Family news		My family

• June 28 - My brother, Ed, died 2/10/2025 of brain cancer (glioblastoma) in Los Angeles where he lived. His girlfriend/partner, Aganaze, hosted a Memorial that we flew to L.A. and went to. Our son Ben, from San Francisco, joined us. Our other son, Alex, who is a college teacher in New York City, came up to our house and watched our dog and cat while we were gone.
• June 6 - People keep asking me where my other dog, Casey is. They miss her or they're just curious. I'm so sad she's gone.
• May 12 - I walked Quinn today and several people asked me where my other dog (Casey) was. It's so sad. I miss her so much.
• May 10 - we put down our dog Casey. She was getting old (she was 13) and she could hardly walk. She went out in the yard to pee and it was raining hard and she just sat there until I fetched her. I still walk the dogs twice-a-day, but Casey hadn't gone on these walks for several days.
  We still have a 4-year-old dog, Quinn, and a 20-year-old cat, Pepper. and now I only walk Quinn twice-a-day.
• April - Ben, who's been living with us for 10 months, went to San Francisco. He lived there for several years after college and worked for Twitter, so he has friends there. He has lived in Taiwan for the last 4 years, but he may stay in San Francisco..
• March - it's warming up - I am wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt
• February - warm weather, snow is melting.
• February - Patti retires!  (now there are 2 of us retired at home)
  
• February - Quinn turns 4
  

My 72-year-old younger brother, Ed, died on Feb. 10 of brain cancer (glioblastoma) in Los Angeles. He lived in L.A. with his girlfriend/partner, Aganaze (pictured). He had never been married and had no children. Ed and I grew up together but he lived in L.A. and I went to college in Boston and stayed here and got married and raised a family, so we didn't see each other too often. Our other brother, David, 2 years older than me, died in 2012 in Virginia of early-onset Azheimer's. He was married and had a grown son, Randy (I don't have a photo), who lives in Germany, and grown daughter, Heather, who is married to Brad and lives in Minnesota. Both my parents and both of my brothers have died, so I am the only survivor of the original Pence family of 5.

• February - Ben, who is staying with us, goes to New York City again for a weekend trip.
• January - cold weather and lots of snowstorms
  
• January - Patti goes to Vermont with Paula and Laura to see Brenda
  

• October - Ben comes back from New York City with French friend, Quentin.
• October - Ben goes to New York City.
• August - Ben goes to Washington, DC.
• July - Ben and Dongyi have separated. Ben is traveling around the East Coast. He will be back at the end of August.
• June - Ben and Dongyi have come to the U.S. for a visit on their way to Lisbon, Portugal.
• June - Eric spent several days and nights at Mass. General Hospital. My kidneys had shut down from drinking too much alcohol. I stopped drinking alcohol
• March - Ben and his Chinese roomate, Dongyi, traveled from Taiwan, where they have lived for several years, to Lisbon, Portugal, where they plan to live
• March - Patti goes to Connecticut to see The Simon & Garfunkel Story.
• February - Quinn turns 3
  
• February - I tested positive for Covid (Patti has Covid).
• February - Patti and friends went to Vermont for the weekend, and she got sick and I had to drive up and bring her home.
• February - false alarm; Boston only got a dusting.
• February - expecting another snowstorm, possibly 5-8 inches accumulation.
• January - expecting a big snowstorm but so far all we've gotten is rain.

