Hi all!
Sorry I dropped off the face of the earth, but last year was brutally awful to my wife and I ![Black Eye [B)]](/emoticons/icon_smile_blackeye.gif)
. Here is the Christmas letter we sent out chronicalling the year, Sorry the pix didn't come out, but I didn't feel like uploading to Photobucket :
All good things must come to an end...and so has our good fortune. With an ailing truck causing Rich to have to rescue Karen on more than one occasion, we decided it was time for a new vehicle. No sooner had we signed on the dotted line for our GMC Acadia on December 15th, when a torrent of misfortune came our way.
Ready...Take a big breath...First the microwave went kaput; closely followed by the aquistat (the what?) on the furnace (Merry Christmas with no Ho, Ho, Ho, Hot water or He, He, He, Heat!); The curtain rod over the sliding glass door in the kitchen mysteriously fell off the wall; Karen's wall of clothes tumbled to the floor when the closet organizer decided the curtain rod was having all the fun; Then a tree fell on the mailbox (helped by Rich, the neighbor and a chain saw...don't even go there!); Speaking of mail...Rich went on the computer to check emails and found the monitor had gone black - after three hours on the phone with Dell "Support" (Yah, right!) the foreign technician said "I think your monitor is broken"; While walking up the driveway after clearing snow for the umpteenth time, Rich found a brake pad from the Pontiac laying on the ground; and Karen goes to the bathroom late one night during yet another snow/rain storm and feels water dripping on her head (Hmmm...there's definitely something wrong here?!) Ah yes, the seven year old roof is leaking and it was only the 1st of February! Then things really got bad.
In April we discovered that our seven year old Greyhound Jack was terminally ill with severe liver disease. We did everything we could to make him comfortable and happy in his final days. On May 10th we had to let him go, he was five days shy of his eighth birthday. Jack was with us for only 3 ½ years but he gave us and many others a lifetime of love. He was personally responsible for at least one family deciding to adopt Greyhounds and was truly a soul that will never be forgotten. We thank our Greyhound friends and their owner's for helping us cope with Jack's illness and death.
The chasm that was left by Jack's passing was too much for us and by late June we had to do something about it. To that end we made two decisions; the first was to go on a dive trip in order to gain perspective on the years events. We made plans to go to Bonaire - an Island in the Dutch Antilles off the coast of Venezuela - at the end of July. The 2nd picture, taken on that trip, is a Frogfish, a weird creature roughly the size of a baseball with a big "foot" and a bigger mouth.
The second decision, made after intensive soul searching, was to adopt another Greyhound. One Saturday we looked at nine different dogs. The eighth dog was a male named Kool (racing name: Starz Kool). Picture Karen standing with Kool, Rich knelt down and asked her if she minded that Kool, like Jack, was red fawn colored. While Karen was answering, Kool adopted Rich by leaping into his arms from four feet away and smothering him with kisses. Rich cried, Karen cried and Kool wagged his tail very satisfied with his choice. It is uncanny how Kool channels Jack...there are things he does that only Jack had done. He brings us joy and tears and we heal some more.
In August, Rich's kidney problems resurfaced after 12 years. A six millimeter stone (that's about ¼ ") rolled around and around until Rich underwent Ultrasonic Lithotripsy to blast it away. Three days after the procedure, some clogged plumbing sent Rich to the Hospital in agony as Karen seriously contemplated drinking all the Scotch in the house! In September Karen had a problem with her right foot that required three Cortisone injections. In October, we went on another dive trip, this time to Roatan - an Island off the coast of Honduras. Again, great diving, food and friends helped us heal a bit more.
One thing that Jack taught us is to live in the moment, so we decided to add to our brood by adopting our third Greyhound. Abby (racing name: Abby's Trouble) is a little peanut of a girl weighing only 50 pounds and is three years old. Abby raced in Florida and came to Maine in November. We picked her up on the day after Christmas and are working on the logistics of having five animals in the house.
So, you can see why I dropped out of just about everything! My United 777 never got started, it still sits in the basement with all the reference material on my desk. Hope everyone had a good build!![Make a Toast [#toast]](/emoticons/icon_smile_toast.gif)