Episode 22, in which our heroes rely on AI to make the web site work and enjoy some big changes.

Please ignore that weird block in the upper left corner, it goes away when you open the pictures and we gave up trying to figure out how to get AI to fix it.

Welcome, Merry Christmas, happy holidays of all other descriptions, and best wishes for a fantastic 2025. Before we prattle on at you about this year, how about we check on some predictions from the last two years? Don't worry about finding your notes, we have it all ready for you.

2022 Prediction:

Keith still doesn't quite have a workshop, but it is closer than ever. ... It will be a real shop by Episode 21 (which is probably going to be online vs. printed).

2024 Reality:

It took a year longer than we wanted, but now we have both a working shop and you're reading this online or not at all. It's nice to not have to deal with the single page limit with just a few pictures to stuff in an envelope. Your attention span and degree of joy over our very long letters may vary.

2023 Prediction:

Keith is still at PTC. That may not be true by the next letter.

2024 Reality:

Nailed it. That's right, he's out. Funny story goes along with this. We'd been planning this all year, which you knew if you were paying attention last year. In 29+ years Keith's had every emotion you can have at a company except being bored. Which is what happened this year, despite aggressively picking up work to stay busy and pitching a new idea that was accepted by the leadership team... and then farmed out to McKinsey. So that was it as far as we were concerned. Keith was set to let PTC know on a Friday that we had a good run but it was time to move on. On Tuesday of that same week PTC was gracious enough to include Keith in a layoff. Any way you look at it this was a win.

General Family Stuff

It’s been a busy year, even without that bit of news. Last year, as you were devouring Episode 21, we were back in the northeast and saw Rick, Karen, and Kate from Ireland as well as Rick’s parents. That led to a week in New Hampshire with Keith’s parents and the Karams. A wicked good time. Episode 23 next year will have stories about the Christmas/New Year’s trip we’re about to take with the same family suspects. No spoilers, patience grasshoppers. A repeat trip to Ireland to see Guinness the Gormans would be great but hasn’t materialized yet.

There isn’t much of anything else to say about work this year. We’ve completed the sale of Jo’s share of the vet practice and you just read Keith’s story. We’re both temporarily retired (not counting landlord and farm operation work). Keith wants to measure “temporarily” with a second hand, Jo is more comfortable with a calendar. We negotiated that we’ll figure out what comes next during 2025. “Negotiated” of course means that Keith is doing what Jo said. Ideas about what to do aren’t in short supply. Ideas that are compelling to both of us not so much. Keith is not sold that “showing horses all the time” counts as a next career. Jo is sure he’s wrong, as evidenced by having to triple the size of her championship belt buckle rack (yes, that’s something people actually do). We’ll have something figured out by this time next year.

We had a great family trip to Denver and Salt Lake City via train. Taking the train was different. The mountain part of the ride was phenomenal and we recommend everyone see that part of the country. The parts about not driving, avoiding airports, having food and a bar, and enjoying the scenery were all great. The nonstop train whistles at every crossing take some getting used to when you’re trying to sleep. If you are claustrophobic don’t get the small sleeping room. That won’t go well for you. The family size room was great.

The next year already has a lot of volunteering planned. Always been true, but will be more of the focus. Defy Ventures, FIRST Robotics, CASA, St. Jude, and Keith is now the VP and Facility Manager for The Castle historic mansion / fraternity house in Troy, NY. Because of course you would do that from Illinois.

We got to see the northern lights this year from the farm. 14 of us went to Fairbanks, 100 miles from the Arctic Circle, a few years back and saw nothing. But here they are in Illinois. Weird.

There were horse shopping trips to Texas, visit warm weather trips to Florida, sightseeing trips to Boston and NYC (Ari’s Christmas present was to throw a dart and we’d visit the city), skiing with the crew in NH, construction trips to Troy for The Castle, Jo and Megan road tripped to see the eclipse, we had a summer visit to NH again with family during which Jo got Lyme disease... what the hell, we were on the road a lot this year.

The Megan

Megan is working part time and taking classes part time. She’s in the “exploratory program”. Which is a nice way of saying she has no idea what she wants to do, but is very much on board with the idea that “nothing” isn’t an option. So, she’s trying different things. Programming classes this semester. Python gets a thumbs up. Java gets a boo. Linux gets a big thumbs up. We really did have AI write all the coding (not the words) for the web site. There was a problem we never figured out, and to which Megan's input was, "That's Javascript, I don't do Javascript". Programming may remain in the mix, but it is not looking like a career path. Some of you reading this either are yourselves or have kids who are in the midst of figuring out what programming in an AI world will mean. It won’t be the same, but it will be good. Enough AI chatter for now, though.