• December - Patti went to Vermont on Christmas to help our friend, Brenda, run a store for a friend. I stayed home with the dogs.
• December - We had our first snowstorm of the season. Not too bad. We also have frequent rainstorms. Is this from global warming? I hope not!
• November - Alex, Lylynn, Agatha, and 2 dogs came up from Brooklyn for Thanksgiving, as did Patti's brother Arthur.
• October - We went to Hawaii for 10 days, and stayed in a hotel on Waikiki Beach and we met with Ben; his roomate in Taiwan, Dongyi, joined us.
• September - Ben flew to San Francisco—after a week he will go to a wedding in Hawaii, where we will see him, then he goes home to Taiwan
• September - Eric and Patti got COVID-19 boosters, Eric also got a flu shot
• September - Ben came back from Vermont to our house and at first wore a mask and kept his distance from us because of his COVID-19
• September - Ben and Michael went to a 1-week meditation retreat in Vermont - they caught COVID-19
• September - We met Arthur & Wilma, Jon (Arthur's son) & Jack (Jon's son) for lunch in Worcester—Ben was with us
• September - Alex visited us for a few days
• September - Eric has some minor health ailments
  - I have a sore right heel—went to doctor, and they x-rayed and found nothing and said I have PLANTAR FASCIITIS which I take naproxen for
  - I have things floating in front of my left eye—I tried to swat them to no avail—on an eye exam the opthalmologist found nothing and said I have "floaters" in my eye
• August - Ben is back and will be with us until he goes to a wedding in Hawaii in October.
• August - Ben and his friend, Michael, have gone to a retreat in upstate New York.
• August - Patti met Ben in Burlington, VT, and they spent a week in Montreal and Quebec City.
• July - Ben was at our house for a week and has now gone to a wedding in upstate New York.
• July - Ben is back in the US and will come visit us next week.
• July - Ben just flew to London.
• June - Alex, Lylynn, and their friend, Agatha, just visited us with a couple of dogs for several days.
• June - Ben has been to New York, Washington, and Baltimore.
• June - Ben is in the U.S. and we will see him in late summer or early fall.
• June - Summer is finally here and I'm wearing shorts for the first time this year.
• February - Quinn turns 2
  
• Patti continues to work at Neponset Health Center. I guess I should stop posting this.
• Eric has started taking over-the-counter sleeping pills (currently Avinol PM) to get a good-night's sleep
• I still walk the dogs twice a day.
• It's been a mild winter.

• Patti went to Vermont on Christmas to help our friend, Brenda, run a store for a friend. I stayed home with the dogs.
• We had a Thanksgiving visit from our son, Alex, Lylynn, their friend, Agatha, and 2 dogs, all from Brooklyn, NY.
• Alex moves in with his girlfriend Lylynn in Brooklyn.
• I got my 3rd Moderna COVID-19 booster and annual flu shot at CVS.
• Ben, who visited friends in New York City, Washington, DC,  San Francisco, Portland, OR,  Dallas and Austin, TX, visited us again before going back to Taiwan.
• We had a another short visit from Alex, who picked up Ben at the airport (we were surprised!).
• Alex got his 2nd bout of COVID-19 (mild) and he is over it now.
• Patti talks to Alex and Ben regularly on phone calls.
• I got my 2nd Moderna booster shot for COVID-19.
  - The CDC card was too small to hold all the vaccination records, so I downloaded and printed it to keep in my wallet.
• We had a short visit from Alex who came to New England from his home in NYC because he was going to hike in Vermont—but due to rainy weather he went to the Berkshires in Western Mass. instead.
• We had a visit from Ben, who came to the U.S. from Taiwan, where he lives, because he had to attend a high school friend's wedding in New York. It was nice to see him again after so long.
• Not much happining so far this year. I still walk the dogs twice a day.
• Patti continues to work at Neponset Health Center.
• Alex and Laura get divorced.
  

• I got my Moderna booster shot for COVID-19.
• Sorry, no travel experiences to share here during the pandemic.
• Patti got her booster shot (3rd vaccine).
• I received my annual flu shot.
• I received my 2nd vaccine shot.
• We got a new Labradoodle puppy, Quinn, in March. We now have 2 Labradoodles.
• Alex got a mild case of COVID-19 in New York, called an 800-number, and they quarantined him in a hotel for a short time.
• I've received my first Moderna shot at Patti's clinic in Boston.
• Patti has been vaccinated at work (even though she mostly works at home and contacts people on the phone).
• Ben has relocated to Taiwan. We visit on Zoom now.
• Patti continues to work at Neponset Health Center.

• I received my annual flu shot.
• Alex and Ben have come up from New York City to spend time with their parents during this pandemic.
• With the pandemic it looks like our travel plans will be non-existent for awhile.
  For the time being we are spending a lot of time at home, alone mostly.
• Patti continues to work at Neponset Health Center.

