Zev Family Newsletter 2024
2024 started on a sad note, when our friend Cheryl passed away unexpectedly. We hosted the memorial service for her at our house, and almost 100 people attended. She will be sorely missed.
A few weeks later, Jackie walked into her boss’s office and announced that, after 30 years with Northrop Grumman, she wanted to retire. She said that she was willing to be flexible on choosing her last day, but she did not want to do reviews again. Since the next reviews were planned for June, they selected May 31 as Jackie’s last day. This apparently pissed off the karma gods, because just a few weeks after that, HR announced that Northrop Grumman was now going to do reviews four times a year, and the next review cycle would be in April. Sigh.
Reviews aside, April was fun, because Marc, Jackie, Jonathan, and Emily flew to St. Louis for the total solar eclipse. We rented a house and spent a day in St. Louis before driving on Monday with Georgia and Delaney to Delaney’s mom’s house in Lawrenceville, Illinois. Jill’s husband Mike grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, and we hung out on their back porch to watch the eclipse. The weather cooperated with perfect temperatures and a clear sky – it was really awesome. Delaney and Georgia spent the night at Jill’s house, the rest of us stayed in a hotel in Indiana, and we drove back to St. Louis the next day in pouring rain. The karma gods may not like Jackie, but apparently the weather gods like us! Jonathan and Emily had a flight out on Wednesday, but Marc and Jackie stayed in St. Louis until Saturday. During the days, Marc worked, and Jackie pretended that she was retired already and went to museums, sometimes by herself and sometimes with Delaney.
Jackie and Marc threw a party on June 1 to celebrate her retirement, although technically she took 10 weeks of vacation from June 1 to August 9, so she was still on Northrop Grumman’s books. More things to celebrate - after dating for four and a half years, Jonathan gave Emily a ring, and now they are officially engaged – hurray!
Jackie and Jonathan have attended the annual National Square Dance convention at the end of June most years since Jonathan learned to dance in 2009. This year it was in Milwaukee and Marc and Emily came too. Since Milwaukee is a short drive from Chicago, where Jackie has relatives (and Emily has friends), the four of us flew into Chicago on Monday and spent two days doing museums and visiting relatives and friends before driving to Milwaukee for the convention. The convention was lots of fun – it was great to see all the friends we have made from all over the US (and other countries too!) that come to convention each year.
We flew home on Sunday, and the very next day, Marc and Jackie hopped on a 4-day cruise to Catalina and Ensenada. Our friend Robyn chose this cruise to celebrate her 60th birthday, and a bunch of her friends joined her – all-in-all, there were 44 people in our group! We had a really good time and look forward to doing more “group cruises” in the future. Afterwards, Jackie came down with a very mild case of covid. Marc was mildly sick too, but never tested positive. That seemed to be common among the people in the group. Many of the couples were sick right after the cruise, but for the most part, only one of each couple tested positive for covid – weird.
In August, Jackie turned in her badge and retired officially. Since she had been on vacation since June, nothing really changed, except the work computer disappeared from her home. Marc is still working for Accenture, and Jackie gets health insurance through his company.
Also in August, Jackie went back to Chicago for her cousin Jack’s wedding. She flew there with her mom, and her brother Don & and sister-in-law Sue went too. The wedding was lovely, with events the day before and the day after, so she had lots of opportunities to visit with her cousins.
Marc and Jackie had one more big trip in 2024. In early October, we flew to Seoul, South Korea. We spent two days in Seoul and then boarded a cruise ship for an 11-day cruise. Our ports included Jeju Island, Ishigaki Island, Naha, Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Shizuoka, and Tokyo. Jeju Island is in South Korea, and the other ports are all in Japan. We disembarked the cruise ship in Tokyo, and then had two more days to romp around Tokyo. We really enjoyed Korea and Japan, and very much recommend the trip we took. People have asked what the high points of the trip were, and that is a hard question to answer, because we liked all the places we saw and all the excursions we took. In both Seoul and Tokyo, we used public transportation a lot, and we were pleased at how easy it was to navigate, despite not knowing any Korean or Japanese.
In November, the project Marc was working ended. Jackie decided that since he didn’t have to be at his desk at 8am, she would change the alarm to go off at 6:30 instead of 6am and get an extra half hour of sleep. Such decadence! She still goes for a run every morning, and then she and Marc go for a walk. Her days are full of doing stuff for AAUW, Sisterhood, the Engineers’ Council, the Platt library, the Valley Trailers Square Dance club, and WRJ, but she has made time for things she wants to do for herself too. One of the things Jackie wanted to do more in retirement was to write software and, due to Marc’s curiosity, she recently landed herself a (paying) gig making improvements to an existing software program. She also wanted to do more blogging in retirement, and that has definitely happened – mostly blogging about our travels, but also about stuff that has happened at home. To read what she has posted, go to www.ityfaq.com. There are lots more details about all our trips.
Marc is still working at Accenture and expects that a new project is just around the corner. He fills his free time with cross stitching and reading. The kids are good. Georgia is still working for Boeing, Delaney is still teaching religious school at their Temple, and Jonathan is still working for Sequoia Research. More good news – Emily is now working for Emax Laboratories in Torrance. Emax provides environmental laboratory services to government agencies, and Emily (whose degree is in Chemical Engineering) is analyzing samples.
We did a lot of traveling this year, spent a lot of time with family, and had a lot of fun. We had so much fun on our eclipse trip and our two cruises that we are going on an eclipse cruise for the next total eclipse, which is August 2026. Want to join us?
We hope your life is also filled with family and fun. Best wishes for a healthy, happy 2025!
Fondly,
Jackie and Marc