1998 has been a year focused on family, friends, food and fun, as well as completing some adventures and starting others. Our first full year in San Francisco has been full and good. Numerous friends and family members have spent a night in one of our guest rooms and helped us eat and drink our way thru San Francisco! New business adventures unfolded for both Jo Anne and Chirs. Rick became the frequent business traveler, but personal travel took us to Boston, Las Vegas, Chicago and finally Tahiti in October!

Rick
continues his work as principal electrical engineer at HOK. His prison design activities have continued as well as work on the expansion of San Francisco International Airport and several office building projects. Although HOK has been hit fairly hard by the 'Asian flu', Rick's work has not been. He continues to be very active in both local and national Illuminating Engineering Society activities and started teaching lighting classes again. However, the piano lessons are still to be resumed!

JoAnne
continues to be an officer at a wireless start-up, just a different one than last year (#3)! After TeleAccess lost it's Asian angels and a planned acquisition failed at the 11th hour, shutting down that business and moving on was the next action. This is not fun work, but it too is part of the world of the start-up venture. As things turned out, the new business opportunity came into view at about the same time and now she is fully engaged again. Ah, life in the land of the 'vulture' capitalists! Parental support was a focus in the first half of the year with a new hip (but of course with complications) for Jo Anne's dad and some hospital time due to seizures for her mom. Luckily, good health has returned and Norman Heywood is right up there with John Glenn and Lydia Heywood at 80 remains our family wise woman!

Lara
received her 'white coat' in early May signifying the end of the classroom portion of med school and is now fully engaged in rotations, the 'hands on' portion. She's living in downtown Chicago and enjoying it. Next February she will do a surgery rotation with Peter Kilburn our friend and Rick's freshman year roommate at Michigan! This will be Lara's first adventure to a non-Chicago area hospital and she is looking forward to it.

Chris
is still an Internet entrepreneur, but he's now on his third start-up. After spending most of the year working to sell the bianca Virtual Community, the deal was ready to sign in early October. However the buyers, Zapata - a fish oil processor from Houston turned web-site buyers, decided they didn't want to be in the web business after all and cancelled all pending deals, including the one for bianca! After that, Chris decided that after almost 5 years of pouring heart and soul into bianca, it was time to move on and focus on information and interactive design, and let others worry about the business side of things. So as the year closes, Chris has joined an e-commerce startup, The Springfield Project, as their 'user experience engineer'. He had an ok year in Boston, a good trip to Peru for a month in June, and is very happy to be back in San Francisco again where he is living in a good sized studio appartment in Hayes Valley and is pursuing many new beginnings.

As we prepare to celebrate the holidays together at home, we are especially grateful that both of my parents are well, celebrated their 55th anniversary and are still living very independently in their home of the past 20 years. Blessings upon each of you and wishes for a happy, healthful 1999 !