The next stop on Megan's career mystery tour is to start a formal dog training program and we’ll see if that becomes the career path. We’ll know more by next letter. Megan certainly has a talent for that sort of work and enjoys it. Although it can sometimes be hard to get much more than a shrug or an “I don’t know” out of her, it does seem like she’s very interested and wants to give this a real shot. Twix doing is still doing great. Teagan dog is still.... neurotic. Megan has picked up lake kayaking as a hobby and really enjoys it. She even drives the truck (!) to get the kayak around. The kayak is longer than her tiny Chevy Bolt and would look hilarious on top. Maybe a shot of that next year.

The Boy

Mason is in 9th grade. Keith and Mason made it to a Bills game this year in Indy (Bills won. Let’s Go Bills). Mason was confirmed this past year and our church attendance suffered thereafter (but we’re pretty sure that is the little-known 11th commandment). Mason still enjoys rec league soccer and wishes his school had a team (it’s a very small town). His favorite class is Foods, and he’s started to cook occasionally at home. He’s signed up for a school trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos in 2 years, which he’s still got to earn a lot to help pay for (without complaining). Still dirt biking, including making some jumps in the yard. Even with the jumps he is less aggressive and has fewer broken bones than his cousin, to whom we wish the best speedy recovery after a crash this summer. Mason is, finally, officially taller than Keith and as far as we know would now be the tallest Gargiulo on record in our branch of the tree. This challenge is in the category of “low bar”, pun intended.

Ari

We bid farewell to Ari, our exchange student from Spain, back in April. Ari got to see a good bit of the country, although we know her favorite activity would have been going clubbing in Miami (that didn’t happen). It was a great experience. We might do it again when Mason is a senior. We’ll see. Right after Ari left, the basement flooded and took out what had been her bedroom. The floods in Spain didn’t affect her family, so two bullets dodged. We may see her at the end of the year, but you won’t know until the next letter.

House and Farm

So, the flood. This is God’s way of again using a flood to send a message. This time it was that Keith should stop hiring contractors for work he knows how to do. We had a plumber put in a backup sump pump. They left the check valve out. For you plumbing novices, that means the pump spits much of its water back into the basement instead of outside the house. Which is a problem when there is a storm with 3 or 4 inches of rain in 90 minutes. On top of that, an electrician ran power to an outside patio and neglected to do anything to plug the end of the underground conduit. So, there was essentially a 2 inch diameter pipe running groundwater back into the basement. With the bonus of having a 125 amp line in it. So yeah, that restoration project is still ongoing (on their dime, plus some insurance). Crazy how much damage 2 or 3 inches of water can do.

The number of house and barn projects we did or had done this year is borderline ridiculous. We finished the 3-year project to build outdoor pavilion space which turned out better than we expected but was definitely the never-ending project. Every 30 or so years you kind of have to deal with paint and the roof whether the house and barns need it or not (that was sarcasm, paint and roof were all overdue). 4 generations of tools and supplies were sorted and organized (mostly) with 2 big truckloads going to auction and a ton (literally a ton) going to the scrapyard. You can actually walk in the shop now. And finally, we converted part of one barn into an apartment where JoAnn’s dad John (who did a lot of the work) has been living since June. It’s bigger and nicer than our first apartment. The project list (ridiculously referred to as "the three year plan") we started when we moved in is actually within sight of the finish line. But due to some very technical financial advice along the lines of “stop spending money when you’re not making money” we have to pump the brakes a bit. Keith doesn’t have an MBA so he didn’t understand it. Jo explained it as “Keith, you just do more projects without paying other people.”

Jo's Dad

John has been enjoying living much closer to the action around the farm and keeps busy with many projects (apartment, splitting lawn mowing duties with Mason, fixing things) and daily visiting. Maybe the favorite project was a 7 foot tall tomato plant that gave its last tomatoes the day before Thanksgiving. John had some skin cancer he had to beat down this year and that seems to have gone well.

Keith's Parents

Keith’s parents are in NH near Shelly/Jeff and the kids. Mom is still beating the hell out of cancer. Dad dealing with the need for a hip replacement that (we hope) he’ll want to tackle early next year. Paige is working, schooling, and still hammering out sports. We got to watch her play hockey on one of the NH trips. Connor is really doing well with his guitar and school. We get “name this tune” videos and Keith was very happy that Rush finally made the rotation. We’re deep in the logistics of our Christmas/New Years trip, which is so much fun that we might start a travel agency (for clarity, that was a lie).

Good God, Does This Letter Ever End?

Every time we write this letter, we’re sure we’ve missed calling out something or someone important. We don’t take notes during the year, and while this isn’t stream of consciousness writing you don’t get revision 15 either. The closest we get to “research” is collecting the photos to trigger Keith’s annual complaint about how much of a pain certain family members are when it comes to getting their picture taken. Was that targeted? It could have been worse. But we digress. We hope we thought of everything and everyone. If we missed, it wasn’t on purpose.

Visit Illinois. Ride a horse. Do Midwest things. Good food, easy to get around. Great weather. Plenty of room (because the basement will be brand new by the time you visit). We’re here and our schedule is pretty flexible, as you may have guessed.

With love, Jo, Keith, Megan, and Mason