Linnea Capps:  

Life The summer we graduated from high school, my family moved to New Jersey. I went from New Jersey to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, for four years, after which I joined my family, who had moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was in Milwaukee that I met the man who would become my best friend, then my husband. In 1975, Steve and I were married in the Washington Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Steve (my husband) worked as a civilian in the Department of Defense at a DOD agency in the Washington, D.C. area until 2009, when he retired. As part of his job, we lived in Stuttgart, Germany for 5 years (1989-1994). The timing of our stay there just happened to coincide with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of East and West Germany, as well as Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and Operation Provide Comfort in Turkey following the close of Desert Storm. Steve spent three months in Incerlik, Turkey, in support of Operation Provide Comfort. Scary, interesting, amazing time. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. I worked at a variety of part-time jobs as our two daughters grew up (Katharine, b. 1979 and Jennifer, b. 1980); in 1992, I settled into training and technical writing full time. I've been retired on disability since 2005, when I left work because of the pain of end-stage arthritis in both hips. Found a surgeon who would replace them, and life has been great ever since the surgeries. Technology is amazing; my new hips are almost as good as the healthy old ones. But my lower back is now problematic - lots of stenosis, bone spurs and a bulging disc. Lovely. My husband, Steve, and I have been happily situated in Maryland for over 25 years (minus the 5 we were abroad) with children and grandchildren close by. Genealogy, reading, teaching/training, writing, music (singing and conducting, some arranging), sewing, knitting, an interest in the paranormal, and learning to quilt occupy my time, as well as cleaning out 33 years of accumulated stuff. We are also very active in our local Mormon (LDS) congregation. Update: Dieter died in May of 2009; no one yet has taken his place in our hearts and lives. He was our third miniature schnauzer. Gretchen, who loved to sing along with us in our weekly family home evenings, joined us in 1978 as a puppy and died in 1993; Trudi was a "used" miniature schnauzer who came to us when she was 7 in 1993 and died when she was 8 - a year to the day from when we picked her up from her former owners - of terrible, terrible metastatic cancer. Dieter came to us as a puppy in 1994 and was just a dearly beloved little sweetheart until cancer took him also. Miniature schnauzers are great dogs; they make wonderful doorb...Expand for more