Yet another year has flown by! Here we are in 2023 and I thought I would share some of the highlights of 2022.

January

For two weeks I worked from home due to increasing COVID cases. I did not mind since I got to hang out with my wonderful dogs.

I became heavily involved in Leadership Westerville’s Snow Patrol which helped match volunteers with seniors needing assistance with snow removal. It was a lot of work, but much appreciated by residents who needed the help. It felt really good to be involved with this effort

I was invited to participate in a roundtable on Smart Parking. I was in a discussion with representatives from Philadelphia and San Francisco! It was pretty cool to be included.

February

Neville Longbottom turned 1 year old!

My husband and I attended the Denison University Bluegrass Festival and doing something somewhat social for once. We still wore our masks and sat away from others, but it was nice to be in public together. We’d spent the past two years pretty much avoiding groups of people due to COVID.

March

While I could not attend RootsTech in person, I did manage to attend a number of the presentations virtually. It was fun to get a little of the old thrill of connecting with my fellow genealogists.

I presented a webinar to the Clermont County Genealogical Society and had fun sharing “What Else is in the Newspaper?”. Always fun to talk about newspaper research and had some great questions at the end.

One of the more challenging aspects of my job at Westerville is attending Planning Commission meetings. I attended one where we had a lot of public attendees interested in the items and of course the hot topic was TRAFFIC. I did my best to look out for the best interests of residents and those who work in Westerville, but it’s a tough situation when you want to consider the safety of all and yet there needs to be growth. This was by far my longest meeting ever with it running from 6:30 PM to nearly midnight. I was exhausted!

Huxley celebrated his 5th birthday. He’s such a good boy and he’s starting to get a little gray on the top of his head. I’m sure overseeing two puppies has added to that!

April

One of the cool things about being a part of Leadership Westerville was getting to volunteer for Service Day. This event centered around providing help to seniors who needed yard work or outside windows cleaned (or whatever work we could do). I was partnered with one of my classmates who is an elementary school principal. It was great getting to know him on a personal level and do GOOD at the same time. The lady we helped with weeding was very appreciative.

Neville and I traveled to visit my step-grandpa to celebrate his 90th birthday! It was so fun to see family and catch up with my aunt and uncles who I had not seen in a few years. Neville was a big chicken and wanted to be in my lap the whole time though he did let Dean get close to him.

We had a pretty awful surprise at work during April. We had a water line break in the building and it flooded a big part of the building. It was clean water (thank god), but it damaged a lot of stuff and was a mess for almost 2 weeks. The number of fans and dehumidifiers that they brought in was so noisy! They moved all of us to the back of the building that was undamaged, but it was a huge pain. It would have been nice if they could have let us work from home for that time period so that we would not have been exposed to the mess.

May

Leadership Westerville held “graduation” for my class and I spoke about the results of our Snow Patrol committee. It was a really nice event held at Otterbein University’s “The Point”.

I was part of a Women in Leadership panel for Women’s Transportation Seminar and shared some of the challenges faced over the years as a woman in engineering. It was interesting to hear other strong women share their experiences too.

I went to see Janis Ian with my mom. It ended up being one of her last performances as her voice has finally given out after so many years of performing. She’s so talented and funny. It was a great night and I’m so glad I got to do that with my mom.

June

Harry Pupper turned 4 years old this month and we celebrated with doggy ice cream. He’s a sweet dog, but has a lot of separation anxiety when either of us leave the house. He just starts howling and all the other dogs voice their support too. It’s a cacophony!

This was an interesting month because I ended up getting a job offer with the Ohio Department of Transportation. I’d been looking for other opportunities since January and this one was too good to pass up. I wanted a position that was less stressful and that offered work from home as an option. The position with ODOT is near downtown Columbus, so it’s a bit longer drive (one hour each way) but only requires me to come in 2 days a week. Since Westerville was not giving any opportunities for work from home in the future and my workload was not getting any better; I turned in my notice. I had made a lot of friends at my job that made it harder to go, but overall it was a good decision for me and my health.

