Monday, July 29, 2002

Work, Home and Play

It has been a long time since I have written to you all. Last time was mid-March when I started my new job at UnumProvident.

WORK
I am enjoying my job and have caught on rather quickly to the products and processes of the Voluntary Workplace Benefits aspect of insurance. The people I work with in the office are great, and I am lucky to have good people to work with out in the field as well. The account managers and enrollment firms I work with the most are in Florida.


My better half of UnumProvident, Stacy, is constantly making great strides at work. She recently had the opportunity to hire two managing writers who will report to her and, in turn, Stacy was promoted to Public Relations Director in Corporate Marketing. It is pretty cool to see the name "Stacy Gray" on documents that are viewed by UnumProvident's 12,000+ employees and many others.

HOME
It is hard to believe we have been back in Chattanooga for almost a year. We moved back here on August 3, 2001. We are getting a lot of pleasure from our home and all the fun projects we have inside and out.


PLAY
Stacy and I have taken two trips this spring/summer. We spent four days in May in New Orleans with another couple/friends. It was the first time down there for us and we made the most of it!


We spent the first couple of weeks of July in the mid-Atlantic/northeastern states. We were in Philadelphia for the Fourth of July and stayed two more days seeing the sights there. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is a must see.

We then made our way to Boston. We walked the famous Freedom Trail through the city and saw a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, where we happened upon a dear old friend who we did not expect to see there! We also spent a good amount of time in Cambridge, home to Harvard University.

We stopped in Providence, RI for a day. Rhode Island is a nice state. It had more scenery than I would have thought. We stayed in New Haven, CT, and visited shops and toured the campus of Yale. We were quite scholarly on this trip.

We made our way to New York City and stayed in the Theatre District / Times Square. Our hotel was in the building above the Ed Sullivan Theatre, home of David Letterman.
Sadly we visited the WTC site. There were not many dry eyes down there as many visitors looked into the massive hole. I am very glad that I went down to lower Manhattan to pay respects. All the stuff you see on TV it is so much more somber and eye opening in person. We even visited the hospital St Vincent's where some of the injured and victims went. This was the area where all those missing signs were posted. Sadly, hundreds of them are still there and have been enshrined in a glass case.


We did have a good time in NYC. We took in a Broadway play, The Graduate, starring Kathleen Turner and Alicia Silverstone. It was a well-done adaptation of the movie. And Times Square at night nothing like it in the world.

We finished up in Washington DC. We sat at the bottom of the Washington Monument at midnight and looked out over the Great Mall, seeing the glowing Capitol Building and the Lincoln Memorial in the near distance. It was awesome. There may have been five other people up there at that time, not counting the two National Parks guards.

Well, I could go on and on. We were very excited about everything we were fortunate enough to see and do. Oh, and we drove 2,398 miles total.

That's all for now. Thanks for keeping in touch and reading up on our recent experiences!
Hope all is well