• Alex and Laura spent Christmas with her mother in Ithaca, NY, and came to our house 2 days later for several days.
• Ben came up from New York and stayed with us over Christmas.
• Ben visited us for 5 days.
• I received my annual flu shot.
• Alex and Laura stopped by for a couple days after a "mini-moon" (not quite a honeymoon) to Cape Cod after the wedding.
• Alex and Laura get married.
  We went to their wedding in the Catskills and really enjoyed it, and saw lots of family and friends who attended.
  The wedding was at the Floating Farmhouse in Eldred, NY, and Alex, Laura, and many friends stayed in rooms at the farmhouse.
  Many others, including Patti and me, stayed at the Catskill Mountains Resort, 10-minutes away.
• Ben moves to New York City after living in San Francisco for 4 years.
• We made a weekend trip to Brooklyn where Patti attended Laura's wedding shower at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We met her sisters and her father, Daniel, who had a birthday that we celebrated.
• We went to the Catskills looking at places where people can stay when they come to Alex and Laura's wedding in August. We were joined by Adriana, Laura's mother.
  The wedding and reception will be at the Floating Farmhouse in Eldred, NY, in the Catskills.
• Ben and his Chinese roommate, Jack (who joined us in Italy last year), went to Taiwan and China for a couple of weeks.
• We had a visit from my cousin Bert and his wife Sonya from Austin, TX, on their trip to Boston
• It has been a pretty mild winter but we did have one storm in early March that left a foot of snow that took a couple of weeks to melt.
• We went to Cold Spring, NY, on the Hudson River to help Alex and Laura select a venue for their wedding this summer. They selected a chapel in Cold Spring for the ceremony but since then have decided to do everything in one location in the Catskills.
• Alex and Laura came up from Brooklyn and Ben from San Francisco to celebrate Patti's birthday in January.
• Patti continues to work at Neponset Health Center.

• We took a 2-week trip to Italy in June-July. This was an extended family vacation of 14 people, including Alex, Laura, and Ben.
• I received my annual flu shot.
• Eric retires!
  I tuned 70 in April but I do a 20-mile fund-raising walk every year the first week of May that I collect donations for at work, so I had to work until after that, then I retired in May.
• I used to use vacation days from work to visit my mother in Idaho but she passed away last year, so in the last few months before I retired I used my remaining vacation days to work 4-day weeks.
• Ben left Twitter and still lives in San Francisco, focusing on non-profit endeavors.
• Alex and Laura came up from Brooklyn for weekend visits in December, once by bus and once in a rental-car.
• Alex gets rid of his car.
• Patti continues to work at Neponset Health Center.
• The 3-day weekend for New Years had freezing temps, and the Hingham commuter-boat was cancelled temporarily when the dock was damaged by ice, so I took the train to work for 2 weeks.
  Definitely an inferior way to commute than what I'm used to.

• Alex and Laura, and Ben with 2 friends, visited us for Thanksgiving.
• I received my annual flu shot.
• In September, Eric's mother, Immy, passed away in Boise at age 98.
• In September, Alex and Laura drove up from Brooklyn for a weekend visit.
• In August, Patti and I went to a wedding at a country club on Long Island, NY. Alex and Laura also attended from Brooklyn.
• In July, Sheri, our au pair in 1988 when Ben was born and she was 18 years old, came for a visit with 2 of her kids. We have stayed in touch with her and visited her in her home in Utah.
• In June we made a trip out to Boise to see my mother, who is ninety-eight now! She lives in assisted living and they seem to take good care of her.
  On this trip were Patti, me, Alex and Laura from Brooklyn, Ben and friend from San Francisco. and Dorothy, my mother's sister, from Seattle.
  We enjoyed eating in some fine Boise restaurants from many cultures.
• Patti continues to work at Neponset Health Center.

• For his birthday I got Alex an E-ZPass transponder to put in his car for tolls on highways when he travels (hopefully on trips to visit us).
  Massachusetts recently removed all toll boths and went entirely digital (pay with transponder, as we do, or get license plate photographed and receive bill in mail).
• Remodeling photos of the new house all posted, and some new photos after we moved in.
• I went to my 50th high school reunion in Idaho and saw some classmates I hadn't seen since high school. (Many of us keep in touch on Facebook.)
• We saw extended family and Alex in Avon, CT.
• Alex came up from Brooklyn for a weekend visit (our first overnight-guest in our new house).
• We sold our previous house of 34-years and moved to our newly-remodeled house on June 27.
• Visited my mother in Boise for a week in February and saw some old high school friends.
• Patti continues to work at Neponset Health Center.
• We had a nice 2-week visit from Ben over New Year's. Now he's back in San Francisco.

