The Ordeal May Be Coming to a Close

Okay, reader's digest on my life over the past few years:

1.  Perfect life until about 2009, when a combination of factors started taking the business down.
2.  Everything came to a head in 2012.  The biz died, the divorce became inevitable.  Had to take a job in Dayton, where I work, now.

I am so very grateful for the job I have, now.  I got it during a time when a good many folks were having difficulty finding work.  It pays fine.  Benefits are insane.  I love the people I work with.

But I love my son so much more.  So, I never did get a place down in Dayton.  I just stay in a cheap hotel when I'm down there.

So many times, I've driven back and forth for football games and whatnot.  I drive about 50,000 miles a year.  That's just a lot of driving.  Averages about a thousand miles a week.  And I don't like it.

Anyway, long and short of it was that I could have made my life easier by moving to Dayton, and just touching base with my son now and then.  But what sort of life would that have been?  He's the most important thing in my life.

Anyway, there's every indication that starting in January, I may be starting a teaching job in Toledo.  If I get it, I can give up this horrible life on the road.  I can hardly wait.

For those of you who have followed me through my ups and downs (and pretty much only downs since 2009... the two exceptions are the job and the son), this is a pretty big up.

For the first time in 7 years, I feel like I finally will have my life back.

I'm not going to lie:  it's been a shitty slog.  I can't wait for it to end.

I also know that mine is just one of millions of stories of people who have struggled, some much worse than I have, since the economy cratered.

For the first time in a long, time, though, I have hope and plans and am looking forward to how my life will play itself out.  It feels good after so many years of just praying for bare survival.

Terraform Your Own Planet

Science fiction writers often write of a future where humans have destroyed the earth's ecology, rendering it unfit for us.  We then trek out into space to try and find suitable planets to live on.  Over the years, we've come to realize that nearly no planet will ever duplicate the conditions on earth.  However, another sci-fi concept:  terraforming, has entered the literary lexicon.

The idea being that you take a planet like Mars, but then you add oxygen and an atmosphere, etc.  Scientists will tell you that this may be feasible in a universe where there are limitless amounts of energy and resources, but it is essentially impossible in practice.

Then, most scientists will say:  if we had the capability to terraform an environment as hostile as Mars, we could terraform a "ruined" Earth much, much more easily.

So, the answer, once you gain terraforming technology, is to terraform the planet you are on.  It's way cheaper, easier and faster than terraforming a distant, hostile planet.  If having to chose between limiting greenhouse gasses on earth, or turning Mars' atmosphere into one we could live in, there is one clear winner of an idea, and one clearly idiotic idea in the mix.  If we can't even save our own planet with modest changes, the likelihood of changing an alien world are essentially zero.

So, I'm going to say that at my age, I've come to realize that the secret to happiness or even survival is to terraform the life you have.  Thinking about terraforming some distant life is essentially impossible.

Others have stated it as, "the grass may be greener over there, but it's a lot easier to just water the grass where you are."

My son is starting High School next year.  4 more years, and, if I have anything to say about it, he'll be off to college, on his own.  I think going away to school is a great experience for young people.  I don't judge folks who don't do it.  Not everybody has the same means.  And not every kid is the same.  But generally speaking, if a kid can do it, I think going away to school is a great thing to do.  I also think you have to do it shortly after high school.  It's not something you can chose to do in your mid 20s or later.  For a kid to gain the maximum formative effects of it, it should be done when they are relatively young.

I am at a paradox in my life.  I can't say that my current situation is particularly comfortable.  So, part of me is looking forward to a day in the medium-term future, where things are a lot easier financially, and I'm not so worn out all the time trying to balance my work life in Dayton and my home life 2.5 hours away in Toledo.

Dammit, though, these are the last four years of my son as a child.  I don't want to let this time pass to quickly.  I want to drink it in as much as possible.  I have 4 more years of my son as a young man, then he will be off to make his own way in the world.

Someday, I hope he has a family of his own and I will be able to spend time with grandkids.  That would be a great way to spend the last years of my life.

My future is pretty clear, and probably going to be really, really good.  I am so incredibly blessed to have a great job that pays fairly.  (And when I consider that they hired a guy in his late 40s into a program intended for kids in their 20s, I want to kiss the ground in gratitude.  Nobody else does that.  Nobody.)  I will have a pension, some substantial savings, and social security.  My life after retirement will probably be easier, financially, than all but a handful of my working years were.

Year by year, things will continue to get easier, too.  Once bambino is off to college, I won't have to live 2.5 hours away from where I work anymore.

So, in 4 years, my life will change immensely.  I'll finally have the time for both fitness and music that I sorely wish I had today.

4 years after that, he'll be done with school.  (Or at least done with Dad paying for it.)  From there on out, my finances will be pretty comfortable until retirement.

So, I have a lot to look forward to.  I can't say I'm happy about a lot of the ways my life has turned out.  I took a pretty bad beating in 2012.  In a recent training session, a lecturer asked, "In the past 3 years, how many people here have suffered the loss of a job?  Financial setbacks?  Death of a loved one?  Having to move?  Having to start a job with a new company?  Divorce?"

I raised my hand.

Not because I've had one of those things happen to me.

Because I have had EVERY ONE of those things happen to me in the past 3 years.  Like kharma was sitting back saying, "You know, you've had a good run, Streb, but there's some long overdue dues you're going to pay and you're going to pay them all at once.  Right now."

So, I can't say that I like my life the way it is at the moment.

On the other hand, I can't move to Mars and terraform the place.  I have one life.  Each passing year is a gift I will never get to have again.

I have the best kid I could have ever imagined.  I have a job I love.  It would be nice if they were in the same place, but they aren't.

There are those who have had it much worse.  Not just in the past 3 years, but in life.  Many folks would look at my life and say, "Wow... you think THAT is bad?  That's nothing man.  Let me tell you a story."  And they would be right.  They would be 100% right.

So, I'm working on terraforming the life I have.  Trying to make it as good as I can make it.

Another thing, though, is that I'm already feeling a sense of loss for what life will be once bambino moves out.  Yes, I will be able to fill my life with fitness and music.  Those, other than my son, are probably the two most important activities to me, personally.

Still, I'll feel a little lost, I know.  I love sports and having a kid who plays every sport under the sun has been a great experience.  I get to not only watch a lot of sports, but I have an athlete that I genuinely love.

Anyway, I'm an overthinker.  Always have been.  Always will be.  I guess I should just be thankful for today.  Logan is hurt at the moment, but his team plays so many games, it's not the worst thing that he gets a little mid-season break.  (Especially with school still in session.)

I'm finally getting to put some of my musical gear to use with Logan's band getting ready to play their middle school talent show.  I'm excited to see that.  He's been working hard at playing bass.  He's still doing just fine in school.  Mostly, he's just a good human being.

I have been truly blessed.  I need to focus more on that, and less on the idea that these years have not turned out at all like I would have planned.

Then, I need to get busy with continually terraforming my world.

Spring is Here!

I'm so very happy that Spring is here and the outdoors are no longer a hostile, foreign environment.  I swear every time I left a building, I was half expecting somebody to warn me that my tauntaun would freeze before I reached the first marker.  I'm pretty sure I froze my tauntauns off on more than one occasion.

So, updates on all the news that's fit to print.  Baseball season is kicking off in high gear.  Bambino is on a new team, now.  I am a little nervous about it, but I figure in the long run, he'll be fine.  This team is, hands-down, the best team he's ever been on.  They play a tournament every single weekend of the season except one.  Then, add a couple of midweek games and all told, he's going to basically average about a game a day from mid April to mid July.

There's a big tournament in Myrtle Beach to cap off the entire season.  So, that's vacation for the year.

I'm excited for Bambino and my goal with all this travel baseball was to prepare him to play in High School.  Doing the math, looking at the available players and talking to other parents, I think we can all but roll out the mission accomplished banner on this one.

I think he has all the tools he will need to play in High School.  If he wants to put in the work, he can continue to excel.  Even if he continues to play other sports, he should still have a good HS career, and eventually play varsity.

So, that's the payoff.  That's all I really wanted with all the travel ball.  Like most stuff in life, if I had it all to do over, I'd do it differently.  However, it's done, now, and the result is what I'd hoped for.  Bambino continues to be a heck of a good ballplayer.

Fencing season is pretty much over for me until late Summer 2015.  It's as good a time as any for a break.  There is just no real way I can do any tournaments until baseball season is over.  It was time for a break, anyway.

I'm very, very happy with my progress over the past 8 months.  I started out basically only knowing how to do one thing (beat the hell out of a blade, close distance and stab like a madman.)  Now, I'm evolving a style that's pretty far removed from that.  I'm getting tons of glove and forearm touches, even in tournaments.  So, I'm using a lot more finesse these days.

Next year, I hope to combine my blade control / sniping ability with the aggression I started out with.  Try to combine it with some better attempts at binding and controlling the opponent's blade and see how it goes.

I'm going to also try french grip.  If it works out the way it's planned, that should lead to more touches and improved control.  If not, I can always go back to the standard pistol grip (the visconti grip) and continue along the path I was going.

Basketball season is over for the Bambino, now.  He's finishing up his rec basketball season.  He continues to absolutely love basketball.  So, I'm encouraging him to give it his all.  Basketball is, by far, the hardest teams to make and the hardest to get a varsity letter in, in high school, IMHO.  Baseball is second.  (Just personal opinion.  Not trying to start a fight with people who have kids in other sports.)  He knows he's either going to have to grow or develop a killer 3 if he hopes to play varsity.  His ball handling, leaping ability, jump shooting, etc., are phenomenally better than last year.  I'm really impressed with his progress.  If he improves a comparable amount next year, I think he's going to be in fantastic shape for freshman ball.

