1999 Holiday Letter

Happy Holidays

Greetings from the cornfields of Indiana (that is not hyperbole by the way - we live in an apartment complex that is surrounded by farmland, with the occasional mini-golf course thrown in.) We hope you are happy and healthy as we go into the next century (although if you are a stickler for detail, we are one year away as the monks who developed our calendar pegged the birth of Christ as year one A.D. instead of year zero...clearly not graduates of the University of Chicago...well, anyway, we're not among those who seem to be seriously miffed about this, such as the guy who wrote letters to the editors of the 200 largest newspapers.)

So, what happened to us in 1999, you ask (if you've read this far, presumably you care)? Tony somehow managed to complete his MBA at the University of Chicago in June (graduating without any honors whatsoever, except maybe "Best Performance by a Slacker Who Spent his Two Hours a Week of Homework with One Eye in the Books and the Other on the Spread in the Packers Game"), although he is still waiting for someone to fess us that they made a mistake admitting him in the first place. Regardless, despite highly competitive offers from the Hyde Park Seven Eleven, the Chicago Department of Sanitation and LazyBoy.com (Tony's enthusiasm for the product really came out in the interview), we finally decided to head to Indianapolis, Indiana so Tony could occupy a cubicle at Eli Lilly and Company (think Prozac) and start collecting a much-needed paycheck.

Although at times we feel like veal chops at a vegetarian convention, by and large we are adapting to Hoosier life. Of course, ever sociable Tony spends almost all of his non-working hours completely immersed in continuous 24 hours a day, 7 days a week sports programming on his satellite dish.

Jolene spent much of the first half of 1999 working in a noisy and chilly basement (due to restoration) of Ernest Hemingway's birthplace. However, funding "ran out" for her position and she had to leave that highly paid and prestigious position. Jolene made a career change upon our move to Indianapolis and seems to enjoy her job at Macmillan USA, a publishing, online content and software firm (think Idiot's Guide to everything, including - I kid you not - The Complete Idiot's Guide to Sex on the Net [insert your own joke here]). Jolene works as the Sales Coordinator in International Software Sales and Business Development, allowing her to occasionally swear in several different languages and contribute to the proliferation of books online. Although she believes the sleep-inducing properties of reading books like Pure XML on your computer screen are the real benefits of this technology. Jolene also managed to get her master's thesis on the cranberry harvest in central Wisconsin approved before the end of the century and enjoys volunteering at Conner Prairie living history museum.

Tony is "hard at work" (the definition of this varies greatly between Tony and his boss) doing strategy and business development for Lilly's Diabetes Care business unit. He comes home with lots of stories about the unfortunate side effects of drugs that are offered to Lilly by biotech firms. Especially interesting was the obesity drug with the herpes simplex-inducing side effect. We think the promotional campaign will be "Lose lots of weight, but whoa there, big fella, don't start cruising those singles bars just yet." He is working harden than anticipated, but feels pretty good when he thinks about his fellow business school graduates working 80-hour weeks in consulting, Wall Street and the dot-com world. Of course, when they drop hundred dollar bills out the windows of their limos in a couple of years, we will both be in line to pick them up.

Our plans for Y2K include seeing as many of you as possible, buying a house (Jolene has one picked out but Tony isn't sure the smell from the nearby waste treatment facility is benign) and adopting a baby from China. However, should chaos ensue at the beginning of the new millenium, we've reserved ourselves a small cave in the hills of northern Kentucky; you're welcome to join us. We hope that you have a joyous holiday season, that you will experience great happiness and prosperity in the year ahead, and that you stay in touch with your friends living in cornfields.