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Holiday Letter 2020

HAPPY HOLIDAYS 2020

Hi everyone! Well it’s been a minute since we’ve done a holiday letter (‘been a minute’ – love that! because it actually means way more than a minute, so it’s kind of like the opposite, like when ‘bad’ meant ‘good,’ kids are so clever!), so it felt like we were due. And this seemed like the perfect year to do it. Because 2020 was a lot, right? You can kind of trace the progression of the year to how people started their emails. We went from “I hope you’re bearing up during these trying times” to “I hope you’re hanging in there okay” to “Can you believe this shit?” to “Fuck my life!” And those were the business emails.

But we’re humans, right? And humans persevere. Which is exactly what the Utz-Greenwald clan has done. Here’s a quick rundown:

Charlie, 27, got married. His wife, Noora, is terrific. They lived with us for a while during the early days of the pandemic but then decided they needed their own space, so they moved to Brooklyn. Now I don’t need to tell you, Brooklyn is a pretty with-it place, so no one was more surprised or impressed than us, when a mere two months after they got there, they wound up on the cover of New York Magazine’s “Brooklyn’s Hippest Couples” issue. Maybe it’s because they have that Indian-Jewish-Catholic thing going, or maybe it’s because they live in a yurt made entirely out of artisanal vegan jelly beans, which they built in the middle of Fort Greene Park, but they’re obviously doing something right. Noora is a graphic designer who recently re-designed the official flag of New Delhi, and Charlie is a business coordinator at CNN, where he’s in charge of the new #fakenewsmyass social media initiative. (They have a lot of likes. From what I understand, that’s a good thing.)

Joe, soon to be 26, lives and works in Boston, where he’s a sales executive for a firm called Meltwater. At first we were really impressed, because we thought he worked at a company that had finally figured out how to melt water, but then we found out it was a media monitoring service, which frankly sounds even more exciting, because who doesn’t want their media monitored?? In just 16 short months Joe has been promoted from “guy who calls people who don’t want to be called” to “guy who calls people who don’t want to be called but answer the phone anyway because they’re desperate for human contact because there’s a pandemic going on.” As a result, he was Meltwater’s Employee Of The Month for two straight weeks. Way to go Joe!

Jack, 24, also works in Boston – well, technically, Cambridge, because that way he can kind of imply he went to Harvard. He’s doing great at VMWare, where he sells cybersecurity that he swears can’t be hacked by the Russians. (It turns out that in the fine print, it says that it usually can’t be hacked by the Russians. But who reads the fine print? Nobody, lucky for Jack!) He’s got a great girlfriend, Iria, but sadly she lives in Spain, so they’ve only seen each other once since March. Luckily, that one time was a five-month trip in which they visited every one of the Galapagos Islands (including 13 major islands, 6 smaller islands, and scores of islets and rocks), so don’t cry any tears for them!

Cathy, age deleted, is cruising right along – or should I say, zooming right along! Her zoom therapy practice is going great guns, her zoom yoga class is a great source of relaxation, and she just started her brand-new zoom cooking school! Called CONES TO SCONES, she specializes in “sweets with sweetness,” and she’s already got twenty-two students from around the world! Tommy is so proud of her, and he tells her so every night when they get into their zoom bed.

Tommy, 58, is doing great and has really made the most of this year! His main job, marketing Broadway shows, has slowed to a crawl, so not a lot going on there. Luckily, he’s used the time to really concentrate on his other job, writing books for kids. Oh no, wait, he hasn’t done much of that either. Which leaves plenty of time for yard work and home renovations, right? Well, he’s Jewish, so also pretty quiet on that front. I guess that means he does most of the housework now? Actually, let’s not go there. Can we talk about the dogs now?

Coco and Abby run the show. What else is new?

Thank God enough of us took the Biden vaccine, herd immunity from Trumpid 17-20 is right around the corner.

Love to all.










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