Bambino is also thinking he wants to play wide receiver in football.  I'm nervous about it.  Every parent is these days.  It'll be more than a little crazy seeing him suit up for his High School's football team.  So far so good.  No significant dane brammage that I can see.  I will be holding my breath until he finishes his time under the Friday Night Lights uneventfully.  Fingers crossed.

I just finished the last of my Defense Acquisition University (yes, there is such a thing) classes required for my Level II certification in Acquisition.  (These certifications are under the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act, or DAWIA.)  In July, my 3 year service obligation with the Air Force is over.  I am desperately trying to find work closer to home.

I'm a little surprised I've been able to do this for as long as I have.  This drive and this situation have just been crazy and I've been doing them for almost 3 years, now.  I was in pure survival mode.  I'd like to do a little living though.

Until Bambino graduates High School, I want to try and stay here if at all possible.  Of course, that may not be possible.  I'll just keep playing it by ear.  If I have to do this same routine for another 4 years, I'd survive.  However, if I could get a job with the VA in Ann Arbor, I'd sure take it.

So, now, the weather is good.  I can start running outside again.  I'm hoping I'll be able to get back into the shape I was in back in August or so of last year.  I did make some gains with weight training over the long Winter, but I've never really liked being big.  I'll be very happy to slim back down.

The Comedic Stylings of Jimmy Trying to Ski

Had 5 days of skiing in the past week.  This pretty much equals my total skiing for the years 1995 thru 2012.  I never was a very good skier.  However, I wanted my son to learn.  So, starting when he was about 8, we started hitting the little local places.

This is like a lot of things I took up as an adult where I wish I had known how to do this, but wasn't in a position, financially, to try until I was grown up.  Even so, I learned on a budget, which meant that I was probably a dangerous and not-very-good skier for most of my life.  I was lucky to afford a lift ticket now and then.  Forget affording lessons.

I got to where I could go down a hill, hockey stop if going to the left, and that's... well, that's about it.  I'd wipe out several times a day on the slopes and when I'd start wiping out every run, I knew it was time to go home.

I wanted my son to learn how to ski properly.  So, I frequently would hire a private instructor for him when we'd hit the slopes.

It's been a few years since I did skiing of any kind.  So, when a friend asked if I wanted to hit Snowshoe West Virginia for a week, I was pretty eager for it.  I haven't had a real vacation in a long, long time and it was time to dust off the skis.

Snowshoe felt like a skiing Disneyland for grownups.  Our Hotel room was a short walk to the top of the slopes.  It was close enough that you could walk to the hotel and up to the room if your feet got cold or you had to pee.  The feet part was pretty important because the week we were there, it was very, very cold.  Like single digits and some negative temperatures.

My friend taught me quite a bit.  For instance, I didn't know that the symbols for difficulty aren't universal.  They're only in relation to that particular location.  So, a green slope just means it's the easiest type of slope at that location.  A black diamond in one location could easily be a green elsewhere.

At Snowshoe, the greens were pretty challenging, I think.  Most of them had a relatively steep drop-off and were on narrow trails.

The first couple of days, I was mostly just trying not to die.  My priorities have changed a lot since I was in my 20s.

In my 20s, my priorities for skiing were:

1.  Ski all the black diamonds by the end of the day.
2.  Ski fast.
3.  Turn roughly when I intend to turn.
4.  Stop, or if I can't stop, slide to a stop somewhere near the lift line.
5.  When I fall, try not to fall on anybody else, and try to keep the yardsale of gear nearby so it won't take me long to gather it up, put it back on and keep flying down the hill.

Now, my priorities are more like:

1.  Don't get hurt.
2.  Avoid injury.
3.  Attempt not to cause myself or others bodily harm.
4.  Endeavor to eschew anything that will result in pain.
5.  Enjoy skiing.

So, the first two days I was trying to get myself back to where I could ski like I used to:  with some semblance of control and ability to stop and turn.  By day four, I was pretty much as good as I'd ever been and was really enjoying the greens.  Each run might have 1 or 2 places where the hill got a little steep and I'd have to really work to keep my speed under control, but for the most part, I could practice staying parallel and controlling my speed.

On Saturday, I took Logan up to Mt. Holly to try out his new ski gear.  His skis are MUCH longer than last year.  I also had some concerns about his boots.  However, the night before I had him put the boots on to make sure they weren't too big.  I didn't know about the skis, though.  If they were too long, they'd be hard to control and he might hurt himself.

So, first thing I did was hire an instructor for an hour.  Unlike years prior, I paid extra so it would be a private lesson for the two of us.  The instructor gave us some great guidance and stuff to work on and then we were on our own.

Mt. Holly, for a little local hill, is pretty nice.  It's an hour and a half away from me.  There's a closer one:  Mt. Brighton, but Brighton is very, very small and very, very crowded.  Much like local places near Cleveland like Brandywine.  You spend most of your time dodging out of control kids on snowboards.  The hill is small.  It's sorta dangerous.

Last time I went to Holly, there were absolutely some hills there that were out of my reach, skill-wise.  It's bigger, with more runs and is less populated than Mt. Brighton.  For a skiier of my skill level at the time, I could have skied there a week and not gotten bored.

I was having difficulty controlling my skis all week and prior to the lesson.  There are a lot of reasons for this.  For one, they're giant slolom (GS) skis.  Probably not appropriate for kid-dodging east of the Rockies.  This means they're a little longer than typical recreational skis.  Probably intended for folks who ski a little better than I did.

For another, the skis today have different technology than they did in the early 90s when I first tried skiing.  The skis are parabolic, now, which makes them much easier to turn.  Thing is, to get them to perform, you have to lean forward in your boots, which scares the heck out of me.

The instructor gave me basically one thing to work on:  leaning forward in my boots.  With the new parabolic skis, this is critical for engaging the front of the ski for turning.

Once I did this, everything that hadn't worked the prior week snapped right into place. My turn to the right was just as good as my turn to the left.  I was able to get my skis left and right to dig them in to control speed on very steep grades.

By the mid-afternoon, Logan and I had safely slayed all the runs at Mt. Holly.  And by early evening we were starting to get bored with them.  My "too long" skis were not a problem at all.  (Not at Holly, anyway.  Next season, I will be looking for shorter skis.  I just saw way too many skiers who probably weren't as good as me, handling much gnarlier stuff in Snowshoe because their skis were so much more nimble and easy to control.)

I thought back to the stuff that gave me fits at Snowshoe, and with my technique the way it is, now, none of it would be tricky at all for me.  So, after 4 days in Snowshoe, I was as good as I ever was.  After 1 lesson and a day at Mt. Holly, I'm a better skiier than I ever thought I would be.

I doubt I'll be going back to Snowshoe.  Honestly, I loved it, but it's just too danged far.  For me, it's like an 8 or 9 hour drive under good conditions.  Also, a lot of the drive is winding single-lane roads.  Boyne is only 4 and a half hours away and from what I can gather, is pretty much the same skiing as Snowshoe.  So, my penciled in plan for next year is Boyne for a week with Logan.  Depending on what happens with the job and the rest of my life, a trip out west is probably in the not-too-distant future.

I don't think Boyne has the fake village Disneyland atmosphere of Snowshoe, but that's okay.  I liked being able to walk out the door of the hotel to a restaurant within a few yards, but honestly, although the food was usually good, the quality was insanely inconsistent.  If I did it again, I'd take a cooler of food and nuke a breakfast sandwich and hit the slopes that much earlier.  I'll probably follow that plan in Boyne.

Total damage (non financial) is a little tweak on the shoulder, knee and hip.  The shoulder is still a little sore.  Hip is fine, now.  And knee is still just ever so slightly noticeable.  All of this happened prior to the lesson.  After the lesson, it was the most uneventful (in terms of falling down) skiing of my life.  I should have done the lesson so much sooner.  Unlike lessons in a lot of other things, the difference was instant and dramatic.  I was ten times the skiier by the end of that day as I'd been when I showed up that morning.

Fit at 50 Day One

Weight:  194.  (Yikes!  A little more weight gain than I wanted, but nothing I can't work with.)

Breakfast:

500 mg. Vitamin C.
1000 mg. Fish Oil.
Centrum Multivitamin.
Orange Juice
3 eggs
5 strips turkey bacon
Coffee

Workout today?  Run 2 miles on treadmill at Planet Fitness.  50 kettlebell swings.



Multiple workouts in a day have always worked for me.  I have heard people give various theories on this.  That it amps up your metabolism.  Who knows.  Maybe it does.

I usually shoot for multiple workouts during my normal days.  One at lunch and one after work.  (Usually weights at lunch and run  or cardio after.)  I don't do this on fencing nights, but fencing is a workout, too.  I sweat a lot during fencing.  I'm probably getting some fitness benefit from it.

So, that's the plan for today.  Also, diet-wise, not much of a plan.  Just trying to keep total carb count below 100 grams for the day.  During December, that was just going to be flat-out impossible.  I wasn't even going to try.  But time to get back on it.

I'll check in at the end of the day to report how the actual went against the plan.

Fit at 50... First Edition

January first has finally rolled around.  It's 2015.  I honestly don't fully feel like I know how I got here.  Yet, here I am.

A year is enough time to change your entire life.  I've seen it.  I've experienced it.  More than once.  This year is especially significant since I roll over the 50 mark.  Yes, my god, I am that old.

