Rosemarie and Pike answer 20 questions for 2020
1. Where the heck are you? Right now, we have reoccupied our condo in Phoenix, a bit north of downtown at the Encanto light rail station and opposite the Heard Museum that is full of southwestern native arts and crafts.
Tapestry on Central in Midtown Phoenix, AZ, USA
2. Can’t you stay in one place like normal people? Apparently not.
3. What? Should I replace your last address once again? No, to avoid the 17th move in 41 years and to have a cooler abode in the summer, we are becoming “rain-birds” and plan to spend late spring, summer, and early fall in the Pacific Northwest at our condo in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle
Lower Queen Anne, Seattle, WA, USA
4. Does this mean that you two are finally retired? We are on the road to retirement--apparently a long and winding road.
5. Don’t you want to retire? Apparently not.
6. What is Pike doing? Helping with a couple of mixed-use real estate development projects and hanging out with university students, staff, faculty and industry advisors as the part-time acting chair of a university real estate department.
7. Is he still teaching? Pike is trying to graduate from the University of Washington.
8. Are you serious? Apparently not.
9. What is Rosemarie doing? She just recreated The Best Christmas Ever for our kids and grandkid in Phoenix and is now Resting.
10. How long will that last? Not long. She has been working infrequently in senior nutrition and is plotting a second career for 2021.
11. What is son Blake up to? Like his father, he moves from gig to gig and is currently Director of Marketing for Jirav, a young company that specializes in financial planning and analysis in the cloud and, appropriately enough, has a weekly cloud accounting podcast with his partner David Leary.
12. What is son Paul up to? Paul is teaching at The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem in New York City and received tenure this past year.
13. What’s happening with that grandson? You mean Thomas Pike Oliver, the last emperor of Encino, who loves to run the show? He is starting kindergarten this fall.
14. Anything special happen to you two in 2019? We were very happy to be received into the Episcopalian church/great Anglican communion.
15. Has Pike succeeded in his lobbying efforts to convince Rosemarie to travel around the USA in an RV? No way, but we did travel to Phoenix last winter and spring. In June, we visited Sea Ranch in California with Rosemarie’s stepmother. Later in the summer we traveled to the UK and Spain. We visited London and Oxford, took a road trip through Wales and spent time in Barcelona and on the Costa del Sol of Spain. During fall, we made two road trips between Seattle to Phoenix to transport “stuff” and enjoy the scenery along the way.
16. Why Wales? The Oliver ancestors came to the USA from Wales in the 1840s. The lead mine several of them labored is now a toxic waste site.
17. Why Oxford? Rosemarie’s sisters, Catherine and Sara were visiting there. So, we had to rendezvous.
18. Why Spain? Barcelona was on Pike’s bucket list and a cousin of Rosemarie’s lives on the Costa del Sol.
19. Aren’t road trips kind of like RV trips? Yes, but the motel rooms and beds tend to be bigger.
20. What’s on the agenda this year? Pike hopes to extricate himself from the University of Washington. We’re thinking about a late April/early May journey to Peru, led by a former student from Pike’s time at Cornell. And there will likely be two road trips—one from Phoenix to Seattle in April and another back to Phoenix in October. We’ve also promised son Paul that we’ll journey to New York City for Thanksgiving.
21. (Bonus question) How do we get in touch with you?
Rosemarie
Email - rosaurus@gmail.com
Voice or text - (206) 557-8184
Pike
Email - pike@urbanexus.com
Voice or text - (206) 890-7456
OLIVERS on December 27, 2019 (L to R): Paul, Samantha, Pike, Thomas, Blake, Rosemarie
