Today is Beth's an my 9th wedding anniversary. Pretty good for a guy whose first marriage lasted three months and who said for years after that: "I'm never, ever going to get married ever, ever again." Beth and I met through our mutual friend, Bill W. in 1990. She moved in here when my father was still living. I had a dog called Maggie and my dad had a little shit named Cindy. Beth was with me when my dad fell and broke his arm and we took him to the Eisenhower emergency room where he began the last days of is life. My dad had always had a fear he would die in a hospital, after all his wife, my mom, had died in the same hospital nine years earlier. Anyway, his fall happened two days before Thanksgiving 1992, and no one was available to set his broken bone(s?) until after the holiday. His doctor refused to admit him anyway, so we found a nursing home for him to stay nearby where he would have 24-hour supervision. The first day he was there he fell out of his wheel-chair and broke a leg. That did get him a bed in the hospital. From then on it was downhill for him. He just got worse and worse; finally going in and out of what seemed to me was a coma. I took the Bible in one day and read him his favorite psalm. The following day just as I returned home from visiting him, the phone rang. It was someone from the hospital telling us that he had passed away. He had just celebrated his 88th birthday so it wasn't that big of a shock - but both Beth and I feel he would have probably lived a few more years if things had been handled correctly. No, we didn't sue. Sometimes we both think we should have, but what would that have proved? It sure wouldn't have brought him back. * The night of our wedding in 1997 we were on our honeymoon in La Jolla when my dad's little dog, Cindy, passed away. We had a friend staying with the dogs and the poor guy woke up to a dead dog under his bed. Think of how he must have felt. * Last year on this date, we had to have our beautiful Collie-Retriever mix, Hollie, put to sleep because she was no longer able to walk. So, November has been both good and bad for us. Oh well, time marches on. Still working on the Columbia Ranch essay. Friend Tom is home and resting. And Beth is out tonight doing some volunteer work. The girls are at my side. I'm happy.