2014 was a transformative year for me.  It started like the years before.  I was slogging my way through a joyless life.  Halfway through the year, I met a person who resonated with me on every wavelength.  One thing led to another and by August, I was unrecognizable relative to who I had been in June.

It wasn't that this person pushed me, or encouraged me, or told me I needed to change in any way.  They woke me up, though, to who I had been, and to who I was.

The changes were all over, but most noticeably in the area of fitness.  Thanks to a workout routine that included free weights, 5 and 6 mile runs and low carb diet, I dropped from about 210 to around 185.

That's roughly where I am, today, though I've probably gained some of the weight back.  I gave myself December off.  Previous endurance training has given me the belief that you need periodic downtime for your mental and physical well-being.  Bodies get beat-up.  Hairline fractures start developing.  Ligaments and tendonds get strained.  Mentally, folks start getting worn down.

December is now officially over.  2015 has begun.  In 2014, I was very close to some of the best shape I've ever been in.  My bloodwork was phenomenal and I had six pack abs that I would show anybody who wouldn't run away covering their eyes.

I think there's another level beyond that and I think I can hit it in 2015.  So, here is what I will be
working on this year:

1.  Shoulders, arms, glutes:  working on muscling up a little bit.  Especially glutes so I don't end up with flabby, flat, old man ass.  This is particularly a concern for me since, thanks to my Asian ancestry, I'm gleutially challenged anyway.

2.  Abs:  I feel like I got these just about right in 2014, but will be working on core strength with a wider variety of exercises in 2015.  The bulk of what I've been doing is incline board at several settings, 20 reps per setting, 5 settings, for a total of 100 reps.  I do this several times per week.  This year, I'll start adding weight to the reps and doing other exercises that hit obliques, etc. and jumbling up the ab exercises with various other routines now and then.

3.  Rower and stepper:  love both these machines and need to do more of them for overall fitness and cardio, as well as muscle definition in quads, glutes and back.

The rest?  I'll be working on definition.  Just keeping the weight down, keeping the muscles toned and trying to get them ripped.

Pretty much I'll be doing exactly what I did in 2014... just more of it.

In the low 180s, my body fat was pretty low.  I'll be happy to hit that again, but my goal is probably something in the mid 170s.  We'll see.  Not terribly concerned about the scale, honestly.  I'll know when my body fat is where I want it to be.  I can see it, feel it, and notice it as I move about.

I have signed up for the Air Force marathon.  Though it would benefit me to go into it with as little upper body weight as possible, I'm not in this to win a marathon or even to run one very fast.  I'm just not that fast.  I'm in it for my overall health and appearance.  So, I'll sacrifice a few seconds per mile to carry that extra upper body weight for the race.

Goal for the marathon is simply to complete all my scheduled 20 milers and finish the marathon.  Time goal?  Don't really have one, but if I had to put a number to it, I'd say a finish in 4:30 or less is just fine with me.

Also, although I'm not much of an athlete, I do have an athletic goal in mind.  Now that I have taken up fencing, I want my physical training routine to at least compliment my fencing without detracting.

I'll be posting workout info to facebook and am contemplating some shirtless selfies to show my progress.  Nothing like the spectre of public humiliation to aid in achieving a fitness goal.  I added a little weight in December, and have the start of a belly.  Might do it, might not... I am afraid that a lot of folks just don't want to see some pasty old guy without his shirt when they open their facebook news feed.  We'll see... jury is out on that one.

But I will be at least staying in shape and trying to take this to the next level.  2014, of all things, I ended up really amping up my fitness.  There's another level beyond that and I think I can hit it.  I'll keep you posted as I go.

Bring on the New Year! 2015 on the way!

Time for New Year's resolutions and here are mine:

1.  Stay in shape.
2.  Stay debt free.
3.  Run a marathon.
4.  Play more music.
5.  Get a rating in fencing.
6.  New job / home / both.

Staying in shape is a pretty modest goal, but I made a lot of progress on fitness this past year.  I'd like to keep it.  Putting numbers to it, I'd like to keep my weight below 190, with regular workouts.  Diet is always problematic for me because of all the time I spend on the road, but as much as possible, I'll try to avoid eating junk.  Or at least eat more intelligent junk.  If I end 2015 below 190, I'll be pretty happy with this one.  My bloodwork is phenomenal and my health is the best it's been in over a decade.  I need to keep this up.

Staying debt free should be a little easier.  I rent my condo, and will probably rent anyplace I live.  So, there's no real need to even have mortgage debt for the time being.  The trick will be to avoid buying too many toys.  (Or avoid buying toys at all... I don't have time for all the toys I already have.)  This is one of those goals that is really just maintaining what I already have, but it will take mindfulness and effort.

Sort of hand-in-hand with staying in shape, I'll be training for a marathon this year.  I won't have a time goal.  (Though, probably something in the neighborhood of 4:15 to 4:30 is realistic.)  One of the reasons 2014 was so awesome fitness-wise is that I have been able to run pain-free for the first time in years and years.  So, I'll celebrate that by lacing up the trainers and putting down some real mileage.  I have no goals related to running speed at the moment.  If this plays out like it did last time I got sorta serious about running, I'll get a big speed bump after my marathon recovery.  So, if I have any speed-related goals, they'll need to wait until 2016.

My life has been covered by a veil of general yuckiness since 2012, but that veil is lifting.  It's mostly gone at this point.  I always feel better when I exercise and play music.  So, I need to start playing more music.  I'll be setting up my piano and playing a bit here and there.  I don't know that I'll perform or record, but I at least want to be regularly playing, now.  Maybe 2016, I'll have a recording or performing goal.

I picked up one new hobby in 2015:  fencing.  I absolutely love it.  Started in very late July with some classes at a local community center.  I've fenced in half a dozen tournaments this year.  If you do well enough in certain types of tournaments, you can get "rated".  At this point, I'm rated "u" or unrated.  Meaning I haven't achieved anything rating-wise.  Sometime in 2016, I'd like to see if I can do well enough in a tournament to get an E in my weapon of choice:  epee.  Fencing has been a blast and I've been looking for a sport.  I guess running is a sport, but this one is a lot of fun in a way that running really isn't.  Haha!  (Never particularly loved running... I just love everything about running other than the running, itself.)

Lastly, I'll have to make a change this year.  I'm hoping to find a job closer to home (Toledo), or if not, then a job closer to family or friends (Dallas, Cleveland or Phoenix.)  If I can't do any of those things, I'll be moving down near to Dayton so I can have a more normal semblance of a life.  Driving from Toledo to Dayton and paying for hotels has been draining in every imaginable way.  I can't really keep it up much longer.  Of course, this means I'll have my son for half the Summer, instead of for every other weekend.  It's not really better or worse, near as I can figure.  It's just a different challenge.

2014 was a great year for me.  I'm happier in so many ways.  I've met a ton of great people.  Had some fantastic experiences.  Got in shape.  Picked up a new hobby.  It was just super all the way around.  If I make the same sort of progress in 2015, I'll be pretty darned happy.

Really, my life is mostly back on track, except for two very important things.  I don't live close to my son, so I still spend less time with him than I did before my life cratered in 2012.  He graduates High School in 2019.  I have only so many years with him.  So, I want to make the most of it.  The clock is ticking on this one and when he graduates High School and is off to college, this chance will have passed.  All I can do is continue to do the best I can.  Forgive myself for what I can't, and just keep moving forward.

Career-wise, I'm very happy for my job.  I love it and am lucky to have it.  However, I'm nowhere near where I was, either professionally, or when I owned my own business.  That's a work in process.

2014 Wrap Up: Where Do I Even Begin?

2014 was one to remember.  To recap, 2009, the biz started dying.  In 2012, I sold off what remained of the assets and started working for the government down in Dayton.  I still honestly don't know how I survived the past two and a half years.  I just did, I guess.  None of it should have worked, but I seemed to grunt my way through what has been, without doubt, the most difficult time of my adult life.

2014, though, things changed.  I lost a lot of weight.  Got much healthier.  (Bloodwork all looks phenomenal, now.)  Met so many new people.  Took up a new hobby:  fencing.

All in all, I never could have predicted at the end of 2013, that 2014 would have been so good.

2015 may bring some changes.  Actually, it will, one way or another.  In July, my service commitment is up, leaving me to seek other positions both within and outside the government.  My preference would be to move closer to home.  Home is still Sylvania, because my son is still in Sylvania.  At least he's here for another 4 and a half years until he graduates High School.

If I can't find anything here, I'll be moving.  If I don't live near Toledo, I'll move somewhere near family or friends.  So, that means, Cleveland/Akron, Dallas/Fort Worth or Phonenix... ummm... /Phoenix.  If I can't find anything in those cities, I'll move closer to my current position, probably by moving to a Western suburb of Columbus, like Hilliard.

Time frame for a move will be sometime after Logan's travel baseball season.  I plan on taking off a month just to follow him once school lets out.  That'll give me time with him, and the time to travel around to watch him.

January, I'll be taking a little week-long ski vacation to West Virginia.  That'll be my first little vacation in forever.  Things are getting better for me.  I am still not entirely sure what the next few years hold, but by the end of this year, the picture should get clearer.

My son continues to be my pride and joy.  I have always said that if I had to chose between a great life for me, and having a great son, that I'd take the great son.  That's the deal I have.  As long as I have that, I can be happy.

He continues to do great in all his sports.  Like most teenagers, he's growing like a weed.  He's getting a lot of playing time in basketball this year.  Football he did great.  He will be playing on his most competitive baseball team, yet, this season.

He's also getting serious about playing bass.  He is in a little band and he sounds great.  I haven't heard the band, yet, but if they're as good as he is, they should sound fantastic.  They're preparing to play in their school's talent show at the end of the year.

