scottbutner.com Blog

(thanks to Groucho Marx for the title line, by the way)

Well, Groucho was right. Time flies — and having flown, sort of develops a taste for it, and never slows down again.

2006 was a year of changes for the Butner-Stephens household: mostly for the better, sometimes not so much. This being, nominally at least, a Christmas letter, I’ll focus on the changes for the better.
Foremost among the changes was that Laura and I became empty-nesters for the first time! (by the way — our initial assessment is: we like it!)

After spending the start of the year sweating out college admissions letters, FAFSA forms, and graduation details, things more or less fell into place as Sean graduated from Richland High School, Ryan graduated from Columbia Basin Community College, and both began the long process of getting on with life.

Sean graduated from Richland High this June, hardly a surprise but still a relief. On the day of his graduation, we got additional reason to celebrate — a letter informing him of a generous scholarship from Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts, in Merrimack, NH. From left to right: Aunt Leslie (Lol), Sean, Laura, Ryan, and Uncle Bill.

Sean and Tabi share a hug at graduation.

A little while before graduation, Sean ended up accepting an offer from Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts, a very small college located on a 300 year old farm in Merrimack, New Hampshire. Scott had the opportunity to visit New Hampshire on business in March, and since Merrimack is just a dozen miles from the Manchester airport, ducked down to visit the school.

It’s an interesting place. 100 students, all undergraduates. The only majors offered are philosophy, english lit, political science, and biology. But the courses are rigorous, the atmosphere was just what Sean was looking for, and so far, Sean seems to be loving it.

Laura and I took advantage of the fact that I had to attend a conference in Baltimore in late November and travelled by car from Baltimore to Merrimack — not exactly a short drive but all in all worth the trip — to visit the campus.

This is the main classroom and library building for Thomas More College — like I said, it’s a small place. Though, in their sophomore year, the entire class relocates to Rome for winter semester, along with a couple of faculty members. So in some ways, the campus is larger than it appears…

Ryan graduated from Columbia Basin Community College with his associates degree, and almost immediately found himself packing up and moving his stuff into Terry-Lander Hall at the University of Washington to take summer semester courses. After a few weeks of adjustments to life “in the big city,” he found that it agreed with him and has already commented on how small the Tri-Cities seems when he comes home to visit. By all accounts, he seems to be doing well back there, and is now sweating out the process of applying for admissions to his major department in the Henry Jackson School of International Studies, where he continues to have an interest in studying China.

A couple of weeks after Sean’s graduation, Ryan graduated from CBC (although by this time, he was already enrolled at the University of Washington and attending summer semester courses). From left: Scott, Ryan, Sean, and Sean’s girlfriend, Tabi.

In fall of 2006, Ryan moved out of a shared room in Terry-Lander Hall, and into a single room at Hansee Hall. There’s a good chance that the UW may need to remove him forcibly after graduation, as he likes the room quite a bit!

Faced with an empty house for the first time in 22 years, Laura and I did what we usually do — made the best of it. So far, we have not made any huge changes, though we do find ourselves going out to dinner a little more often, since it no longer involves four-party negotiations about where we are going to eat. Laura continues to quilt, and we find it a lot easier to drop what we’re doing to hop in the car to attend a quilt show if the mood strikes us. This year, we attended shows in Missoula, MT and Walla Walla, as well as Pendleton, OR. Next year, we hope to go a bit further afield, though we are hording vacation time in preparation for a long-planned trip to Europe in 2008.

This is one of several quilts that Laura made in 2006 — this blanket-sized quilt was made for Tabi

Laura tends to go “all out” for Halloween. On the positive side, I get an excuse for not raking the leaves, since they are an integral part of our Halloween “decorating” — at least, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

I tried my hand at vegetable gardening for the first time in years, starting out small with a few raised beds of tomatoes, peppers, and strawberries. Growing strawberries in the Tri-Cities heat is a bit more of a challenge than I was up to — we got berries, but they were small, and by the dog-days of August, the 100 degree weather had wilted most of the plants pretty badly.

