Hope all is well with you. Where has the time gone? This year is passing by so quickly. Julie and I can barely blink and another month is gone. We have travelled, laughed, loved, cried and done some changing this year. As we have often heard, change is good. I have certainly done a lot of that this year. During this year I have went to the extreme of feeling invincible to being as weak as a newborn child and back again. Life certainly is entertaining to say the least!

This coming weekend my daughter will graduate college. I don’t know how I feel about that. It seems that life has fast forwarded from the day she was born until now. I can remember excerpts from her life. I remember when I let go of the bike and she could ride on her own and I can remember teaching her how to drive and many other things in between. But, today I feel old. Did you ever just want everything to fall in place and become a life of organization and routine? I guess if that happened, it wouldn’t be life. However, this graduation has been a long time coming. Julie and I are going and all the family will be there. Oh yea, my ex wife will be there as well. She and Julie have never been in the same room together and I hope the mini-dome can hold it. Julie has no animosity at all and she has never done anything to hurt my ex wife but my ex has certainly did her share. I am sure that things will go well. I may have to do something crazy to break the ice like stripping down and running naked through the crowd but that will only get me put in jail and on the evening news. So, I think I’ll just quietly hold on tight to Julie’s hand and get through it.

This growing old is hard on a man! I used to know exactly what I wanted and I pursued it. Right or wrong. But now there are so many options and decisions to make. I have a diverse background and my career can go many directions. I just want to hold on to three things. God, Julie and the truth. Without one of these three I would be a blowing speck of dust in a world of desert land. I never thought true happiness would bring a demand for such a change in mind frame. Pulling out of a long past is like pulling a truck out of a mud hole. Your not stuck anymore but there is still some mud on the wheels. You can wait for time and rain to wash it off but it really won’t be clean or you can purposefully wash it away in detail. Either way it has to come off for the truck to be clean. As for me, I have pulled out of the mud and I’m washing it off.

Anyway, Julie and I are plugging right along. Our Christmas tree is up and it is beautiful. We put it up after Thanksgiving. Julie has been busy making home made bread and it is wonderful. Our lives are continuing to melt together with love and understanding. I will say this, Julie is one of the most understanding people I have ever met. She has put up with a lot in the name of love and I am thankful for it.

Happy Holidays to all,  Tony