All in all, my son is great, and 2015 finds me in better shape than I was in when 2014 started.  I'm still rebuilding my life after the business died.  It's pretty much all there, except my career got set back pretty far.  I've got another couple decades in the worforce.  No telling what it will bring.

Best wishes to everybody out there.  I hope 2014 was good to you, too.  We can all hope for a great 2015!

It's a Wonder Anybody Ever Stays Together

Strange that Facebook posts so frequently fall into neat classifications.  The "brag on my kids" post, or the "this is my health issue" post.  These things mean the entire world to the people posting them.  For those who are reading, it's a chance to share in life's very real joys, triumphs and trials.  Then, there's the heartache post.  I see them.  Have been tempted to make a few from time to time.

They are ones where it's easy for an outsider to see what's happening and to give sage advice:  heal, move on, but mostly realize that what you thought was there probably wasn't.

When dealing with something as complex as human emotions, it's a wonder any two people in the world ever get together.  You have to be emotionally ready to explore a relationship.  You have to have mutual attraction and desire.  You need basic compatibility.

That's just to have any relationship, of any kind.  Even a bad one.  As you look at the building blocks of a good relationship:  trust, mutual respect, care and concern; it gets difficult to believe that anybody can really have all that.

Then, there's all the personal flaws that derail relationships:  People who have their own issues to work out, which make them a poor fit for others.

The biggest stumbling block?  Seems to be that far more often than not, one person is crazy about the other, and the other person is just not in to the same degree.  That's when the heartbreak happens.

So many "happy couples" I see are really a case of that:  one person emotionally carrying the entire relationship and the other person wanting to keep a good thing, but not being completely invested.  For most people, that's the closest it gets, I fear.  One person gets their dream... the other person settles for a good thing.

I think there are a lot of perfectly functional marriages that work like that.

However, if you're heartbroken, it means that your relationship wasn't perfectly functional.  One of the more productive dating concepts that's come along in recent years is the whole, "he's not that into you" thing.  Of course, SHE may not be that into you, either.  If they aren't jumping into this with you, with both feet, that means you just aren't a priority for them, period.  The rest?  You need to harden your heart, because the rest really doesn't amount to much.

I heard a great quote once:  real love is when both people feel like they're "dating up."  It happens.  It's wonderful to see when it does.

THEN, you can have all that... every last element of it... for years and years and years, and then something changes.  People grow apart sometimes instead of together.  Is that worse?  Who knows.

In the end, it's hard to see.  Harder to go through.  Yet people do.  From the beginning of time they did and they do.  Billions upon billions of people bumping around through life looking for the one person who will give them a sense of home.  Love is just that powerful.

So, for every person going through it, take heart.  It feels like your heartache is the worst thing anybody has ever, ever gone through.  Like you lost the one person you were meant to be with, and if only a few little things had been different, the two of you would be together and happy.

These things are not true, but that's what heartbreak feels like.  The worst is that your heart just doesn't want to accept that the relationship ended because it had to.  It was fatally flawed.  Most of the time, people can put their finger right on the flaw, yet their heart refuses to accept that it couldn't have worked.

I think this is an emotional coping mechanism that is actually a good thing LATER in an established relationship.  It causes the heart to hold on, even through tough times.

But when a relationship ends, that same instinct is the source of most of the pain.  The belief that the relationship was a good one.  If we had only...

The fact is that every relationship is packed with a lot of good times, positive emotion... the reality is that even a failed relationship had a lot of commonality with a good relationship.  You are left thinking, "the good stuff... I wish I didn't have to lose that."  Thing is, you don't.  You can have it again.  With another person, and with any luck, better next time.  Those good times didn't go away.  They're still waiting for you.

You just have to heal.  Aaaaand... it feels like you will never, ever heal.

That isn't true, either.

I don't know a lot about love.  I sure don't know much about relationships.  I just know that hearts heal and they love again.  It takes time.  Sometimes months or even years of painful, painful time.  It happens, though.

It gets better.  Hang in there.  The pain feels like it will last forever, but it never does.

In the end, you do come out the other side.  When you do, you will find more people who are also bumping along, looking for that one person who will make their life feel complete.

You'll be older.  Wiser.  A little gun-shy.  You'll have learned a little bit about what you really need, versus maybe what you merely wanted.  Maybe, the next go-round, it won't be one person crazy in love and another person just content to hang on to a good thing for a while.

Maybe you'll both be dating up.

In the end, you can't make somebody love you.  You can only be someone who deserves to be loved.

The Art of the Stab

I just finished my first weekend of fencing tournaments.  Right now, honestly, I'm a little exhausted.  It wasn't the physical activity so much.  I do more than that pretty much every day in workouts.  But it was tiring... probably mentally as well as physically.

The first event was an "E and under" event in Michigan.  In fencing, you are classified starting as a U (unrated) and then can earn ratings of E through A.  An A level fencer would be a world-class fencer, collegiate varsity fencer, basically somebody with the highest classification.

I am a U, obviously.  So, I figured the E and under tournament would be a good way to fence against people my own level.

The event I fence in is called epee.  There are 3 different fencing events, and in epee, the entire body is a target and you can attempt to score at any time.  The other two events: saber and foil, involve a concept called "right of way" where you can only score at certain times.  They also have limited scoring areas and require special jackets or vests called a "lame" where you have to be touched for it to be a valid score.  A score in fencing is called a "touch" or "touche" the French word, in international competition.

At least so far, a sizeable chunk of people who have seen me fence think I'm actually a saberist who is picking up epee as a second weapon.  The reason for this is that saber is by far the most aggressive of the events, with competitors moving at each other very quickly and points scored very, very quickly.

Half a dozen folks, starting the very first few lessons I took, saw how I wanted to fight and said something along the lines of, "You really, really need to try saber."

Epee involves patience.  Those who are familiar with my level of patience may immediately wonder about the wisdom of me choosing this event.

So, the funniest comment on day one was from a woman who actually was a saberist.  She tore up our pool, and ended up with the #2 seed going into the brackets (called "direct elimination" or DE in tournaments).

Of the pool bouts I lost, I did best against her, losing 5-4.  She was the only person I have ever fenced who was more aggressive than I was.  After the bout, as we shook hands, she asked, "Is this your first weapon?"

"You think I'm a saberist, don't you?" I asked in reply.

Her response was classic, "You ARE a saberist."

I had begun taking baby steps towards learning saber before the weekend.  Trying to find a lame and buying a saber.  (Sabers are the least expensive weapons as far as the weapon, itself.  The lame and mask are the most expensive of all the events, though.)  Now, though, I'm interested to see how it goes.

I watched her fight through the tournament and it was an absolute pleasure.  Basically, she just kept aggressively attacking the entire time.  She didn't end up winning, but went deep and it was just fun to watch her go.

Overall, the tournament went well on Saturday.  I beat the two people I should have in the pools and got dispatched quickly in the Direct Elimination portion.  What was surprising was that almost everybody had no trouble at all dealing with my aggressiveness on the strip.  At least at the clubs prior to this, I could sometimes get a lot of points, or sometimes a win against a better fencer because of my unconventional style.  In the E and under tournament, most of the people I faced were completely unfazed and would just beat me using standard epee tactics.

Sunday's tournament had the same result, but felt much better.  Again, I beat the two people I should have beaten.  Again, I lost in the brackets in my first bout.

The difference, though, was that I was getting touches on everybody in the pools.  I just wasn't getting enough of them.  And the kid I lost to in direct elimination was a D rated fencer.  I actually had him tied at 6-6 (after getting a red card for a non-functioning body cord and thus starting the bout 0-1).  I just felt that although I lost to people I should have lost to, the gap wasn't insurmountable.  I scored a lot of touches.

Plus, I think in some regards, I went in with the attitude that I would have fun and learn from the experience.  And I think I really did.  But I didn't expect to beat the guys who beat me.  Next time, I think I'll probably go in with a more aggressive attitude.

I will probably only do maybe half a dozen tournaments or so all year.  This weekend was an anomaly because I had two of them.  Next weekend, I have a third.

I'm glad to have them all back to back, though.  That way I minimize that time where I'm sitting around thinking, "I learned a lot, there... I can't wait to try the next one."

So, exhausted and need some fencing downtime.  I'll probably open fence at SWORD on Thursday and then off to an E and under tournament in Wadsworth, OH next week.  Though, honestly, I thought the E and under tournament this past weekend was harder than the open tournament.

I should also add, if you're a high school aged young man, this is a sport to go into.  In my pool alone, in the E and under tournament, there were 4 gorgeous young women (all of whom thrashed me rather soundly, I might add).  Lots of cute girls get into this sport.

Where I Am

I've documented so much of my life in blogs that it seem odd that now, of all times, I'd be reluctant to blog what I've been going through.  In an odd way, so much has been going on that I've been too wrapped up in the real world to write about it.

First, I guess I'll talk about the most obvious thing.  The one that folks are most likely to notice when they see me in person.  I've been able to start running again.  Physically, I'm just much smaller.  At first, it didn't seem like it, but it is absolutely true.  I don't particularly like the act of running.  My head does clear and I think clearly on what's on my mind, but the act of running, itself, has never really been joyful for me.  After 3 miles or so, I settle into a sustainable tranquility, but it's never really fun.  The other things, though?  The impact on my life?  Huge.  My physical health, mental well-being, energy level, everything improves.  Just had a routine blood test and they could have used my results as a textbook example of perfect bloodwork.

