secretly arranging to send me to Sonata Piano Camp in September. I’m about to have a life-changing experience!

I’m not knitting much in 2000. Too busy being a PTA mom/church volunteer/piano student. When I do something, I’m all in.

quote:

I have no idea that Mr. AM is secretly arranging to send me to Sonata Piano Camp in September. I’m about to have a life-changing experience!

I didn't realize that your first piano camp was a surprise gift, how wonderful!!

I had to look up an old check register to remember a lot of this.

By 2000 we had lived in this house 11 years and I built a patio cover over the summer. Greg was a sophomore in High School and paying baseball/soccer, Kim was in Jr. High and had started piano lessons on the Landfill upright.

Both my parents and Sharon's were still alive. Sharon was working for the same company she works for today.

The business was 8 years old. Interesting that I offered medical insurance to the crew at that time, obtained through a builder's co-op. Only one guy took advantage of it - at $110 per month. The co-op went out of business the following year.

I was riding both street and dirt bikes at that time and spent at least one weekend a month in the desert. We spent New Years Eve Y2K way back on a dirt road near Salton Sea.

Mr Pique and I had been together almost 4 years, married for a little over 2. We were living in my little bungalow in Missoula. I was teaching at the journalism school and writing for Sports Illustrated when I got hired as research director for a journalism non-profit and started making a living wage for the first time in my life. I was talking with Mastiff Rescue about an adoption, and taking piano lessons again for the first time in over a decade. Hadn't discovered PianoWorld yet.... Life was pretty good, if quite simple, as I recall. I'm sure we were out skiing a lot that month.

However, just before the turn of the new year I lost my youngest brother at the age of 37. That did color the months that followed with grief and melancholy.

I was thirty-eight and a stay-at-home mom. Muffin's Brother was fourteen, Muffin's Sister was thirteen, and Muffin was four.

I'd been married to Muffin's dad for ten years and we lived in the house that Jon visited four or five years later, when he was served the blueberry muffins that gave Muffin her name. (I believe he was the only one here to visit that house, but somebody correct me if I'm wrong.) Considering her later career, one might have thought that Muffin's Sister baked them, but no. Muffin did.

I was the youth choir director at our church and my husband and I had a band, along with Muffin's godfather David Reiser, that practiced once a week and played gigs about once a month.

I had an agent, but we'd failed to sell my first book and I was working on Artifacts. It would be more than two and a half years before it sold.

My father was already gone, but my mother and David Reiser were still with us and would be for several more years.

I had a 1932 Hamilton Baldwin studio grand that always had a beautiful tone but was on its last legs mechanically. It would be another four years or so before I bought the C-7 that brought me to this place.

I had been in significant neck and jaw pain for years, and it was on the upswing. I would have major surgery on both in five years. I'm happier and more content now in all ways, but being freed of that pain was physically life-changing. I honestly don't feel my age, because I spent so many of my early middle years pushing my body to do what I and my family needed it to do. Most days, I feel young.

The only thing less than positive that I feel when I look back is grief over the loss of loved ones and wistfulness over missing my young children. Fortunately, they are thriving and happy, and I'm so proud.

Hmmm. Mr. Nina was at ASU, I was working there as a data analyst, part-time. I was still doing a lot of choral accompanying, and kept that up for another 8-ish years. Had my lovely Pleyel upright at the time. I still miss that piano.

Daughter was in her senior year of high school, with all the excitement that contains. If memory serves, her top school considerations were Oregon State, U Colorado, Colorado College and ASU (she eventually chose the Barrett College there).

Son was finishing 8th grade and had "found himself" with a great group of kids at summer camp. His life revolved around his camp friends, and he went there every summer, all summer as a camper througn grade school, then as a counselor through junior year of college. It was a fantastic experience for him.

Both my parents and in-laws were still alive, though my dad's health was deteriorating rapidly. By the end of the year he was in an assisted living facility, and passed away in early 2012. My mom was getting ready for a hip replacement, which did indeed occur in 2011.

We started the summer in hot and sunny Phoenix, and ended it in cool and rainy Portland. No idea at the start of the summer that we would be moving. Things went pretty quickly.

20 years ago your daughter was a senior? I thought they were pretty fresh out of college now. Interesting.