Or rather, the day after. We wanted to see FIL, and since he and his g/f had driven down for Thanksgiving, we decided to drive up to his place on the 26th. Unfortunately, the Santa Ana winds picked that day to blow really badly. So badly that they kicked up a duststorm along CA 14 between Palmdale and Mojave. After driving through that (yes, I know, the paint job .... but we keep cars forever so resale isn't an issue and it didn't seem to pit the windshield), we got to Mojave to find that the 14 was closed north of Mojave. Fun. So, rather than drive back through the duststorm, we took CA 58 east to CA 395 and up to Ridgecrest then across 178 to my FIL's. It ended up being about 8 hours on the road. We can normally do that trip in 3 hours by car, or less than an hour in the air. However, as I'll explain in another section, even if it hadn't been windy we couldn't have flown up anyways.

I think FIL is pretty much done doing the Rose Parade, at least as part of an equestrian group. He'd take a ride in a convertible down Colorado Blvd., but someone else will have to do all the work.

So we stayed home this New Years, which is just as well, being the first new years we have with our daughter. We watched all three Back to the Future movies. To me, they seemed to get better as they went. Mrs.FT's crazy cousin called at midnight PA time (9pm our time) so we returned the favor by calling her at midnight our time. She claimed later that she was still up, but just didn't hear the phone ring (which knowing her, I don't doubt one bit).

I try not to make them. However this year I really think I should;

1. Do my thesis! I took three units of thesis last semester and did not a dang thing on my thesis. I apparently need to beg the department chair for a postponement. I'd like to not flunk out of grad school for lack of doing my thesis, which is the only thing I've left to do. I'm hoping he'll be sympathetic to the following;
1. Having a 16 year old move in with us, with the intent of adopting her, at the start of the semester
2. My thesis was originally intended to be a project done mostly at work, however the issue I was to investigate, while still needed, has become much lower priority.
3. A ramp-up of off-site testing and transferring of more and more responsibilities to me.
2. Post more diaries and comments here. I know, sounds pretty contrary to goal no. 1, however many of you here are very important to us, even though we haven't been around here much. It's been VERY crazy this last few months, and while it doesn't seem to be letting up, I can use the free time I do have more effectively.
3. Fly more. That will be difficult in the short term (see below) but I really do need to fly more often. Flying more is somewhat contingent upon my mechanic being in town more, but it seems likely that he will be.
4. Be more organized. The house is a disaster. We both are packrats and not good about putting things away when we're done. Partly because we have more junk than room. We've taken three large loads to Goodwill last year, and two large loads to household hazardous waste recycling (dead monitors, old paint, etc.), and barely made a dent.

Needs a nick. I've been calling her $Daughter here but that's really been done to death and is sort of lame IMHO. I really think I'll use TinyFlightTest, since she's 4'9" (though she tells everyone she's 4'11") and 97 lbs even though she's 16. Also, TinyFlightTest can be abbreviated TFT, and I'm fundamentally lazy, which is totally lame.

Despite goal no. 3, there will be no flying in the immediate future for me. While attempting to find oil leaks, a section of the exhaust system for the right engine broke off. Exhaust system parts for any airplane aren't cheap, and parts for 1956 airplane aren't easy to come by. Aircraft Spruce may be able to locate new parts.

It's been two years of playing with meds and adjusting them, but we're about back where we started. Mrs. FT still suffers from frequent hot flashes, not as many as she had before, but to me they seem to be more intense and last longer. Lately she's tired and cranky a lot, and a bit out of sorts. Three more years of this!

2007 was pretty stressful. I was gone a lot doing testing for work (and will continue to be gone a lot this coming year) and a lot of responsibility has been placed upon me with no commensurate increase in pay; we gained a new member of our family, which while we knew it would be difficult, it has been difficult in new and imaginative ways we could never have anticipated. It all seems to be wearing on poor Mrs. FT more so than I. Although I've said it before, it bears repeating; I can now TOTALLY understand how things like cancer tear families apart and cause divorce. I used to really look down on people who left a spouse during or after a serious illness, but now that I've walked a mile or two in their shoes, I'm not quite so judgmental about it. It isn't just the stress of the diagnosis, and the surgery. It's the continuing on and on day after day effects (e.g. hotflashes) that really wear on both parties. Don't worry, I'm not leaving Mrs. FT, far from it. But our lives continue to change as a result of the cancer, and "better" is rarely a word we can use to describe the changes.

All that being said, ladies, please, please don't put off scheduling your mammograms. Guys and gals, make sure your female loved ones get their mammograms. Breast cancers can usually be seen on mammograms before than can be felt, especially if the breast tissue is dense, and the sooner any cancer is caught, the better. Mrs. FT's lump could only be felt by the ultrasound tech who could cheat and use the ultrasound machine to locate it.

FIL's g/f, who you may recall hid a lump in her breast from my FIL for 10 years, is one tough old bird. Her doctors recently told her that when she first came in (Aug 2006) they had figured she had about 2 months to live. So the good news is, she's apparently going to live, though she still sees doctors far more regularly than Mrs. FT does (roughly weekly, in fact), and lives with a morphine patch (similar to a nicotine patch) and other pain killers. The bad news is, she's worse than ever at being, well, a bitch. She managed to make TFT cry with one of her put downs when we went up there after Christmas. Geh, while TFT does need to learn to better deal with abrasive people, we are going to have to remind her the next time we go up there to expect FIL's g/f to say mean things, and to try to ignore them.

Last, but certainly not least at all, Mrs.FT and I owe Hulver a big apology. A couple years ago he sent out handwritten letters to anyone who asked. Granted, our letter arrived shortly after Mrs. FT's cancer diagnosis and my going back to work full time, but that really is no excuse for never writing back. We feel very badly about that. For all the hard work Hulver puts into this site, we should have done better. We apologize.