But the tomatoes did well, and it was nice to taste “real” tomatoes again for the first time in years. We used them on salads, and made a few batches of home-made puttenesca sauce. But to tell the truth, we ended up giving a lot of tomatoes away to neighbors, so next year we will have to relearn the canning skills that I haven’t used for a long, long time.

We grew Roma and cherry tomatoes this year, for the first time since we discovered our dear departed beagle, Jessica Squirt, would eat cherry tomatoes ripe from the vines. The tomatoes were nice, but all things considered, I guess we’d rather have the beagle.

I spent much of spring doing a different sort of cultivation — working to organize the Mariner High School 30th Class Reunion. I did much of the organizing “online” via a blog like this one, and actually had a fun time tracking down old friends. Not being a particular socially adept person (truth be told, I actually have something of a social phobia, disliking parties and crowds), it was a real stretch for me — but the results were worth it.

Old friends try to put names to faces in a dusty yearbook: From left: Brad Meacham, Dave Cernich, Syd (LaRue) Hudson, and Darlise Lund look over a yearbook. I’ve known Brad and Darlise since I was 7 years old. We’re all a lot older than that now.

Of course, I did some fishing this year — it would be much more newsworthy, perhaps, if I hadn’t! — but unlike most years, not all of it was on the Yakima River. During the spring, I had to travel to Atlanta for business, and managed to sneak in a day of fishing with an online friend, Don Newton, who grew up fishing the Chatahoochee River. Don showed me a beautiful stretch of river, but alas, he was the only one to catch fish this time out.

Looking downstream from the base of the dam, here’s a view of “da HOOCH!,” as my friend Don likes to call it — noting to any who will listen that the punctuation is mandatory.

Here’s Don himself, a fine example of the kinds of friends you can make if you spend enough time on the Internet…

And I did fish the Yakima a few (dozen) times. I also made it to the South Fork of the Walla Walla river, a rare gem hiding out in the open, practically in my back yard.

A rare treat was fishing with brother Bill and niece Kaelee; don’t let the smiles fool you, the boat was leaking like a sieve by the autumn and ended up spending most of the fall at the Hyde factory in Idaho Falls, getting refurbished.

Without a doubt, the highlight of the fishing year was a trip I took in mid-October. Following up on plans made at the aforementioned 30th class reunion, I met up with some old friends for two days of fishing, camping, and reminiscing on the banks of the Yakima River. In the process, I learned that all the advances in camping equipment, high-tech fibers, and air-mattress technology cannot keep pace with how much harder the ground has gotten in those past 30 years!

Here’s a story about the trip.

A spin-off of the Mariner High School class reunion was the MHS Old Farts Fish-in on the Yakima River in October. From left is Keith Knol, Scott, Dave Van Beek, and Ozie Greene. This group has known each other for nearly 40 years!

We hope to make this an annual event.

We also said “goodbye” this year, to the maroon colored Geo Metro affectionately known as “the Cranberry.” After surviving the summer as the car that Sean used to deliver Papa Johns’ pizzas in, after returning intact from numerous cross-state trips, the car met its demise in Bismarck, ND — one third of the way to New Hampshire with all of Sean’s belongings packed into the hatchback.

Actual transcript of the phone call:

Sean: “Hey dad, the Metro is making a funny noise”

Scott: “What sort of funny noise?”

Sean: “You know what it would sound like if you dropped a handful of quarters into a blender?”

Needless to say, the Cranberry did not finish the trip to New Hampshire; Sean and his pal Nick hopped an Amtrack from Minot to Manchester, and arrived at Thomas More with hours to spare.

The Cranberry, may it Rust In Peace.

But all things considered, we came out of the year pretty well — and now, 2006 is water under the bridge. The house is temporarily full again, as the boys have come home from college.

And we hope that 2007 treats you well, and invite you to leave a “hello” for us below.

Posted by Administrator on December 24th, 2006 at 1:48 am
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