8 weeks already ?

I just double checked the dates, and it appears that I've been AWOL for 8 weeks.

Did you miss me ?

I looked around the blogosphere, and nothing has changed much.

The Dems/liberals are still going through a civil war, between the far-left of the Dem base, and the mainstream liberals. There is no such thing as a conservative Democrat anymore, and from the perspective of a conservative, I must say that's a good thing for us. Come on 2012.

Prsonally, 2011 has started out as a crummy year -

On January 1st, in Arlington Iowa, there was a house fire (a trailer of course) and I lost my Uncle John, and his two Grandkids. My Uncle John was my mothers brother, and he was one of the coolest men I ever met, with a heart of gold. He went back in to get out the two babies, and was killed. May he dwell in Valhalla.

Then last month, another cousin of mine, Ryan Rodenberg, was driving a truck near Garnavillo, Iowa and the truck started on fire, so he pulled it off the road, and it burst into flames. His two small children were strapped in the back seat, and he almost burned his hands off trying to save them, but they were killed, burned to death as babies.

I also lost a brother-in-law to brain cancer - Don Adams, formerly of Billings, who was in Chino Hills, California when he died.

Then, last Friday, I was up at Red Lodge, where I spend much of my time anymore at Rock Creek Lumber, when my phone rang at about 9:00 pm. It was my adopted mothers neighbor in Billings, and she was worried about Jeanne because she hadn't seen her all day, and her lamp wasn't turned on. So, rather than drive in at that time of night, for what was probably nothing, I called up my daughter Katie and asked her to go check on her. Katie called me up, hysterical about 10 minutes later, because she found Jeanne dead on her kitchen floor. I jumped into the Crown Vic with my son-in-law, punched it up to as fast as I could go without slamming into a deer, and made my way back to town. She called 911, and the Billings PD was super. They checked out the house, photographed every inch, and it was like CSI the way they went through the 'scene' looking for any foul play, and fortunately they didn't find anything, it looks like she fell, hit her head, and died.

I got her last 'business' settled over at the funeral home Monday, and got her cremation arranged, and grave markers for both her, and my adopted father who died last May 15th.

We'll have a family gathering at a later date - she didn't want any services, because she didn't think anybody was left to come.

They were hoarders, and it'll take a couple of roll-off dumpsters to clean out their house.

So 2011 will be a year I'd like to forget so far, and I have a generally bad attitude right now.

So I'm still taking a break from blogging - too much real life to take care of.