My Sister
Have I mentioned here that my sister has/had breast cancer? I don’t even remember… if not, she had it and had the cancerous portion removed from her breast, which included her nipple. Then she had genetic testing done to determine if she carried the gene. If I did mention this already, sorry for the double mention.
The results from the testing are in and it was negative. That’s good… in a way. But it doesn’t mean she’s in the clear.
Based on the following reasons, she’s chosen to have a double masectomy:
1. The genetic testing it’s 100%. It only tests for what they know. “A negative test result doesn’t put you in the clear. You may still be at high risk of hereditary breast cancer if your family carries a high-risk gene mutation that hasn’t yet been identified. As a result, you and your family may still need more rigorous screening. The BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic test can detect the majority of gene mutations, but it’s possible, if you receive a negative result, that the test was unable to detect your family’s gene mutation.”
2. Even with the negative test results, based on her young age and the family history of breast cancer (my mom having it at a young age too) her changes of a recurrence is 36%. That’s pretty high still.
She’s going to shoot for reconstruction at the same time. Keep her in your thoughts.
In house-buying news, we haven’t closed yet thanks to bullshit red tape and the like. Supposedly we’ll be done with this by Thursday. Gods help me I can’t take the stress! *freaks out*
Wasn’t this year supposed to be LESS stressful?
15 Minutes of Fame
Woo… 15 minutes of fame: Women in the Web Hosting Industry
ok, maybe not 15 whole minutes. More like 2 minutes.
I was interviewed for about an hour by the author of this article. The focus was women in the hosting/tech industry. At Lunarpages, we have many women in management and high-end positions which I guess is rare. So he focused a lot on us.
He asked me how being a woman in the male-dominated hosting industry has helped or hurt me. I said I don’t feel that my gender has hurt me at all. I said being a parent has taught me the patience to deal with more difficult or hard-to-please customers. He asked me if I felt men could emphasize customers as easily as women. I said I felt empathy came more naturally for women. That was pretty much the extent of THAT portion of the interview. We talked about a lot of other stuff such as my technical background, how I got into this industry, etc. The “being a parent has helped me” conversation was like 2 minutes of a 60 minute interview but that’s all he used.
The second to last paragraph of the article contains a comment I said to him. I find it funny that he used it in the article but didn’t quote me on *that*.
I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad though. Two other women he interviewed didn’t even get into the article. 
Moving Day!!
Friends and Family,
Jack and Tracie would like to announce that we will be moving on February 10, 2007 to a new home!
Fortunately it won’t be too hard to find us, as we are moving right around the corner from our current home. 
If you’d like to come help you’re welcome to come, if not that’s ok too.
We have a housewarming/birthday party tentatively planned for Saturday February 24th. This will be a casual get together. Snacks and soft drinks will be provided. If you’d like something harder, BYOB.
Drowning in Paperwork (Literally).
When we bought our current house 3.5 years ago, we were so excited, so starry-eyed, and so um… desperate, that we didn’t pay much attention to the details. We bought the house without an inspection and without asking for any type of work to be done before we bought it. When someone told us we needed to sign something, we just did.
This time we’re trying to be careful and know exactly what everything means and why we are signing this or that… We’re being careful about any defects in the house and to be sure it’s what we want AND to be sure we’re doing things 100% right….and OMG it’s hard!
First, we intended to be looking for a while before we found the house.. who knew the perfect house was already right in our own backyard. (Literally.) So this is coming at us way faster than I expected or was ready for. And now we’re asking questions about why we’re signing this or that, and what everything means. Why can’t all these escrow papers and legal documents make SENSE?? There’s numbers all over the place that mean nothing to me. 
I know this will be over soon, but this is no less stressful and aggravating than the last time we bought a house. Last time we were just happy to GET a house, let alone try to understand what anything meant.. The stress last time came from wondering if we could even find something because every time we did, someone bought it minutes (literally) before us and we kept getting our heart broken.
Now we’re waiting to find out what this new set of paperwork we got is about. And to find out if the seller will agree to at least meet us halfway on some of the repairs we’ve requested. (We weren’t *that* picky. We didn’t sweat the small stuff.. just the big stuff that could be a danger to the house or my family.). And we won’t know what this new paperwork is about or if the sellers are going to be nice or not until Monday. If I don’t have any hair on Monday, you’ll know why.
Getting Closer
We’re getting closer to getting our new house. Despite the “surprise snow storm” we had yesterday, we got the inspection done and will be negotiating the results of that this week.
We met the neighbor’s across the street at the new house yesterday. Really nice people. They’ve been in their house since it was built 14 years ago and know the street well. They had a beautiful outdoor fireplace (full brick fireplace) and they invited us to come get warm by it. They had a dog named Clark and he and Randy hit it off and enjoyed playing all over their back yard. I still don’t trust Kendra off the leash so she stayed close to my side.
So the previous owners of the house we are buying ARE leaving behind the upright grand piano which Jack is thrilled about. I’m not though. We already have a piano that is much smaller… I’m not sure what we are going to do with two pianos!
