2020

We had big plans for our first year as a married couple: enjoying a long honeymoon in Ireland, traveling to see friends get married in exotic locales like Brooklyn, New York, and Eugene, Oregon, and maybe even starting the search for a two-bedroom apartment.

Instead, as we're sure you need no reminding, 2020 had its own plans.

We have been personally lucky — we both have our jobs and our health. David continues to work at Insight, now named Sagesure, as a software developer; the entire tech team at the company was already highly-distributed and embraced remote work, so the day-to-day disruption didn't affect things all that much. Sarah switched to working remotely for LIVESTRONG.com in March; the initial thought being they'd be back in the office within a few months. Now, they're contemplating if they even need a full-size office in the city when things open back up again permanently.

New York City was a very lonely and uncertain place in March and April. For weeks, the only real interaction we had with other people was the 7PM cheer for essential workers. But slowly, as case counts fell and mask-wearing became nigh-universal, we started venturing out again. Never for very long, and never into a crowd, but David does now leave the house to pick up lunch on a regular basis and Sarah goes for walks to watch the dogs at the neighborhood dog park. We remain very cautious, overall. It's unlikely either of us has traveled much more than a half-mile from the apartment since March.

Late March brought further sorrow with the death of Mag Seaman, who was essentially Sarah's grandmother and an all-around incredible human being. Not being able to travel to be with Mag in her last days was heartbreaking. Sarah's mom sent us a package that included paintings that Sarah grew up admiring in Mag's home. They now hang in our dining room, and remind Sarah of balmy summer nights spent playing Scrabble and singing showtunes on Mag and her husband Ken's back patio.

Sarah has continued working with her mentee through Girls Write Now, an NYC-based mentorship program for AFAB and gender expansive high-school students, and has also started mentoring a graduate student with the NYU Graduate School of Journalism. Her Sunday afternoons are filled with Zoom discussions on prose poetry, gender dynamics, and how to pretend you don't know something to get a good quote from an expert during an interview.

David's work with Papers We Love NYC took something of a hit with the pandemic — after all, it's not a very good idea to hold in-person meetups right now — but he's been working on setting up streaming presentations on Twitch as a substitute, and managed the technical end of a livestreamed fundraiser for the computer-research organization USENIX. He even gave a talk of his own: Understanding Real-World Concurrency Bugs in Go.

Our NYT Crossword streak remains strong: 842. Cricket has been his usual adorable, snuggly, slightly rascally self (as evidenced by his domination of our photos this year). We have hope for better days and years ahead, and know that, while 2020 was bleak, there is still a lot to look forward to in the future. Maybe even Ireland.

– David and Sarah