Back From The Wilderness

Wow.  Mid-October Already?

Damn, that was a long, dry spell.  Don't think I've ever let quite that much time pass between updates.  Feel kinda bad about it, to tell the truth.

OTOH, things have been... well, problematic, to say the least.

If you've followed along on Facebook, you know the tale, more or less.

For the rest of you, here's the scoop behind my lengthy disappearance:

I just didn't give a shit about posting to the blog.   See, my best friend since we were freshmen in high school killed himself on September 30th.

Since then, things have been mostly a dark grey blur.

I'm not going to tell the whole story.  Not yet anyway.  The short version is that he had struggled with alcoholism for years, then got diagnosed with a nasty dose of cancer that required serious surgery & lengthy sessions of chemotherapy.

The drinking never stopped, and eventually started chewing up his organs, which were none too perky to begin with after all the chemo.  So, his health was pretty precarious.

Still, he had a good 7 year run after a stage IV diagnosis.

The cancer came back, though.  He found out at a screening in September.

When it did, he decided to check out via the express lane.

So, here I am.  Without my runnin' buddy of 33 years.