Pictures from the Past: Emilie

Nothing shows the passage of time quite like kids growing up. I don’t look a whole lot different here in 2004 than I do now, but the munchkins on either side of me sure do! Yesterday, Boy Munchkin turned twelve, and his sister will turn eleven in March. WOW!!!! Back in college, I baby-sat these two quite a bit, then lived in their finished attic for a year until I graduated and moved “to the corner” of their placemat-map of the US.  I get to see them once, sometimes twice, a year now, and in between, I miss them and their parents a lot.

In the intervening time, I guess a lot has changed for me, too.  In Dec. 2004, I was:

• a junior at Purdue University (go Boilers!), majoring in creative writing
• just a few weeks from formulating a plan to allow me to spend the following summer studying in Ireland, which in turn allowed me to graduate a semester early, in Dec. 2005
• majoring in creative writing, covering entertainment for the student newspaper, and wondering what in the world I was going to do for a living after graduation
• just starting to check out Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction program
• having the occasional conversation with a grad student at church who, less than two years from then, would become my husband
• NOT considering the possibility that I would EVER move to Seattle…silly me

Major Events of 2004 (outside my sheltered university life):

• George W. Bush is elected for a second term as president (my first time voting in a presidential election, btw).
• An earthquake in the Indian Ocean creates a tsunami that ravages several south Asian countries and kills nearly 300,000 people.
• Martha Stewart is sent to prison for insider trading.
• The Summer Olympics are held in Athens, Greece, a fitting tribute to the ancient games which provided the format of our modern ones.
• Afghanistan holds democratic elections for the first time.
• And, the greatest lasting impact from 2004: Facebook launches at Harvard.

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