a mail received from David Todd

Ex MH3 member

   Monday, December 25, 2006 9:32:17 AMDavid M. Todd (todddm@earthlink.net)

Hi everyone,

Wishing you a Happy Holiday season, Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.
We did up a little newsletter this year, see below.

Best wishes,
The Todds

Holiday Newsletter of Sorts

We don’t usually do newsletters. In fact, we have never done one! However in light of the fact that since our move to Alaska we’ve been relatively incommunicado, I decided to break down and write something to send out as an electronic greeting (which we didn’t even do last year). Since I am not an experienced newsletter writer, I don’t write in the third person (like Jimmy from Seinfeld).

So, here goes:

Executive Summary

We are all fine, hope you are well and hope to see you soon.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Love,
David, Sue & Jessica Todd
2510 Stern Circle
Anchorage AK 99515
USA
todddm@earthlink.net
suzannemt@earthlink.net
jessicalt@earthlink.net

If you want to know more, continue, otherwise you’re done!

Detailed Discussion

I pondered long and hard whether the Executive Summary was enough, but since the laptop is fired up anyway, the cost/benefit equation of adding more is very favorable, so here goes:

Brief summary of 2005

The project in Ireland effectively wrapped up in December 2004 and the plant was running steadily in January 2005. During the time of project closeout, I had a couple of job opportunities come up with ConocoPhillips: Upstream Project Management in Alaska or work on a Refinery Project in Wood River, Illinois (across the river from St. Louis, MO). Either of these jobs and locations would have been pretty good but (for us anyway) a place like Alaska has to win out. So in March we all went over to Anchorage house hunting. I stayed on at work while Sue and Jessica returned to Ireland for the remainder of Jessica’s school year. I went back in April to pack up the household and ship it out, Sue & Jess moved into an apartment for the remainder of the school year, about 5 more weeks. Then I met them in Houston, we visited some friends, then traveled to visit more friends and relatives in Florida and finally spent a week of vacation in Panama prior to our final descent on Anchorage. The remainder of the year was a picture of rapid fire integration. In continuation of her primary endeavors in Ireland, Jessica had joined a soccer team and a track club in Anchorage in absentia. She had a soccer game the day after she arrived. That was the beginning of a soccer season that never ends. Since I’m belaboring 2005 a bit, here are the high points:

• We bought a house (and now live in it)
• Jessica’s soccer team won the Alaska State Championship for 1993 girls
• Jessica traveled to the National Junior Olympics Track Meet and ran the 100M and 200M
• I learned how to fish for Salmon and Halibut
• We went to Panama again for two weeks at Christmas (hence very few holiday greetings went out)

On to 2006

I’ll jump around by subject a bit here rather than be chronological.

During each of our expatriate assignments, Sue couldn’t work (for pay) under the terms of our Visas, so upon return to the USA she once again considered the job markets. Each previous USA stop in Montana, Texas and Texas again, she had always works “for the man” at energy or engineering companies, but decided this time she’d go it on her own, this fitting in much better to the time commitments she’s given to the Mears Middle School (Jessica’s school) Parent-Teacher Organization, as well as our local Homeowners Association. Sue’s new job choice was to become a Pampered Chef sales consultant and has gone at it hard in 2006, advancing to Director level for which she will get recognized at a national conference in Dallas in January. Between these three endeavors, she is pretty much tapped like a full-time job, but has ultimate schedule flexibility. Jessica’s sports have always been a big part of her life, and as the years go by, it becomes more and more of Sue’s and my life too. There are two facets here in Alaska: School sports and Club sports.

Jess plays most of the interscholastic sports at her school. In 7th grade she did Cross Country, Volleyball and Track. She always does well in running sports and though she is a natural sprinter, she did get 8th place in the Anchorage School District in 7th grade Cross Country, and then this year moved up in the finals to 4th place. She played JV in 7th grade and then made the Varsity this past season. Mears took 3rd place in the School District this year. Track is one of Jessica’s best sports and she got one Silver and two Bronzes at the District finals in 7th grade in the 200M, 100M and High Jump respectively.

School sports are just part of the normal schedule, much as they were when “we” were kids, but the Club sports scene is involved, intense and at least for those of us in Alaska, always involves some significant travel. As mentioned in the “2005” section, Jessica’s team (Cook Inlet Spirit) won the state championship. This qualified them for regionals in Idaho in June of 2006. The team also went to one tournament in Seattle in preparation for regionals. On top of that, Jess also qualified for the state representative team so that put her in Idaho one more time for Regional Camp to play against other states. Her club took 2nd place at state this year so no Regionals in 2007. Additionally, her team merged with another from her same club. Jessica used this opportunity to try out for and join another team of 1992 girls, the Northern Lights Celtics and she is currently playing indoor soccer with them. Playing with the older team challenges her skills a bit more.

On the track & field side, the local summer season starts about two weeks after the school season ends, so it is fairly continuous. Jessica has really come into her own this year, running each week at the local track meets in June and July. She and I traveled to Regionals in Oregon where she ran as an exhibition athlete and took 3rd place in the 400m as well as doing a personal best in the 100M of 13.3s. As a “remote” athlete from Alaska, she was automatically qualified for Nationals but it was good to see her do well against the regional competition. To close out the season, we all traveled to the East coast for Nationals in Baltimore at Morgan State University, making a vacation of it with lots of family living or meeting us in the area. Jessica ran the 200M and 400M against the USA’s best 13-14 year old athletes and achieved a personal best in the 400M with a 62.17s, enough to place 29th out of the field of 36. Next year’s nationals are in Walnut, California and, as a 14 year old, she hopes to place in the top half of the field.

So, what am I up to? Well after one season with the Bird Creek Barbarians RFC, and a total of 22 years and 9 clubs, I officially retired from playing rugby at the end of the 2005 season, and to date have only played one match since, and didn’t even play at the Kansas State Alumni game over Labor Day even though I did go and see a lot of the old mates from college. Now that is honest retirement! (though Sue is not convinced). More fishing and hunting on the horizon for me, chasing my daughter around the country for her camps and competitions, and getting as many ski days as possible at Mount Alyeska (www.alyeskaresort.com). I’m currently the Portfolio Manager for surface facilities capital projects at the Kuparuk Oil Field on the North Slope of Alaska. If you want to know what that means, I’ll have to explain separately.

Look ahead

In 2007, Jessica will be in 9th grade and move on to Dimond High School. She’s been doing well in Middle School so may be getting into some AP courses. We’ll take another trip or two to Panama to look after our business there and hang out on the beach and in the city. Sue will have a couple of conferences in the L-48 with Pampered Chef. I will pass my 19th year of service with Conoco/ConocoPhillips (one more year to a watch or something!). We have a trip to San Francisco planned that Sue received as an award for sales volume. I’ve got a work trip planned to Kuala Lumpur in February so hope to stay over a weekend to see friends in Melaka. I’m not sure we will make the Rugby World Cup in France in ’07. It’s a shame to miss one but I think we will have to set our sights on New Zealand in 2011. I’ll be continuing with Spanish classes in hopes of being reasonably bilingual as we do travel to Panama a lot with long-term hopes of a vacation home there. Jess and I both want to improve our snowboarding skills this winter.

That’s about it for me, here are some hotlinks to some photos, and here is Sue’s rebuttal.

Best Regards,
David

I have no “rebuttal” to David’s comments. I think he did an excellent job of recapping our one+ year in Anchorage. So I’ll just close with a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Wishing you all the best.

Love,
Sue