1998 – The Year in Review

Well, once again it's that time of year - the holidays. Time to look forward to the year ahead, and take stock of the year gone by – and then try to sum it all up in a single page of observations. Well, here’s my cut.

The past year has been one of real challenges both on the personal and professional front. Starting with the latter: We managed to launch the new CBS web site (www.cbs.com - along with 160 CBS affiliate sites) in February after many sleepless nights, a few gross (and boy do I mean gross) of pizza boxes and Chinese food containers, very little bathing, and much gnashing of teeth. I somehow managed to survive, and Sugayo and the kids finally got to see me in early March. To this day, when I talk to the kids on the phone from work, Paul picks up the phone and says “Are you coming home late tonight, daddy?” Youch! Unfortunately, my boss (and a good friend) left right as we launched, and I was given a battlefield promotion to Director of Technology for CBS New Media. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what it is a ‘Director’ does and how exactly I go about winning an Oscar. It’s a nice title, but I really aspire to be the Executive Intranet Extranet Information Officer – that is, the EIEIO.

Work finally started to settle down in May so we packed up the kids (who wouldn't stop squirming in their suitcases) and headed for Japan. We left on Sugayo's birthday and Mayumi turned 3 on the plane ride over (unfortunately, the little odometer inside of her head mistakenly flipped to "terrible twos”). The kids had a great time in Japan meeting their aunts, uncles, and cousins; and forcing me to rent hours of Japanese videos (including Pokemon - the one that got all the press because it caused kids to have seizures). The only affect Pokemon seemed to have on Paul and Mayumi was causing them to insist that I buy Pokemon merchandise (along with all the Ultraman and Hello Kitty merchandise). The kids even got to stand up in Sugayo’s cousin’s wedding (though Mayumi did not so much as stand up as trip all over the wedding train she had to hold). Sugayo and I also managed to hit a few of our old stomping grounds in Osaka, but not as many as we had hoped because Sugayo was not feeling real well.

Sugayo, it seems, had a suffered a collapsed lung on the way over to Japan, though we didn't find this out until she had suffered through a very painful plane ride back to the US (the problem had been misdiagnosed as asthma in Japan). This had happened to Sugayo once before, right after Mayumi was born. The good news is that this time they found the root of the problem, they operated on the lung, and we are told it will never happen again. In a few days Sugayo will even get to try her new breathing apparatus on a plane ride back to the Detroit area (more on that below) .

After a long recovery process and just as Sugayo was starting to feel herself again, things got really crazy at work - thanks to a few cruise missiles that bumped into Sudan and Ken Starr. Our site was one of the major news sites which made the Starr Report available to the public over the internet. It’s funny, the day the report was released was really an historic one for the internet, but I don’t know whether to feel proud of the work we did - or just sort of used and dirty. One thing I do know is that President Clinton can really drive internet traffic, I just wish he'd find another way to do it! At one point I was personally lobbying him to resign - not because I have any political agenda, but because our site just couldn't keep up. Bill did give us a nice compliment though (or at least his chief of communications did): We found out that the White House monitored the results of the election on our site.

Back to the personal side of things: Paul continues to bridge the cultural gap. He is starting to write in Japanese a bit (he signed his name in Japanese on the bottom right of the picture on this letter). A few weeks ago he was a looking at book in which a boy was wiggling a loose tooth. Sugayo did not know the word “wiggle” and asked Paul what it meant. Paul, thought for a minute, "hmmm" (he always says this when he thinks), then he said "Wiggle means this" and he did the twist. Pretty good full idiomatic translation. Paul is also taking Soccer lessons and continues to hone his artistic and lego engineering skills.

Mayumi is trying desperately to skip all the years between 3 and 23. This started early in the spring when Sugayo was home from the hospital and we were both trying to relax. We thought “if only Mayumi would be quiet…”. Ten minutes later we were enjoying blissful silence when another thought hit us “oh no, Mayumi is being quiet!”. I jumped up from the couch and turned down the hallway to find Mayumi in the bathroom giving herself a haircut (her hairstyle is still recovering as you can see in this year’s family photo). She also has a pretty tight group of friends, four to be exact, and all invisible. Their names are Nessia and Kerri-Anna (girls) and Tanki and Bowitt (boys). I’d call them imaginary friends but then I’d probably never get them to clean up the basement again.

Speaking of friends, imaginary and otherwise, here’s the friend update: Bonnie and Bob Kozachek had a baby girl this spring, and Sue and Joel Solomon had a baby boy. Wendy and Ned Gulley are expecting their first. Mike and Crystal Kjelsberg have moved to North Carolina and are expecting a second and a third child next May.

Next year promises to be a big one. Paul will start Kindergarten. Mayumi will go to school five days a week. Sugayo will work on a Japanese version of the family web page (http://www.oocities.org/Heartland/1640). I will finally get around to updating the English version. Oh, and I will come up with a way to transfer beer over the internet (I'll call it BTP - Beer Transfer Protocol). I will create a company, take it public, and then markets will crash because of the Y2K problem. Ah well. Maybe then I’ll be able to catch a nap.

Here’s wishing everyone a joyous Christmas and God's blessings, peace, and prosperity in the coming Year.