The Family Christmas Letter, 2019

It's always sunny in LA, even indoors

2019: you call it "last year," but to us it's just so much material for another Family Christmas Letter. So very much material: we changed schools (Gideon twice), extensively rejiggered our properties (so why does it feel like we ended up in the same place?), moved again from the Old World to the New (oh, that's why), and, once back, adopted a new drive train (instead of gas, our Kia uses 100% renewable smugness). Even the Christmas Letter, bound though it be by hoary tradition, has changed: we've added a special section about you special people, our bicycling readers. Posting from the magnificent city of Los Angeles (because some traditions do hold and being late is one of them), here's the period at the end of the run-on sentence that has been our 2019. Enjoy!

TALIA:

Teaching the Dutch a lesson about how to eat herring
(namely that if you use a bigger plate you can get a lot more on it)

If by some strange chance you reread last year's Letter preparatory to reading this one's, you may be wondering: Did they ever get a couch? The answer is yes, we did, and it's Talia who found and bought it for us. It's also Talia who decided not to include that couch in our shipping container when we sold the apartment it was in and moved back a couple of months later (she filled the container with HEMA tea towels instead, which says something about her priorities). And it was that very same Talia who realized, upon our return, that we again needed a new couch. But--and this is the point of the story--it was a very different Talia who leapt into action and quickly bought us one, a rock hard leather chesterfield which is, in the most literal sense, surprisingly comfortable. An inspiring story of personal development if ever I have told one. Nor was that all: Talia this year learned how to ski (hard, even with half a bottle of wine at lunch), how to cook vegan (harder, even with frequent recourse to the Beyond Burger), and how to keep an electric car charged (hardest of all, though recall that at the moment we're in LA, which does not appear to have received news of the EV revolution). Talia is confident that some combination of these skills will help her find the job for which she is currently hunting, but if you have other ideas she's open to suggestions or, better yet, offers.

FELIX:

This one-of-a-kind card is available via direct purchase (from me, in any quantity) for $72,
yet another example of the cynical marketing machine that is "Magic, The Gathering of Your Money"

In addition to cultivating (and infecting his brother with) the MTG virus, Felix was asked to join an advisory board for Nestle Nederland (he instructed them on how to make hamburgers healthier and other kid-relevant matters about which he knows nothing), won admission to a top Dutch gymnasium (which isn’t a gym though it has one), became really quite good on horseback (better than his father, at any rate), and learned where the money you sometimes find on the street comes from (namely his wide open pockets, which is why he no longer gets an allowance). While abroad, Felix maintained an active correspondence with his many friends back home (they would send him lengthy, thoughtful emails to which he would actively respond using Gmail's auto-reply function). He returns to them a well-traveled young man, having played pinball in cities all across Europe. Now exactly half way through middle school, Felix is seemingly unaware that seventh grade is supposed to be a struggle. On the other hand, he's also unaware that, by now, he shouldn't need to be told to change his pants.

GIDEON:

Speaking of pants, here's a rare shot of Gideon wearing some while
spreading the news that Brexit is coming (er, when exactly?)

Gideon moved to a new school at the start of the year and, embarrassed by his parents' now foreign accents, asked that we not walk him there. Back in California, Gideon once again welcomes our company on his morning commute: we both speak American like a native, and besides, he's hoping we will buy him hot chocolate on the way. (I often think about the former situation when denying him the latter treat.) Politics being the major topic of conversation at his new, new school, Gideon dove right in, winning a seat as class representative on a platform of “vote for me, Gideon.” He is also driving change at home, where he irregularly but passionately declares his intent to be vegan (hence Talia's cooking challenge). Despite still being the smaller of our two sons, Gideon manages to hold his own in the ultraviolent but deeply strategic "Butt Wars," a sort of gladiatorial game the boys played in historical monuments all over Europe (here's a video of them doing so less inappropriately than usual in the Roman Coliseum). When not leading with his glutes, Gid goes with his gut.

ALEC:

No, I can't read any more of this than you can

Alec publicly admitted that he doesn't know how AI works (though truly, no one else does either), which statement was published multiple times and even translated into Korean, he thinks. Deeply concerned about the climate situation, he also played what he imagines to be a key role in last October's "Rebels without Borders" event (and it's probably best if you don't mention to his Extinction Rebellion colleagues that he flew back to Amsterdam to do so). Not apt to remember anything he hasn't written down and unable to find the place he wrote it, we are forced to consult his search history for further details of the year past. A curated selection: diskeeper, Pacific Rose apple, IPL, klatch, dishwasher salt, geoengineering, fin rot.

THE HOUSES:

A long and complicated tale, it boils down to this: for a while there we had a heated bathroom, but now, once again, we do not. Still, having sold our Amsterdam apartment, we were happy to find the remaining house right where we left it and not visibly worse for the wear, though what that might have looked like I really cannot imagine. Anyway, here's a picture of Talia in our kitchen:

I'm lying, this is our bathroom, not our kitchen

THE FRIENDS ON BIKES:

2019 was one of those rare years in which we once again got to mix lots of US friends with lots of European ones--it is always a delight to bring you wonderful people together! By way of thank you to those who visited us in Amsterdam, here are some photos of you all on and around bikes (though do email me if you'd rather your likeness not be used to teach self-driving cars how to recognize bicyclists):

You are adorable and we love you all.

VACATION:

We spent a lot of time traveling this year, both around Europe (because Europe) and the US (because Alec's US employer instituted an "all-you-need" vacation policy and it turns out he needs a lot so has not been to work since returning). As required by the Cupertino Xmas Convention, we offer photos from those travels in an Apple-generated montage:

We hope you are jealous, that's why we record our lives and share them with you. Won't you please try to make us jealous, too? In the meanwhile, here's our New Year wish: may 2020 bring less change for our family but a lot more, and better, for the world we all live in.