July

What a month! Not only did I try to document everything that I’d been doing in my job at Westerville for my successor… but also I was dealing with some health issues. I had a kidney stone for the first time! UGH. Luckily it passed and nothing further had to be done. Hopefully I never go through that again.

I volunteered at the Westerville Music & Arts Festival and assisted with their silent auction. I had a nice time since one of my fellow Leadership Westerville classmates ended up volunteering for the same thing. We had some nice conversation while admiring a lot of local art and handiwork.

Mid-July I started my new job at ODOT. The crazy thing was that my boss ended up starting his paternity leave that same day. This was their first kid so he ended up taking 6 weeks off to be at home to help. It made for a weird first month on the job, but I think it worked out nicely since I was able to do a lot of training and get to know the 6 team members who report to me. A great group of smart people that will certainly be making my job easy in the years to come.

The highlight of the month was getting to see my youngest sister and her family. It’s rare that they make the trek from North Carolina up to Ohio so it was a real treat to get to spend time with them.

August

I began working from home 3 days a week and it was great. I had to spend some time getting my office back in order since I’d pretty much not used it for several months. Things sure pile up quickly!

My husband had an exciting month as he was interviewed and offered a full time position with OSU-Newark campus as a lecturer. He decided to keep his ties to Otterbein University and Columbus State (just in case). His schedule was going to be super busy, but he somehow managed to do it all! He taught for OSU and Otterbein and drove back and forth to each of the classes. It sounded exhausting.

Neville started taking Beginner training classes at PetSmart. The funny thing is that our teacher was the same gal that I learned from when I had my other two corgis. And she remembered their names! It was good to see a familiar face.

September

I had a pretty social September! Luckily I was able to get my 2nd COVID booster shot. I went to my 30 year high school reunion (has it really been that long?!) and really enjoyed catching up with those that attended.

Neville and I went to the Ohio Corgi Picnic up in Marion, Ohio. It was fun to see 30+ Corgis all in one place. Of course Neville was scared of everything so we mostly ended up relaxing on a blanket and taking it all in. I met some really nice people there.

October

This month we celebrated our 10 year anniversary. It was nice to actually go to a restaurant and have a nice sit-down meal. We have not done that together since before the pandemic! We then got to see Nick Offerman (Parks & Rec fame) at a book signing event at Otterbein. It was a lot of fun and nice to have a “date”.

Winter celebrated her 2nd birthday and is really such a sweet girl. She still tries to boss the other boy dogs, but overall she’s pretty well behaved.

The Virginia Genealogical Society invited me to present “GIS & Genealogy: A Beginner’s How-to” as part of their virtual conference and it was a lot of fun. I always enjoy sharing about mapping and all the great resources out there.

November

Neville joined me for Thanksgiving at my mom’s house this year. I warned him that there were three rules to follow:

1. No terrorizing the cats.
2. No destroying anything.
3. No pooping or peeing in the house.

He was very well behaved and I think he’ll be invited back again. It was fun to get to hang out with my nephew as we walked Neville around the block. Plus THANKSGIVING FOOD! Can’t beat it!

December

This month brought one of the best birthday gifts I have ever gotten! My husband had gotten us tickets to a behind the scenes tour at the Cincinnati Zoo of the Red Pandas! I will say that I never smiled so much in my life getting to be so close to the little guys. They were so cute, but watch out for those claws.. they don’t retract.

We ended up having a major snowstorm and temperatures well below zero right around Christmas. This made it difficult to do anything and even the dogs would only go out for a minute before coming back inside. We had a scare where we thought we had a frozen pipe, but luckily it was just the Village shutting off the water due to a water main break. We were back in operation later that night.

So that’s my year! The new job is going well and I am so happy to get to be home so much. I’ve been really making an effort to get together with friends whenever I can since I miss seeing a lot of them from my time at Westerville. Now to just reconnect with my genealogy friends! I really hope that 2023 brings more opportunities to get together with them.