Christmas 1998

As the New Year approaches, we extend Season’s Greetings and Warm Wishes to all our friends & family! 1998 comes to a close very much like it began... In January, we were in Las Vegas for the grand opening of Star Trek: The Experience -- an interactive space ride-simulation-adventure at the Las Vegas Hilton. Last week, we found ourselves in Las Vegas again, this time for the World Premiere of Star Trek: Insurrection -- a movie written and co-produced by Eric’s boss. The movie is a milestone for Eric -- his first on-screen feature-film credit.

Between January and December, we managed yet another trip to Las Vegas; to celebrate Debra’s 40th birthday in March. We were joined by Debra’s parents, Eric’s parents, Stacey and Marc Cogswell and Deb’s best friend, MaryAnne Given as well as MaryAnne’s father who was visiting from Canada. We all had a great time and Eric even won $1,000 on the slot machines! Deb won another $1,000 while we were there last week, so it’s been our lucky year!

We also found time for weekend trips to San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, Seattle & Eugene. But our big trip of the year was our annual Star Trek cruise, which sailed to Alaska in June. We were joined on the cruise by Eric’s parents and their close friends Bob & Carol Elmore and Ann & Arnold Stocking -- all from Oregon; as well as our dear friends, David & Karen Ragan-George, and David’s sister and her companion from Virginia. The cruise departed from Vancouver in beautiful British Columbia (our only excursion outside the U.S. this year!) and sailed the Inside Passage to Alaska, with ports of call in Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Valdez & Seward. We also cruised through the College Fjords and around Hubbard Glacier. The scenery was breathtaking and the cruise itself was probably the most relaxing we’ve experienced. Alaska is a genuine gem of pristine wilderness.

Debra took her Oncology National Certification Exam during one of our two visits to San Francisco this year. She subsequently passed the test and is now one of the few nurses at her hospital with national certification. Recently, as part of a hospital stewardship challenge to raise money for local charities, Debra designed and put together a cookbook to sell using recipes submitted by all the nurses and staff in her Short Stay department. For her efforts, Short Stay won first place for creativity among all the departments in the Providence hospital system in the Los Angeles area. As a result, Debra was chosen to present a check to Burbank Temporary Aid for $21,600 and her picture appeared in the local newspaper.

Of course the biggest news of the year is that we bought a house! To facilitate our goal, we submitted ourselves late in 1997 to a Los Angeles Times “Money Make-Over” -- a weekly newspaper column that provides free financial advice. Our story ran in January (with a follow-up story on December 29th) and the experience was both cathartic & validating, if perhaps a little embarrassing. But it did help us stick to our guns, and in February (after looking at hundreds of houses over the past two years), we finally found one we liked! We stumbled upon the house -- actually a model home -- in a new development in Santa Clarita, a bedroom community about 30 miles north of Los Angeles. Our actual house was not yet built when we first discovered the development, so we had the good fortune and opportunity to pick the lot of our choice -- one with a beautiful view of the Santa Clarita Valley.

From February through August, we observed on weekends as construction advanced from empty lot to finished product. We closed escrow and moved into the house in late August during an unusually hot hot-spell (110+ degree weather!). Abbie and Gray-C, our two cats, didn’t take kindly to the move, but after a few weeks they adjusted quite well and now enjoy the extra space (and chasing each other up and down the stairwell!). We’ve spent the past three and a half months getting settled. Deb has been busy with interior decorating and making curtains on her new sewing machine, while Eric has focused his attention on designing and coordinating the back yard landscaping. Eric’s parents drove down from Oregon last week to join us for the holidays and arrived in time for our inaugural Christmas Party. The outdoor portion of our festivities were threatened by an unusually cold cold-spell (wind chills below freezing at night), but we made the best of it. A couple nights later we thought it might actually snow. It hasn’t snowed yet, but we suspect even Santa Claus would feel at home in Santa Clarita!

Our guest room is open for visitors. If you plan to be in the area, give us a ring! We’d love to have you as our guests. And from our home to yours, we wish you love & good fortune in 1999!

Eric & Debra