After a long absence, I am writing again. January, and the last five months of 2007, were busy and depressing. I had one grandmother pass away at the end of July and another on the verge of doing so, or so it seemed, from early August until she passed away in late January. Besides my usual personal battles, I have fought with three bouts of a skin rash which got progressively worse with each occurrence, starting in October.
The last bout covered almost my entire body resulting in serious discomfort for about five weeks including the entire time I was in Toronto for work. Also while in Toronto, I caught the first cold I have had in two years. I normally like to take advantage of my work travel to sightsee, hike, ski, etc., but this trip was mostly work and hotel room, not very exciting, as you might imagine.
What with my 93 year old grandmother being pretty sick, I made a few road trips back and forth from Virginia to Jersey to see her. I did the 560 mile round trip at least a couple times on the two-day weekend. At long last…grandma was ready to go…she passed away on January 20th. My parents were due to fly in the next day from Wales. My uncle was already there. They scheduled the funeral for the following Saturday.
I drove down 500 miles from Toronto on Friday, attended the funeral and alienated myself from my family on Saturday, and drove 500 miles back up to Toronto on Sunday. Then I worked for two more days and drove 490 miles south to Seven Springs, PA, for our annual group ski trip. Including my aborted first attempt to get in to Canada (more on that later), I wracked up 3500 miles on my car in five weeks.