Happy New Year! 2009 is here!

This is my window office at Park 500 in April 2008.

We made it through 2008 reasonably well! Since I retired in June of 2008, I've been helping Ginger and Ron out at the Gourmet Briar Patch Tea Room. They have taught me a lot about cooking for and running a tea room over the past seven months. It's definitely different from cooking dinner for your own family or even preparing food for a big party.

My long-time friend, Jeanie Crawford, passed away in early July 2008 from pneumonia complications that set in after having routine gall bladder surgery at CJW the week before. Her death devastated me because she and I had planned on hanging out, traveling to new places together, and having fun once I retired. In April, 2008, Jeanie invited me to go with her and her family to Hawaii; however, I declined because I wanted my first trip to Hawaii to be with Richard. It's now January 2009. I miss Jeanie a lot and think of her often. I hope that her daughter, Lorie, her son-in-law, Mason, and her grandchildren, Jordan and Macy, will be okay in time. They've all been through an awful lot within the past three or four years. Lorie not only lost her mother in July, but she also lost her brother, Doug and both grandparents the year before Jeanie passed away. Two years before her grandparents died, Lorie's dad, Wayne, had a massive heart attack in his home and died. I think Doug's death devastated Jeanie more than she could take after losing her dad and mother, and husband, Wayne. I think she gave up fighting the pneumonia effects because she missed Doug so much and wanted to be in heaven with him. Jeanie and I talked a lot over the phone during the years after Wayne's death and she shared a lot of confidential information with me. Her mom was her BEST friend, as well as being her mom, and a piece of her heart left Jeanie when she lost her mom. However, when Doug died from a heart attack in her den a month later, it nearly killed her. She never really recovered from losing her best loved ones and stayed depressed and cried a lot after that. Since my father's death in 1999, I usually can't handle going to funerals, but I made an exception to going to Jeanie's funeral. It was very hard for me to see my wonderful, funny, loveable friend lying in that coffin and never talking to me again. Jeanie, I love and miss you a lot. I pray that you're now happy in heaven hanging out with Doug, Wayne, your twin brother and your parents.