I haven't been able to run much for the past 10 years or so due to various injuries.  Most notably, my 4 year battle with plantar fasciitis.  Now, though, I'm running injury free.  I'm trying not to push it too hard and end up broken again.  We'll see.  My routine is 6 miles, 3 or 4 times a week.  If things continue to go well, I'll shoot for the AF Marathon in Fall of 2015.

So, fitness, all blue skies these days.  I'm still lifting, but not as much.  I haven't fully decided on a fitness goal.  I'm just enjoying being in shape.  If I do a fall marathon, I may give up the lifting for a while.  I'll worry about that later.

Second, things in general have improved and because of that, so has my general mood.  As I have whined incessantly about, things have been tough since 2009, and everything sorta crashed in 2012.  The bad news all seems to be behind me at the moment, though.  My feet are firmly beneath me and I'm feeling ready to explore what's next.  I'm contemplating my next entrepreneurial step.  Not sure what it is, but for the first time in a while, I'm sure it'll be something.

I will have to make some sort of change regarding my living situation.  I have a year left on my service committment at my current job, but after that, I will be looking for something closer to my son.  If I can't find that, I'll be moving closer to my job and go on the distance parenting schedule.  (Instead of every other weekend, I'd have him half the summer.)  I will probably continue to hang on to the current situation, as gruelling and expensive as it is, until then.

Lastly, and more importantly, I had an extraordinary person come into my life.  Honestly, this is why I haven't been blogging.  It's just that I didn't know what, if anything, I could say about this.  Yet, at the same time, it's probably the biggest thing that's happened to me lately.

For reasons too personal, numerous and complicated to divulge publicly, I really can't talk a lot of specifics about this person.  She's somebody who came into my life oddly and suddenly.  We shared an extraordinary connection.  It didn't hurt that she was smart and beautiful.

Timing truly is everything.  She came into my life when I needed her most.  I needed somebody to remind me that I was truly capable of caring about another person.  I needed somebody to show me that there are people I can relate to, deeply and personally.  I have never met another person who I connected with on this level, at this depth.

Unfortunately, because timing is, indeed, everything, I did not come into her life at a time when she was in a position to be ready for this to progress much beyond a complicated friendship.  Or, maybe it's just me.  Or maybe a combination of both.  My heart was hers to take, but hers was not mine.  The reasons why, ultimately, really don't matter.

Still, I find myself being more grateful than hearbroken in the end.  You have to be grateful when a person comes into your life, picks you up and leaves you better than they found you. Life is made the greater by the people in your life.  My life is greater now that she is part of mine.

Gotta make a change...

I'm in training in Sterling Heights for the next couple of weeks.  Easy stuff.  Pricing and Cost analysis, which is sorta in my wheelhouse.  (Lots of math and spreadsheets for a guy who writes Excel Macros when he's home and bored.)

The thing that stands out about this is that I'm sleeping in my own bed every night.  Man, this is nice.  I really need to make a change here in the foreseeable future.  Will do it, but more on that in a bit.

For those who are just tuning in, I drive down to Dayton every week.  If my son has sports, I drive up for the games.  It's exhausting, expensive... well, there isn't much to like about it at all, other than it giving me time with my son.

As he gets older, though, that time gets smaller and smaller.  On a weekend, I might only see him a handful of hours.  If I lived further away, he'd spend half the Summer with me.

If I had my way, I'd probably just find a way to continue this, but the expense and fatigue are pretty insane.

I have a little less than a year left on my service commitment for my job.  Love the job, but there are lots of comparable jobs within the DOD.  So, I may be looking at changing jobs next year.  Either that, or I'll be looking at relocating closer to the job.

Dayton is sort of nice in that it's basically an hour from Cinci or Columbus.  Not the easiest commute, but if anything happened to the Dayton gig, I'd have two of the biggest cities in Ohio within feasible driving distance.

So, yeah, probably going to make a change.  Not sure when, but sometime.  I set up this arrangement a few years ago when the job was new and everything else in my life was up in the air, but it is time to reassess it, now.

Other than that, busy, busy, busy.  Social life has been insane.  Also, I've been doing a yeoman's job of keeping up with the fitness.  I am only running while on this training.  (Though may do the rower after 3 straight days of 6 milers... that's a lot of days in a row for me.)  I'm missing the occasional 2nd workout at the gym.  So, there are upsides to returning to my Dayton routine.  (Of course, I could have that upside if I lived down there, too.)

I do notice that my hips don't hurt as much when I'm not driving so long, too.  I thought running was wearing them out, but I think it's just all the sitting in a car.

Oh, and I'm recovering from a sinus infection.  Ever notice how all sinus infections are categorized as "nasty".  Yeah, here in this part of the country, we all get them and they're all nasty.

But mine are a little beyond that.  I usually get them taken care of at the doc in the box because they treat with both steroids and antibiotics and usually give me some injection in the ass to get things going.

For folks who have known me a while, I'm definitely a veteran of these wars after having been hospitalized twice for sinusitis in my lifetime, including once with a stay in the ICU and not waking up for 4 days.  (Yeah, they thought I was going to die... dad flew in from Philly to say goodbye and everything.)

So, when I go in there and get some PA and explain, "I have a bacterial infection of the right maxillary sinus", they usually get a sort of chuckle.  I usually have little patience for questions like, "how do you know it's a sinus infection?"

This is my first sinus infection in a while.  I had been taking benedryl, both to keep my sinuses clear and to help me sleep.  Sorta got on the stuff back in 2012.  Just got off it in July due to a lot of positive changes in my life.  Sleeping (for the most part... no worse than before, on balance) without the help of benedryl these days.

So, that's the long and short of it.  Something has to give.  I'll be moving here sometime in the next 12 months.  And if you're in Dallas or Phoenix, I have those on the radar screen.  I would never move anywhere I didn't have family or friends, and that pretty much leaves Dallas, Phoenix or Ohio.  (Yeah, "Ohio" is sort of a cop-out, but even being in C-bus or Cinci isn't that bad.)

Juicing Status

It's been 2 weeks now since I bought the vitamix, and it has probably resulted in some positive change.

For one, it actually led me to go to the supermarket to buy vegetables.  I can't tell you how seldom that happened before.  For another, on weekends, I'm juicing at least half my meals.

It's also encouraging me to eat more raw fruits and vegetables.  There are some vegetables that I like, for instance, salted bell pepper.

I felt a big increase in energy last week that lasted about to mid-week.  (I'm on the road during the week.  So, I was just working on residual whatever after Sunday.)

I'm still eating normal food on weekends, too.  Saturdays more than Sundays.  It sort of takes a day to detox myself a bit.

Fruit smoothies are going well.  Veggie smoothies, not so much.  Today, I'm going to try a more tomato-centered mix to get a more v-8 type flavor.  This may be a losing battle, who knows.  First veggie cocktail wasn't bad, but this last one was awful.  Too much new stuff in there:  onion and broccoli, for instance.  I'll be less indiscriminate on the next one I make.

Like any positive health lifestyle change, this spills over into my conduct during the rest of the week.  If you just spent the weekend eating a great healthy diet, the last thing you want to do is undo all your good work with terrible food during the week.

I also bought a little water bottle to keep at my desk at work.  I've been drinking a lot of water.  Probably like a gallon a day or something of the sort.  Otherwise, literally, I'd be drinking a six pack's worth of diet coke, instead.  Not that I have anything against diet coke, but it certainly isn't good for you, and probably is bad for you if you overdo it.  I've been overdoing it for about 30 years, now.

Today, I stepped on the scale and I was at 206.  That probably represents some modest weight-loss.  Which, really, if I could get a lifestyle change that resulted in losing a pound or two a week, that would be absolutely wonderful.  We'll see how it goes.  Last week, I weighed myself and was at like 213.5 or so, but that was a late in the day, fully hydrated weight.  Today was first thing in the morning.  So, you gain a pound and a half after your morning coffee.

The weather is also getting better.  So, I can start walking and getting outdoors a bit.  This has been a brutal Winter.

I feel like there are some general improvements in my mood, but that could also just be a reflection of things starting to go my way a little more these days.

Pulling Myself Together

Feeling really good right now.  Better than I can remember feeling in a long, long time.  For those who haven't been keeping up with the saga, it's been a rough turn of events since about mid-2009.  Lots of pretty awful stuff.

The worst part was the sensation that the bad stuff just kept coming and coming.  It's not like just surviving a short-term event.  It was like crappy things happened over the course of month after month after month.  Just when I thought I was done with something, I'd get blindsided by it again.  It was horrible.

Now, though, I feel like maybe, finally, the waves have subsided.  Most of the bad news appears to be, finally and mercifully, behind me.  At least for now.

Two things that I have really been neglecting have been my fitness and my music.  Those are, coincidentally, two of my favorite things in the world.

It's just that the events of my life were so exhausting that by the time the day ended, all I wanted to do was dissolve into the couch and watch TV.  Who knows, I guess I also had this nagging sensation in the back of my head that I wasn't entitled to enjoy those things since I'd made such a mess of the rest of my life.

The insidious thing about that is that, especially with exercise, you end up in a downward spiral.

Exercise makes you healthier, improves your mood and gives you greater endurance.  When things are bad and I stopped exercising, all three of those things took a hit just when I needed them most.

Over the course of the past few weeks, I've moved some hand-weights into the condo from the detached garage.  I've been doing a few reps of this and that.  I just set up my rower and did a 10K row.  I'm ready to get physically active again.  It's been a long time.

Not sure what goals I'm going to have with this, other than just making myself healthier.  We'll see.  The trick now is to keep up working out regularly.

