Hey there, Guys,

The holidays were a lot of fun — we went up to NYC again this year. We did Christmas Day alone, the same ol’ Rockefeller / Sacs Fifth Ave rodeo and a party at one of Kevin’s co-workers from the New York Office afterward. Then, a walking tour of through immigrant communities in the LES of Manahattan run through the Tenement Museum, followed by a couple days of Street Fighter 2 and booze with Becca and Kyle.

We have a couple new acquaintances in our neighborhood and building (I’m finally capable of gradients! 😎) who we spent NYE with, ringing in 2019 drinking from champagne glasses around a fire pit where an effigy of the person in the room w the most difficult year was burned to rid the coming year of bad energy (not me). It was in honor of the Ecuadorian host’s home culture.

Things w me are coming more into focus: my position just became permanent and I have some actual mapping projects in the tube; I’m registering for my first graduate Spatial Analysis class in late February; and we have plane tickets out to Denver in a couple weeks to meet my new niece for the first time.

(My most exciting project is developing a free mobile app / Geo database-route finder for all the HIV testing centers in DC!)

We’d love to hear an update about what’s been going on with you guys. Did you get the job you interviewed for, Jeff? Is the shutdown affecting you, Greg?

There has been one voice that has been completely silent in the disquiet that you’ve seen come from me these past weeks/ months — and it’s Kevin’s. Throughout the public eruption of my pain and paranoia these times, it became clear to me you haven’t seen his.

Kevin would like to send you guys his perceptions of what transpired in our group dynamic this year along his own needs from the group through a snail-mail letter.

We miss you guys a lot, and we want to make this work.

It’s just really complicated.