We Were On a Break …

My first — and last — post here was in 2014 almost five years ago. Okay, so it wasn’t all that short of a break, but I had a reason. Several of them, actually. Things have happened over the last five years — life-threatening illness, a stressful job, a diagnosis of Parkinson’s, being fired from the stressful job because of the Parkinson’s, a lawsuit for being fired from the job because of the Parkinson’s, a newborn grandson with a life-threatening illness, settlement of the lawsuit for being fired from the job because of the Parkinson’s, an eye that literally fell apart, four surgeries to fix the eye that literally fell apart, the passing of my mother, a daughter in the hospital for forty days trying to prevent an extremely premature birth of a granddaughter, the far less but still quite premature birth of a granddaughter — just to name a few. Throw in a few kidney stones and a president who made the president presiding over the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina look like a benevolent genius, and it’s been one hell of a ride.

But there’s a lot of good things that happened, too. For starters, I survived paragraph one, largely due to a family that loved and supported me along the way. You’ll be reading about all of this in the times ahead. I also rekindled some passions. I got more involved with my model train and model-making hobby. My wife and I became enamored with the Craftsman-style of architecture as seen in person at the Disney California Grand Hotel and are in the process of renovating our home in that style.

Finally, I resumed my interest in genealogy and it was the desire and the need to pass what I have learned of my ancestry and family tree on to the rest of my family that led me to this journal and the other components of the website. Maybe I’ll make a few bucks to pay for the trains, the wood working, and the website. Maybe not, but it’s good therapy for me and it keeps me off the streets, which is probably good for everybody.