My doctor actually prescribed over the counter Omega-3 fish oil for me to take.  I think it's going to have a positive impact on my bloodwork, but I also find I'm just not as hungry throughout the day, now, either.  If the press is to be believed, this is a good supplement for folks who don't get much fish in their diet.  I doubt it could possibly do any harm.  And if the press is to be believed, it may do tremendous good.

The other thing is that I get a promotion at work again this year.  It comes with a pretty big bump in pay.  Things will be easier, financially, after that.

The upcoming promotion (not until August), and a pretty good tax refund also mean I could afford to start rebuilding my guitar collection.  I'm actually playing again, and it feels good.

Really, the two things in my life I've ever done that resulted in me just getting lost in things and losing track of time are playing music and writing computer code.  The computer code was seldom enjoyable because whether I lost myself in it or not, there were always deadlines to meet.  The guitar, though, is something I love to do.

I was going to take a guitar with me down to the hotel in Dayton where I spend my week-days, but the temperatures lately have been around zero.  I am afraid it may damage any instrument I might take down.  Once my tax return arrives, though, I'm going to buy a little portable keyboard and road-case.  I figure that'll handle extremes in temperature better.

Also, my goal was to get my credit rating back into the 700s, and at least according to one service, it is.  I'll continue rebuilding.  My near-term goal (sometime in the next 3 years) is to get back to where I can get 0% promotional financing on a new car.  I just hope my current hoopty can hold out a few more months or years until that happens.

So, I don't know what it is that triggered things, but things got better all in a hurry.  During these past few years, things were pretty hard.  I was barely holding it together.  My main goal throughout was to not-fail my son, and I hope I did a good job of that.  Now, though, I have the energy to devote to making myself a better person.

I'm still not entirely sure what the future holds, but I feel like I'm back on track.  2012 was the year everything fell apart.  2013 was the year it took all I could do to stop losing ground.  2014 may be the year I start making strides forward.

So, goals for this year are:

1.  To play music every week
2.  To try and exercise every day
3.  Stay debt-free
4.  Keep making progress professionally

The Word According to The Fresh Prince

Recently, a friend posted a Will Smith quote on Facebook.  Honestly, I have no idea if it is actually a Will Smith quote, but the basic gist was, "Sometimes you have to put the past in the past.  Take inventory and appreciate what remains.  Then, move forward."  (Apologies if the paraphrase is off if, indeed, the famous philospher, "fresh prince of bel aire" is offended.)

That got me thinking.  I have gotten very, very good at putting the past in the past.  Comes from the learning style of "do it wrong so many times, you have no choice but to stumble on the right way."  I have to thank my son for that.  I spent the first 35 years of my life regretting pretty much everything I had ever done.

Once my son came around, I wouldn't have changed a single thing about my life, because it all led to him.  I wouldn't change a thing about him.  I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, but the love of a parent for a child is unlike anything else in life.  He is perfect to me.  He was also a perfect beginning.  From the moment he was born, I put the past in the past and kept an eye to the future.

I've also always been very, very good about keeping an eye to the future.  I was unhappy with my life for most of it.  What has always kept me going is the promise of a better day ahead.  People will eventually believe what they need to believe in order to face each day.  Some people fill this need with faith in God, or love of their fellow man, or a sense of purpose in their lives.  I wish I could say that I was driven primarily by all of those things, but that simply isn't true.  My faith is in the future.  It always has been.  Even during my darkest times as a little child, my grandmother would fill my heart and head with visions of a better tomorrow.

That's a great thing, I think.  The people I admire most tend to be those with optimism and a vision of the future.  The downside is that focusing too much on the future can keep a person from appreciating the present.

That is where I truly fail.  I really need to do a better job of appreciating where I am, instead of focusing solely on where I'm going.  I need to be more thankful for the many, many blessings in my life.

This is the future I waited so long for.  Not all of it turned out badly.  In fact, some of it turned out better than I ever could have imagined.

I truly believe that a person's happiness or sadness in life lies largely with their perception of things.  Some situations are truly so great that virtually nobody would be unhappy in them.  Some situations are truly so horrible that nobody could possibly be happy in them.  But most of life, the vast, vast majority, and the way most of us live our lives, is someplace in-between.

I have a challenging situation with trying to balance my time with my son, and a job that's 150 miles away.  I'm fortunate, though, that my job is as accommodating of this challenge as any job could reasonably be.  I work with great people.  I have a sense of purpose in what I do.  Even though it's less money than what I'd become accustomed to, the pay is actually very good.  Not great, mind you, but good.

There's an old Chinese proverb (probably apocryphal and invented in Los Angeles, like egg rolls), that a blessing for most people is to wish them "enough".  As in, "I wish you enough", versus, say, "I wish you tremendous wealth."

This whole thing could have gone so many other ways.  Every time I read the paper about those bizarre near-hermits the Walton family, or hear a tale of somebody murdered by a relative in a plot to steal their riches, or a story of a wealthy family's kids dying of a drug overdose, I'm reminded that sometimes wealth isn't the cure-all that I've always thought it would be.  Sure, it solves a host of problems.  However, it brings a host of different problems.

At a minimum, I know my friends are not motivated by any ulterior motive.  I know my son won't be tempted to live a wasted and pointless life on hoarded wealth.  Now, yes, if given the choice, I'd take rich people's problems over struggling people's problems any day.  However, it's important to note that you truly are trading one set of problems for another.  The other set of problems may be less challenging, but they're still problems.

So, I don't have wealth, but I have a good job.  I don't have every moment with my son like I'd like, but I do have quality time with him.  I still see pretty much every sporting event he's in.  There are plenty of fathers who, due to the demands of their work, are far less involved in their kids' lives than they want to be.  It wouldn't take much of a stretch to envision myself in that situation.

All in all, if I had to chose between success, wealth, leisure, all the trappings of a fabulous life, and having a healthy son I could be proud of, I'd pick the healthy son.  Every time, no hesitation.  Well... that's sort of the deal I got.  I sort of lost out on all the parts of my life that amount to tinkering around the edges, and I got the only part that really, truly means the world to me.  I'm doing pretty good.

Mostly, I should take a look and realize that I still have a lot of time left in my life.  I've got a lot of spins of the globe left in me.  There is still so much adventure ahead.  I can still dream.  10 years from now, I could be working for the government in some foreign country.  Or, I could be back writing applications software in Silicon Valley.  20 years from now, I could be comfortably retired, spending my time with my grandkids.

But again, that's looking to the future.  In the mean time, my bills are paid and my heart is full.  That's enough.

Time

It is amazing how the perception of the passage of time changes in a person's lifetime.  I can still remember being a grade-schooler waiting for Christmas day.  One week felt like an eternity.  As time goes on, it passes more and more quickly.

When you are a kid, your life stretches out in an incomprehensibly long trail before you.  Time is everywhere.  It is mostly an obstacle.  Time stands in the way of what you want.  It makes you wait to graduate high school, to graduate college, to get out of the military.

Eventually, though, time becomes precious.  You realize that there are more years behind you than ahead.  You wish time could slow down.  You now know that time isn't the obstacle to the things you want.  Time becomes the thing you want.

2014 will be the year my son turns 13 and starts 8th grade, his final year before High School.  He's mostly a young man these days.  No longer a little boy.  Time set that table, and then cleared it away.  I know how quickly 2 or 3 or 4 years can pass.  Soon, he'll be out of High School and one way or another, independent and making his way in the world.  I can help if I want, but so, so soon, my incredible time watching a boy grow into a man will be over.  Now that I've seen so many years, I know that each year will continually pass faster and faster.

I actually don't look forward to the day he's grown.  I know he'll be a fine man.  I hope things work out so that I'll have grandchildren to play with.  I hope my life will be such that I can be an active part of their lives.  But it will never feel exactly like this again.

So, I remind myself that each thing has its season.  You can't stop and linger at the parts you like the most.  The best you can do is appreciate things as they come.

A few years ago, I started on a road that I knew was going to be unpleasant for a few years.  2012 was the start of my great depression.  A depression emotionally and financially.  Life ebbs and flows.  I was riding high from 2007 to 2009.  But the downstroke was really, really bad.  It has lasted a long, long time.

2014 things will start to get better.  Barring any unforeseeable calamities, it should be the start of building something great with what's left of my life.  I'll be able to buy a nice house and drive nice cars again, eventually.  2015 should be great.

So, in a way, 2014 is like the last of the bad years.  Things will be getting better, but only relative to a pretty deep hole.  I need to think of this in the same way I thought of my last year before graduating college, or my last year before getting out of the Army.  I need to fill it with the optimism that comes with knowing that you did a drawn-out, challenging thing.

Often, those things that seemed so excruciating when you were going through them provide the most pleasant memories later.  I do have joy in my life.  Mostly around my son.

He's one of the most athletic kids in his grade, despite being one of the youngest.  More importantly, I'm proud of the fine young man he is.  He has strong, positive character.  I worry about him like any parent would, but he has the tools to go far in life.  He gives every indication that he'll make good use of his potential.

So, I find myself torn.  Torn between wanting 2014 to end quickly, because it represents the last of the dues I need to pay for my most recent setbacks.  Also, torn because I just don't have that many years left with my son as a young man before he is, simply, a full grown man.

In the end, things aren't good or bad because I decide they should be.  I can alter the way I look at things, but most things are pretty far outside my control.  And time doesn't pass quickly or slowly based on my desires.  It passes as it passes.

So, while I'm paying the last of my dues (for now) and looking forward to a better 2015, I will try as much as possible, to enjoy the time as it passes.