• I am posting remodeling photos of the new house (here are Before & after pictures).
• After living for 34 years in the house the boys were raised in, being "empty nesters" we bought a new house.
• Alex is going to graduate school at The New School in Greenwich Village, New York City.
• Ben attended the annual DEFCON hacker conference in Las Vegas, which he has gone to several times before.
• Patti and I have purchased a smaller house in Hingham now that we live alone and don't need the huge one we have owned since 1982.
  We will be remodeling this house for the next year before living there.
• My mother is 96 now, still in good health, and I plan to visit her soon in Boise.
• Alex and Laura have moved back to New York City for teaching assignments since returning from Vietnam.
  
• Ben now lives in San Francisco where he works for Twitter.
• Patti continues to work at Neponset Health Center.
• After several severe snowstorms we have 3-6 feet of snow all around our house. I made slideshow of photos on my website and a photo album on Facebook.
  

• The 5 of us (Patti, Ben, Alex, Laura, me) took a trip out to Boise to see Grandma and up to Seattle to see friends and relatives.
  Seattle has changed so much since I left in 1973 that except for familiar places like Pike Place Market and the Space Needle it is almost an entirely new city to me.
  We saw the fascinating Dale Chihuly glass sculpture exhibit at Seattle Center.
• Alex and Laura have arrived. It is great having the whole family together after a long time apart. Time for a family photo!
• I attended my late brother David's 50th high school reunion with his daughter Heather (my niece). It was interesting to see people I'd known in high school for the first time in 50 years!
• We visited my mother (Heather's grandmother) in Boise on this trip. I journeyed from Boston, Heather from New York.
• Ben is doing some traveling around the U.S., including Las Vegas (a DEFCON hacker conference),L.A., Washington (DC), New York City, and Chicago.
• Alex says he and Laura will be coming home from Vietnam in October. I don't know what their plans are.
• Ben and Michael went to South Korea for a week after Tokyo, and came home in June. Ben will be making plans and moving on.
• My mother is 95 now and still in good health. I hope to visit her soon.
• Ben called and he is now in Tokyo with Michael. They got together with our Japanese friend (and high-school exchange student), Mayuko.
• We had a great visit with Ben in Jamaica. Now he has gone to Toronto for a week, and he will soon fly to Tokyo to re-join his friend Michael and complete their travels.
• Ben is now in Moscow and will fly to Jamaica next week for some friends' wedding where we will join him.
• Ben has flown to Beijing, China, where he will take the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow, Russia. He and Michael have split up but will reconnect in a month.
• Ben and Michael are now in India, after visiting Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Laos, and Vietnam, where they saw Alex and Laura.
• Patti continues to work at Neponset Health Center.

• Alex and Laura have left Turkey and now live in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Vietnam.
• Ben, and his traveling companion, Michael, are now in Indonesia after spending 2 weeks in Taiwan.
• Alex and his girlfriend, Laura, who lived in Brooklyn, NY, for years, have gone to Izmir, Turkey, where they plan to live and work.
• Ben, who worked for the Department of Defense for 2 years after college, is taking some time off to travel in Asia.
• My mother is 94 and lives in Boise, ID, where she is in good health, and I try to visit here several times a year.
• Patti continues to work at Neponset Health Center.

• Patti starts working as an N.P. at another Harbor Health location, Neponset Health Center, which is located in the Neponset neighborhood in Dorchester, a shorter commute.
• We got a new Labradoodle puppy, Casey.
• Alex graduates from college, The New School in Greenwich Village, New York City.
• We had to put Haley down because she bit Paula whom she'd known her whole life (10 years).
• My brother David passes away in October at age 66 from early-onset Alzheimer's, which is a horrible disease that science and medicine are battling.

• Ben graduates from college, George Washington University(GW) in Washington, DC.
• A tree limb fell during Hurricane Irene destroying a sailboat we had on a trailer in the backyard.

