I've been working in the Information Technology field since graduating from the State University of New York at Albany in 1977. I'm currently a Systems Consultant at Phoenix Home Life Insurance Company in Hartford Connecticut, where I've been employed for the past 14 years. Cheryl is working as a Medical Assistant at a Dermatology office in Avon Connecticut." Andrea was expecting at the time William wrote this e-mail.
Attached is a Christmas picture of our daughter Renee Oravec. She is the daughter of Bob and Tracey [Schmidt] Oravec. I am the youngest of the five children of Irene Sladek and William Oravec Sr. My wife and I live in Severn, MD which is nearly in between Baltimore and Washington D.C. We have lived here since 1988. I am a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Camp Springs, MD which is just outside of D.C. I forecast weather conditions for the entire U.S. out to 7 days. I graduated from Albany State University with a B.S. and M.S. in Atmospheric Science. My wife is a special projects coordinator for Metrocall Inc., a telecommunications company based in Arlington, VA. Since the birth of our daughter in June [1999], Tracey has been working only part time. She works around my schedule since I have days off in the middle of the week every two weeks. Tracey and I met freshman year at Albany.
I am an avid runner and have run in 16 marathons. I have run for about 20 years, but started running marathons in 1992 after seeing the NYC marathon and thinking it would be interesting to try. My best time is 3:05:23. I have run the NYC and Boston Marathons once. I usually run two a year, the Marine Corps Marathon in Oct and the B&A Trail Marathon run in Severna Park, MD in March. Our daughter is just getting big enough to fit safely in our baby jogger so I will be able to take her running soon. This of course depends on the weather being warm enough. Hopefully, it will be another mild winter in the mid-atlantic. I use to love cold and snowy weather when we lived in Albany, NY, but since moving south to MD we have both become weather wimps.
I am not as passionate about football as my brother Bill. He keeps on reminding me of how he hates Art Modell for moving the Browns to Baltimore. I am a big baseball fan of the Orioles and the Mets. The Orioles have recently been very disappointing, but the Mets have begun to become exciting again. I suffered through many years of bad Met teams when I grew up in the 70's and early 80's. The world series victory of 1986 is still one of the more exciting sporting events ever. Bill Buckner is my favorite RedSox.
My parents (Bill and Irene Oravec) visited recently and we began to make a family tree with the information that Nancy sent and my parents recollections. I plan on putting this info on a spreadsheet and will forward it to everyone for accuracy and for additional info that each can offer.
Hopefully everyone will be able to view the attached picture. If you have trouble, right click on the picture attachment and save it to your hard drive and then open it from their. I sent a test of this picture to myself here at work and had this trouble. However, when I sent it to my home I had no trouble.
Bob sent new pictures of Renee with his 2000 Christmas Letter.