Now, on more mundane notes:

1.  I think next Winter, if I'm in Ohio, I'm going to take the 2 weeks around Christmas off.  Logan is off from school, and I may see if there's any way I can work a week in Phoenix in there.  That was a fun thing to do last year.  It'd be nice to ring in the New Year with my family out there.  Plus, lord knows the weather is a really, really welcome break.  Not sure if I'll make it a ski vacation or not, but we'll see.

2.  I'm not big on New Year's resolutions because, frankly, they're a cliche.  You promise you'll do better on a number of things and by February, you discover you're the same person you always were.  But I do believe in trying to be better.  I do believe that sometimes you just have to commit to making a change.  So, my ONE resolution this year is oatmeal.  I'm going to keep oatmeal at work and instead of eating McDonald's or bagels from the bagel shop, I'm going to eat oatmeal for breakfast.

3.  I won't know for a few months, but I may have the chance to do some job-related travel in 2014.  Sort of a complicated topic, but I really, really want to do this.  It's hard to think about much else at the moment.

4.  As some of you may know, I was accepted to a code bootcamp in San Francisco last year.  However, I decided to ride out the government job just a little longer.  I still don't know which direction my life will take.  I just believe in investing in yourself.  Probably always, but now more than ever, your only job security is the investments you make in your skills.  Government work is pretty steady and secure, but nothing is a certainty and the applications development job market is pretty crazy in a few parts of the country.  If the economy heats up, things could get sorta nutso.  When I will go, or even ultimately if I'll go are still up in the air.  But I've got that on the back burner.

5.  2015 is the year when I should be able to decisively turn the tide.  So, despite the fact that all time is precious, I hope I can be forgiven for looking past 2014 to some degree.

Merry Christmas! End of Year 2013!!!

2013 is coming to an end.  My apologies to everybody who won't be getting a Christmas card this year.  It sort of snuck up on me and I guess I'm still shaking off mope-mode.

2012 was a terrible year.  Just a year where a whole lot of terrible things all happened in rapid succession.  2013, I feel like I've stopped losing ground.  Things didn't get good, per se, but at least I wasn't in full retreat all year like I was in 2012.

I did get a few small mercies in 2013.  I found a great condo.  It isn't my ideal living situation, but it's spacious and feels homey.  It's within walking distance of Logan's home games at his Junior High.  The job continues to go well.  The longer I do it, the more I like it.  I was dealing with lingering ill effects of 2012 all year, but I have my fingers crossed that everything should be taken care of from here on out.

I am also grateful for my job, especially in an economy where so many others are struggling.  I have friends and I have my son.  So, I have some blessings to count.

2014 is still a little early for me to say I'll turn the tide, but it's going to be a year where I get my feet more solidly underneath me.

My brother is moving back to Ohio.  It'll be good to have Rob back in the state.  He was a lot of fun to chum around with before he moved to California.  It'll be good to see a lot more of him.

I am sorta making peace with my current situation.  I drive to Dayton for work during the week, then back up here on weekends.  I also try to drive up for Logan's sporting events.  It's a hassle.  I do a lot of driving, but it could be worse.  At least I do get quite a few days with my son.  It's not as good as if I had an actual job around here, but it is what it is.  Toledo has a horrible economy.

There will be some developments at work in 2014.  I will rotate out of my current office and I'm looking forward to seeing where I go next.  There are a few other opportunities that may pop up, too.

Until then, well, it feels like I'm still treading water, but at least I'm not drowning so much anymore.

I'm hopeful that my December 2014 update has a lot more good news.  We'll see.  Sometimes you just have to play the game to see how it ends.

Driving forward through the darkness

As much as I'd like to believe the disasters of 2012 are behind me, there seems to be something every week or two that drags me back into it.

As an example, I got a notice from the State of Michigan that I owed them $225.  They said they were going to start tacking on penalties and interest.  So, I mailed the check and contacted my payroll servicer who screwed up a tax return to them.  They admitted their mistake and sent an amended return.

Now, State of Michigan should refund the overpayment to me.  But they'll probably send it in my business name.  That means that depositing the check is going to be a hassle.  Oh well.  I'll figure something out.  God only knows what, but I'll figure something out.

Things like that are just depressing.  I'm trying to focus on building things back up and it just defeats me to have to get dragged back into the past again.  Not once have any of these episodes been because of anything I did wrong.  It's always some governmental agency or court screwing up some sort of paperwork or whatnot.

I think if I can just hang on, I can be done with it all sometime before the end of 2014.  It won't last forever.  So, I persevere.

Logan's football season is over.  He tries out for basketball next year.  After the fiasco with the Mavericks a few years back, I'm always more nervous than ever at tryout time.

I just want him to have a shot at making his high school teams if he wants to play in high school.

I will breathe a big sigh of relief if he makes his 7th grade team, though.  I think his chances are excellent, but it's never a done deal until it's final.

Anyway, I don't feel that great now.  Like I said, I'll feel better when 2012 is behind me, but it isn't yet, and might not be for a while.  So, I just do what I have to do and keep trying to move forward.

Reunion Weekend!

Who was she?  She was elegant and beautiful: looked at least 20 years younger than our age.  That wasn't all that unusual.  At least half a dozen of the women at the reunion had defied the laws of human physiology and simply had not aged since the 80s.  It was that I had no idea, whatsoever, who she was.  Everybody else at the reunion did, but I didn't.  She wasn't a spouse of a classmate.  She was a Tallmadge High graduate.  Her date was a guy who everybody knew.  He clearly knew her.  She had apparently attended High School with me, based on her Facebook profile.  The way she interacted with all the other Facebook friends indicated that, without a doubt, she was part of the class of '83.  I had no clue, though.  

I recognized about half the folks at the reunion on sight.  With half of the rest, I could suss it out after studying their faces for a few seconds.  The remainder?  It took a glance at the name tag.  There were just a few, though, who I honestly didn't have any recollection of at all.

The reunion weekend was something I had looked forward to for thirty years.  I had complicated matters by completing my requirements early and graduating with the class of '82.  So, for the past thirty years, I've been getting notifications of their reunions, but not from my class.  Tallmadge is a small town and back then it didn't have much of a transient population.  So, a good number of these folks are people I attended kindergarten and first grade with.  I wanted to attend the reunions for class of '83.

It wasn't until Facebook that I was able to get in contact with a critical mass of classmates and was able to get on the mailing list for this reunion.  30 years later.  That is a long, long time.

I had some apprehension about attending.  For those who have followed my ups and downs, 2012 was a bit of a disaster for me.  I got beat on pretty hard by an unfortunate series of events that upended most aspects of my life.  2012 was the year when I sold off what was left of my business, finished my divorce, and had to take a job that largely takes me away from my son.  It was, in the vernacular, "a shitty year."

I have felt like a loser for a while, now.  Strange, it's just a habit you get into, even when things are on the upswing.  So, part of me was a little reluctant to go show my loser self off to all my classmates.  If I had made my 20 year reunion, I would have just come off of my Ironman Lake Placid finish and would have been at the height of my corporate career.  At the 25 year point, I was a millionaire (at least on paper) and at the helm of the company I had started.

As it stood, I didn't get to see those folks until my 30th reunion, at a time in my life when I was rebuilding.  I was going to meet my High School classmates at a time when I was in the process of trying to figure out what I was going to do next with my life.  Which means, basically, I hadn't really made any progress in the past 30 years.

If anything, I'd regressed.  At least in the 80s, I had hair.  (In case I made things sound too bleak for dramatic effect, don't be concerned.  I have a great job with the DoD and am doing fine.  It's just a huge adjustment from the way things were before the economy tanked.)

I missed a lot of folks who I really wished I could see.  Somebody mentioned that some of them will probably never come back to a reunion because they hated high school so much.  I hated high school, too, but not because of my classmates.

Really, when I think back on my school years, what strikes me most was not how horrible my classmates were, but how really nice most of them were.  I won't paint a Pollyanna picture here.  There were some kids who were pretty mean.  It's a phase for most folks.  I'm sure I did things and said things I should regret, if only the memory weren't mercifully concealed by the fog of adolescence.

It was give and take, too.  There are a couple of folks where I sorta flinch at the prospect of meeting.  Then, I think about it and realize that I'm basing this phobia on something that happened when we were 12 years old.  They've probably grown just like I have.

That's the jungle of middle school, mostly.  Lots of hormones and immaturity, combined with adult capability to inflict emotional duress on people if you're of a mind to be careless.

There were kids who were picked on.  (A few of them, in particular, were picked on so mercilessly I will probably always carry at least a little guilt for even being in the same school when it was happening.)

So, it wasn't perfect.  It had commonality with the school experience everywhere.

That having been said, for the most part folks just sorta did their thing on their way to who they would eventually become, especially once they hit High School.  Folks were basically civil.  Differences were generally appreciated.

After I graduated, I'd see teen movies where the jocks were mean and stuffed nerdy kids into lockers, etc.  I never quite got that.  The jocks in my school were always pretty nice.  For years, I thought maybe it was because I was a self-imposed nerd.  I had been a starter on the Freshman football team before I stopped playing sports and became a guitar nerd.  Now, though, I am old enough to know that most of them had no idea who the first-stringers were on the Freshman team.  Hell, it's pitiful that I knew.  They were nice to me because they were nice people.  Beginning and end of story right there.