• Ben starts college at George Washington University (GW) in Washington, DC.
• Ben graduates from Hingham High School.
• Patti starts working as an N.P. at Geiger Gibson Community Health Center (part of Harbor Health), located in Dorchester near UMass Boston—the first Community Health Center in America.

• We get a new kitten, Pepper

• Alex attends his first year of college at UMass-Lowell.
• Alex graduates from Wellspring Academy in Hull with a high school diploma.

• Ben starts high school at Hingham High School.

• We got a new puppy, Haley

• Patti starts working as a Nurse Practitioner at Planned Parenthood
• Patti gets her Master's degree at UMass Boston.
• Alex goes to high school at Hingham High School.
• Bel dies from cancer.

• Alex starts high school at Wilbraham and Munson boarding school in Central Mass.

• Ben starts school in 1st grade at Foster.
• We got a new Golden Retriever puppy, Bel.
• Eric takes a programming class at Northeastern.
• Eric starts working at Safety Insurance in Boston, and continues commuting to by boat from Hingham.

• Our dog, Jessie, dies at age 15 (old age). She lived with us her whole life, in Weymouth and Hingham.
• Ben goes to kindergarten at Foster.
• Grampa Jack passes away outside St. Louis on a trip back to Boise from the East Coast.
• Grampa & Grandma are on their way down to Virginia to see David's family and he starts feeling ill and they decide to head back to Boise.
• Grandpa Jack and Grandma Immy visit us in Hingham.

• Eric creates a website:  penceland.com.

• Alex starts school in 1st grade at Foster.
• Ben starts nursery school at Wilder Memorial.

• Alex goes to kindergarten at Foster Elementary in Hingham.

• Grampa Jack has leg amputed that wouldn't heal after car accident.

• Eric takes programming classes at MIT,

• Grandpa Jack and Grandma Immy are involved in a head-on collision in Oklahoma on a cross-country car trip.
  Eric, who had been on a business trip to Washington, DC when he hears of the accident, flies to Tulsa to see them in the hospital.
• Carter Rice has offices in New York and Washington so Eric gets to travel.
• Eric starts working at Carter Rice in Boston and starts commuting to work by boat from Hingham.
• Alex starts nursery school at Wilder Memorial, where both boys will go at that age.
• Ben is born.

• Alex is born.
• Eric starts working at National Teledata in Norwell, a short commute.

• Eric starts working at Harper and Shuman in Cambridge.

• Eric is now a compter programmer and will be for the rest of his working life.
• Eric takes a regular job at ADP in Waltham where he drove to work up Route-128.
• Eric graduates from Center for Computer Education in Newton, and after a 2-month internship job at McBer and Company on Newbury Street in Boston (where he commuted by boat from Hingham).

• When we move to Hingham they have no leash law for dogs, so Jessie just roams all over Hingham Square where we live.
• After losing our Weymouth house to a fire we buy a house in Hingham, MA and move to Hingham.

• Patti starts working as an R.N. at the Preterm Health Services clinic near Cleveland Circle in Brookline.
• Patti and Eric get married.
• Patti graduates from Boston University.

• We get another dog, Jessie (Jessica), an Australian Sheppard. We have her for 15 years in multiple houses.
• That spring, after the storm, Eric moves in with Patti in her house in Weymouth.
• Eric takes photos of the Blizzard of '78 which occured while he was living in the Fenway.
• That winter Patti's dog, Ben, a Doberman, goes to Angel Memorial hospital and dies.

• Eric and Patti meet.
• Patti buys a house in Weymouth, MA with a fenced in yard so she won't have to walk her dog in parks in Boston.

• Eric stops going to school after 2 years, moves to the Fenway, and starts working at Beacon Auto Radiator with skills and knowledge he learned as an Engineering major in his first 2 years of college (1966-1968) at University of Idaho (his home state school).

• Eric comes to Boston from Seattle to study at Berklee College of Music.

A little background info...

I lived the first 20 years of my life, 1948-1968 (including 2 years of college) in Idaho. Then I lived in Seattle for the next 5 years. Then in 1973 I came to Boston to go back to college. I met Patti in 1977, we started living together in 1978, and she graduated from college and we got married in 1979, and we have 2 grown sons.