Hi

I guess you thought I had left forever.  Things have been good/bad/horrible/wonderful and my emotions have run the gamut from elation to complete despair.  I haven't been creating any digital elements and the closest I've come to PhotoShop is to work on an album for a friend of mine.

I have missed my online buddies as well as my real time friends; it seems as if I have been a hermit since my job with Libby was completed.

Kim has been becoming more healthy by leaps and bounds! Since separating from her husband and joining the gasteoparesis study, her diabetes has become much more manageable.  In fact, the feeding tube she had to have surgically implanted in her intestines so she could get enough nutrients to sustain life has been removed!!!!!!!!!!  The opening closed up completely in about 30 days.  She still has to have the opening in the bottom of her stomach surgically widened every 80 to 90 days so she can digest her food, via gravity, in the intestines, but life for her has become so much better.

My heart has been aching with the loss of one of the dearest and closest people in my life; my cousin, S. Kent Moran, passed away from oral cancer on August 17.  Kent was part of my support system during all the tribulation of my father's last months.  Our families spent our free time together so we were raised more like siblings than cousins.  Some of my earliest and most cherished memories are of our times together playing in the creek, skipping rocks in the cow pond, or telling fantastic stories to each other and making plans for our adult selves while we hid out in the hay loft gazing at the blue skies of summer in Chesterfield, Virginia. Our bond was one of those that held no matter how much time or distance separated us and I will miss him for the rest of my days.

So, you see, the happy and sad, highs and lows that have beset me since April.  I'm sure there are those of you who have had much more interesting and/or difficult lives these past few months but everything is relative so my experiences have been center stage for me. As we finish out this calendar year, it is my intention to try and be a better friend whether online or in person.

Kent