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This is a picture of my grandfather and me at our summer home in Maine. I do not remember this occasion. I really have very few specific memories of my grandfather. He died when I was six. Most of my memories are either pictures like this or stories that get recounted by my family.

One vague recollection is waking up very early one morning when he was trying to sneak out to go fishing. He clearly wanted to go out by himself, but reluctantly agreed to take me with him. 

I find the distance between the importance of his impact on my life and lack of experiences with him ironic for a couple of reasons. My experience of having our summer home has been significant and in many ways cannot be expressed in words. As the story goes, my grandfather very much wanted to have some land that he could go to on the weekends and share with his family. He spent a great deal of time trying to find a spot that would satisfy this dream. And while he was relatively successful, I think his dream was very aspirational. I am told that I am very much like him as we both took on big and emotionally based projects; often for the benefit of our summer home. The irony for me is that while I am told we have a number of character similarities, I don't share any direct connection to them based on a relationship with him.

This picture maybe one of the few connections I have with Bop Bop and I think it encapsulates this part of my life quite well.

These are my three kids waiting in line to see a fairly extravagant and well done Santa photo opportunity. I would have probably skipped this type of event but my wife is pretty insistent on this kind of stuff. And at the end of the day, I am glad she makes me and the kids do these type of things.

Alfredo is the oldest and is good big brother and kind sole. Sara is my middle, and the rose between the 'two thorns'. She is willful, independent and proud. Ben is my youngest and he is loving, playful sole who likes to push the rest of his family's buttons.

Merry Christmas!

This is a picture of me and three good friends from San Francisco on a trip in 1997 to New Zealand and Australia. Eric Butler, Gregg Friedman, Bill Miller and I were at the Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Harbor and Bridge in the background. I believe this was towards the end of our trip that was loaded with adventure and some very amusing events; most of which came compliments of Gregg. As I look back at it, certainly an important memory and really marked the beginning of the end for my single life. At some point I will writ` about the many stories this trip generated and I love to recount in social situations.

I grew up in Connecticut and started skiing somewhere in high school. My neighbors were skiing and they talked me into going to Sundown Mountain in New Hartford. I certainly was not a natural, but for my age and when I started, I didn't embarrass myself. I then went to college in New Jersey which meant no skiing for four years. After college I visited my brother at the University of Vermont and he had become a good skier. As the older brother, I was pretty used to being better than him at most things and this situation didn't sit well with me.

My cousins were big skiers and they took me on trips to Vail and a few trips to Alta. They all were very good, my cousin Billy was amazing. I did my best and got better, but was slightly above average. I have bony feet and my Lange 'Pink Panther' boots we bruise bones and at times I found skiing very painful. Over a couple of years I had surgery on one foot to grind down bone and then worked on the boot fitting and got things better.

I then moved to San Francisco and hooked up with some friends that were very good skiers. We would get a ski house on the North Shore of Tahoe and skied almost every weekend, mostly at Squaw Valley. I never became as good as that core group of avid skiers, but I got pretty good. Every once and while, we would go to other resorts and sometimes that would include Heavenly. This mountain had a lot more intermediate runs, but on the 'Nevada side, there was a run called Killebrew Canyon. It took two char lifts to do this run. It was steep, full of trees and had a great view of Carson City and the valley below. A very memorable run among a fairly full skiing experience.

Unfortunately I moved to Southern California and having kids has severely limited my skiing for the last twenty years or so. I hope to take it up again in the not-so-distant future.

This is a picture of my father's side of the family gathered for Thanksgiving. I actualy scanned it from a physical picture as I don't have a lot of visual evidence from this part of my life. For the first twenty Thanksgivings of my life we would either go to my cousin's house in Bedford, NY or they would come to the Hartford CLub where my grandmother had a membership. This get together was in Hartford and this was the full compliment of that gathering. The Beattie side of the family over time has suffered and been torn apart. This was a moment of some the good times.

This is a picture of some of my best friends from my days in San Francisco. Rick Cornejo, Ron Sykes and Mike Weissmann. We had quite a gang of friends. These three were some of the best. Ron was my roommate for quite awhile. There were definite subgroups within this gang and Rick and Ron were a group, whereas Mike was part of Scarlet Theory and was predominantly in that circle. This picture was taken in my house in Maine and a good example of these groups mingling. We had a great time and this was a great opportunity to share this part of my life with a group of friends from a very different world.