I hit Facebook to to try and brush up on the 3 or 4 people who I honestly didn't remember from school.  I was actually Facebook friends with her.  Like most of my Facebook friends, though, we probably connected just because we were part of the same group, not because we had been actual friends.  Her name gave me no clue at all.  But that was a married name.  What about her maiden name?  No.  Nothing.  I vaguely remembered it, but for the life of me, I can't connect it to her face.  I would have remembered an attractive female classmate.  I thought I knew everybody in my class by name. What about her date, everybody knew him... is there a clue in there somewhere?  Who did he date in High School?  No clue.  I have no idea who this woman is... I can place every other single person at this reunion, but her.

High School was awful for me not because of what High School was, or who the other kids were, but because of who I was.  I had a difficult family situation, no money and was one of only a small handful of ethnic minorities at the school.  Difficult to fathom today.

I worried that my son might feel isolated being that he's 1/4 Korean heritage.  Those fears are poorly founded.  Bedroom communities like the one I grew up in are full of Asian people these days.  The halfback who runs behind him on his middle school football team is named Chan Jin.  It's just not something kids today are bothered with thinking about.

I was also gangly and awkward.  Had crazy hair, bad complexion and a nerd's personality.  I also thought it was funny to verbally cut people down now and then.  It's hard to know, this long after the fact, whether I was just doing the normal amount of schoolyard putdowns or whether I was genuinely mean to folks.  For anything I may have ever said that hurt another kid, I am genuinely sorry and carry that regret to this day.  I can only pray that I never said anything that truly hurt a person, but the trouble with being careless is that you just can't know.

From a sociological perspective, I had a lot of early indicators of a youth at risk, and I think most of my classmates would be alarmed to know that I walked pretty far down that path before turning my life around in the Army.

When I think back on my time at school, though, it's as though nobody judged me for any of that. There was never a time when I didn't have friends.  Folks accepted me as I was.  The jocks and cool kids weren't mean in my school.  They knew you, would say hello to you and accepted pretty much everybody.  It was a place more like college than high school, I think.  It was a place where kids had the space to explore and try different things.  A place where you may not know how to "be yourself", yet, but everybody seemed to give you the space to make the effort.

It could have been so much worse, and it is so much worse for so many kids.  I was lucky.

In teen movies, the typical arc of the story involves a sensationally beautiful girl who wears glasses and a ponytail.  Eventually, she takes off the glasses, gets big hair and then everybody is stunned at the transformation.  It is, along with Superman's glasses, the stupidest plot device in the history of drama.  Cute girls in high school don't fly under the radar just because they wear glasses.  That's not real life.  That's not how it happens.

The first night of the reunion was an informal get together at a sports bar.  I connected to good friends I had been close to in middle school.  Hung out with others who reminded me of how close we had been as friends in the 3rd grade.  That is half the beauty of these reunions to me:  these people literally knew you when you were a child.  When you think of them, you think of things like the time they blew milk out of their nose while laughing in the 2nd grade.

Another grade school friend said he felt bad for poking me in the face with a pencil in the 1st grade.  Trouble was, he didn't do it.  I slipped and fell on a pencil I was carrying and poked myself in the face.  It was gruesome:  went all the way through my cheek.  Lots of blood and I ended up going to the hospital.

I can only imagine that since we were friends and he was only six, that he felt bad that I'd had that accident.  I also imagine that our teacher came in and yelled at the class because we'd been roughhousing during an indoor recess.  So, over the years, his memory had played tricks on him and convinced him that he had done it.

I hope he didn't lose any sleep over that one.  I straightened the story out so he can at least rest easy from now on.

Some guys from the basketball team were at a table and honestly, they looked like they could take the court today.  They were all fit, tall and didn't look that much different, other than the random gray hair here or there.  If there's a Gus Macker 30-year reunion category, these guys would clean house.

It took me a while to realize that nobody here thought I was a loser.  I was able to relax almost immediately.  Nobody was wondering how the hell you go from a seven-figure net worth to zero in 3 years.  Nobody thought that only an idiot marries a supermodel-gorgeous woman and divorces her twelve years later.  Nobody was questioning what sort of dad has to take a job that takes him away from his son most weeks.

Just like when I was in high school, my anxieties were based on things inside myself.  These people were just happy to see me.  These were the people I grew up with.  The folks I rode the bus with.  Now, as then, we're all in our own lives.

Tallmadge was not, by and large, a place where you judged other people for what they were doing or not-doing.  The middle class was different in the 1970s.  Unions were still strong.  Your neighbor could have been anything from a rubber worker at Goodyear to an office worker at Goodyear.  Okay, some of them worked for Firestone and BF Goodrich.  Seriously, though, the middle class was more diverse, then.  Your neighbor could have been a plumber or a professor at a university. So, there was more of a sense of respect for every family and their contribution to society and the community.  Not everybody's parents went to college.

You didn't have to be a millionaire:  it was enough to simply be a decent person.  It was a place with industrial midwestern sensibilities where you worked on your own life and if you were lucky, you got to take joy in the lives of others.

I hadn't seen most of these people in 30 years and all it took was a few minutes with them and our friendships took off right from where we'd left off.  I didn't have to be a millionaire for these folks to accept me.  It was enough that we were friends when we were kids.

That maiden name.  It looks familiar.  There was that girl... no... no way...

It was 1977.  The most anxiety-producing part of gym class in Junior High, other than our first communal showers, was square dancing.  I can only figure that somebody, while designing the curriculum, thought this was a good way to introduce social skills to boys and girls in a form of dancing that's as far from twerking (though that didn't exist at the time) as it could possibly be.

For those not-familiar, square dancing is country and western dancing where 4 couples dance while standing in proximity (sort of like the 4 corners of a square) and a person yells directions to them.  The thing is, they yell these directions while also telling you to do these things to the left or the right.  So, for instance, "left allemand your partner", or "dosey-do to the right."

This was a problem for me on so many levels.  The first and most obvious was that I didn't know my right from my left.  I knew they existed as concepts.  If I thought about it long enough, I could figure out which was which, but there is a psychological disorder where people can't tell their right from their left.  I have it.  So does my aunt.  I've heard that children who have this disorder never crawled as babies, they sat up and scooted around on their butts.  So, it's a real thing and it was a real problem for me in the seventh grade.

That, though, was the least of my worries.  The worst part was that boys and girls were left to their own devices to chose a square dancing partner.  Oh.  My.  God.  

I was a pimply, gangly, awkward, nerdy, Asian kid wearing garage sale clothing who, since the school wasn't air-conditioned, probably actually smelled bad.  This was going to be difficult.

I can't speak to women today, but in the seventh grade?  If they had offered the option of taking a beating, instead, I would have chosen the beating.  This was required, though and we were actually graded on it.  So... I mustered up my courage and approached a girl I'd known since grade school, who was actually sort of a family friend.  Had a brief exchange and got the vibe that she'd rather chew glass than to be put into a situation where she would have to physically touch me, then slinked off before the exchange could get any more humiliating.  

The couples were pairing off quickly.  Seventh grade had combined a few grade-schools, so I didn't know half the people in my seventh grade class when school started.  Over across the room I saw a cute little girl standing by herself.  She was pretty.  Hair pulled back.  Face partially concealed by the gigantic glasses that were popular at the time.  

"Do you wanna square dance?"

The response took less than a second, but I am certain that Einstein is right about the relativity of time because I think I aged 3 years during that second.

"Okay."

Thank.  You.  Jesus.  

Trouble is, I wasn't out of the woods.  Remember that old left-right thing?  Yeah.  That didn't go away.  

You can see the end of this story almost before it begins.  I faked my way through much of the dancing, but at a critical time, he told me to go left, I went right.  She was a tiny girl, wearing the glasses that were fashionable at the time, which means that her glasses were probably the physcially largest thing about her at the moment.  And...  *smack* right into her glasses which made an alarming crunching sound.

Oh my god, the kindest girl in the 7th grade and I just broke her glasses by smashing them into her face.  Even after this unintentional physical assault that resulted in destroying... I dunno... her means of seeing... she was gracious and kind and completed the next few days of the square dancing segment of PE without demanding a different, less-destructive dance partner. 

The last name is the same, but is that her?  Is it?  No.  It can't be.  But the more I thought about it, yes, it was.  It was the same girl, minus the pony tail and glasses.  And as a woman, she's probably hiding her absolutely beautiful freckles behind a flawless base-coat of makeup.

It is her.  Mystery solved.  I guess the movie makers really were right.  There were stunningly beautiful women in my school disgused with glasses and pony tails.  Thing is, they don't look better without the glasses and pony tail.  They just look different.  They were beautiful then, too.  And in more than a few cases, they were beautiful inside as well.

The thing that's remarkable about the square dance story is not that it was a special moment.  It really wasn't.  In fact, I'd pretty much forgotten all about it until I was desperately trying to comb my memories for what I could connect to this classmate's maiden name.

What's remarkable is that when I think back on my school days, they were filled with thousands of small kindnesses that happened all the time.  The kid who unexpectedly stood up for you, or the kid who took the time to pay you a compliment.  The kid who was the big man on campus, but who didn't consider themselves too good to talk to the nerds and geeks.  The girls who could have been cruel, but weren't.  The kids who took you seriously at a point in your life when no sane person should have taken you seriously.

I was lucky to go to school when I did, with the people I did.  I'm so glad we're back in touch after so many years.  We basically grew up together.

Included in all the horrible things that happened in 2012, my grandmother, who raised me, passed away at the age of 94.  (Yeah, 2012 was like that for me.)

I tried to visit her regularly when she was alive.  So, in a way, it's good to reconnect with my classmates.  I hope to get back to Tallmadge to see them a little more often than once every 3 decades from here on out.  Reconnecting will give me more reasons to go home now and then.

Because, hey, it's good to stay in touch with the folks who knew you when you were nothing more than potential and dreams.