YEAR IN REVIEW - 2000

Dear Family and Friends,

We hope that the year 2000 brought many joy and memories. To share our memories of the year Y2K, MM, or whatever - we provide you with a brief summary of the events that took place for us in this memorable - sometimes forgettable year 2000.

Rick completed his first full year at Boeing's Huntington Beach facility. As Boeing's inherited entity, we were folded into the so-called McDonnell-Douglas' facility and payroll. As a tenant in the host-tenant relationship there, we were part of the Reusable Space Systems Division, sharing the facilities with the Expendable Launch Systems Division that includes the Delta Launch vehicles. Then near the end of the year, the Reusable Space System, International Space Station Division, and other manned-related activity merged to form the Human Space Flight and Exploration Division. During the year, the facility was reduced by approximately 600 employees when the Delta rocket launch programs were consolidated at its Alabama facility.

As the majority of the Space Shuttle mission has become assembly missions for the build-up of the International Space Station, so has my role with the space program. Our role is to support the Space Shuttle flights to the Space Station and assess and analyze the program from the Space Shuttle perspective.

Rick continues as a "coach" with the Mathcounts Program at Suzanne Middle School. At the beginning of the current school year in November, there were about 50 students. But as expected, the difficulty of the problems thinned the participants to about 25 students by the beginning of the year-end break. Last year's team (1999-2000) did well enough at the chapter competition in February 2000 so they participated in the State competition in March 2000.  The results of these two competitions are detailed at this link.  The same team represented Walnut Valley Unified School District's 8th Grade Team and participated in the Los Angeles County Office of Education Math Field Day in June at Garvey Elementary School in Rosemead. The team did well enough to take second place in three of four categories.  The results are detailed at this link.

The end of the year saw our older daughter, Sherry, in her fifth year at UC Davis. Due to health problems, she missed classes from the spring quarter in April to the beginning of this school-year in September. She continues to be active in the UC Davis Associated Students activities serving as the External Affairs Chirperson.

Our younger one, Starla, is now a junior at Walnut High School. Although almost fully recovered, a sprained ankle limited her participation on the dance team during the fall of 2000. In her sophomore year, she did well enough to earn a spot in the school dance team of about 25 members. The dance team, much like the color-guard/flag-team in her freshmen year, consisted of outdoor competition along with the band during the fall season. Then the team participated in the indoor competition during the spring season. Because of her commitment to the dance team, especially on Saturdays, she has now discontinued the Japanese language school lessons that she had gone for many years. In April, she was in a bit of pain with extraction of four wisdom teeth.

Tanya continues her lessons in the Japanese tea ceremony practice. In March, she and Starla prepared and demonstrated the art of tea to the students at the East San Gabriel Valley Japanese Community Center's Japanese School. At the end of the year, her teacher submitted her name to the Tokyo main office to receive an honorary "tea" title - kind of like "graduation" - after fifteen years.

At the end of the year, Tanya's niece from Japan came to visit for a few days which gave the family the opportunity to go to Las Vegas for the second time as a family. The real millennium New Year was, therefore, spent in Las Vegas with about 300,000 other Southern Californians.