Alan is keeping up with the final frontier as aerospace and science editor at GeekWire, a Seattle-based tech site. A lot of this year’s reporting trips focused on Washington, D.C., including Jeff Bezos’ big reveal of the Blue Moon lunar lander in May. He covered the New Horizons flyby of the Kuiper Belt object now known as Arrokoth at mission control in Maryland over the New Year’s holiday, and had a chance to ride in OceanGate’s Cyclops submersible in August.

But the biggest trip came in July: Alan helped organize a high-level panel about the next 50 years of spaceflight for the World Conference of Science Journalists in Switzerland, and as compensation, the organizers paid most of the expenses for his trip. There was also a big bonus: a field trip to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan, where he and other journalists met with scientists and toured the SESAME light synchrotron in Jordan. He added a couple of extra days to see more of Jerusalem, including an active archaeological dig and a visit to the Dome of the Rock, shown here.

Alan put some money down to reserve a season ticket for Seattle's NHL hockey team, which isn't due to start playing until 2021. Next spring, he'll have to actually decide whether to go ahead and make the purchase or get his money back. Considering that the ticket is likely to cost thousands of dollars, and that Alan has gone to maybe one hockey game in his life, chances are good that he'll let it go. The same goes for the Tesla Cybertruck that he made a refundable pre-order payment for in November. He'll have until late 2021 (or more likely 2022) to make up his mind about that unconventional purpose. Stay tuned for updates in a future holiday letter.
 

Flowers in the front garden, and raspberry and apricot jam in the kitchen, were among the fruits of Tonia's labors.

Tonia is the queen of the garden and the rest of the home front. It was a good year for our home-grown fruits and vegetables, including the blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and figs as well as a great crop of golden beets, leeks, peas, Brussels sprouts and more. Thanks to that bounty, the larder is nicely stocked with cans of jam, pickled figs, salsa, tomato sauce, applesauce and pickled beets. 

Evan received his Ph.D. in genetics from Stanford, along with a master’s degree in medicine (a.k.a. MOM). The whole family headed down to California for Evan’s thesis defense, and Alan returned weeks later for the graduation ceremony (at which Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke). Evan has since moved to San Diego to become a postdoctoral fellow in Gene Yeo’s “Team RNA” lab at UCSD, focusing on cellular and molecular medicine, and recently received a fellowship from the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation.

Meanwhile, his partner Elias also received his Ph.D. from Stanford, in geophysics, and has taken up a postdoc position at Caltech. Caltrain and FlixBus are getting a good workout. Check Semantic Scholar for published papers by Evan August Boyle and Elias Rafn Heimisson.
 

Bijou, our Tibetan spaniel, is just about to reach the ripe old age of 17, which makes her the equivalent of 84 in dog years. She’s been suffering the occasional seizure, which is highly worrisome, but so far we’ve managed to keep that under control with the aid of CBD oil. She still enjoys scampering about and a bit of extra pampering from all of us. We’ve also signed Bijou up for the Dog Aging Project – so who knows, perhaps she’ll help scientists unlock the secrets of longevity.

Here's wishing you all long and happy lives, with much success in 2020!