On July13th, in the later afternoon while she was resting, Cheryl suffered a massice stroke in the cerebellum part of her brain. We kept her on life support, a ventilator, for a couple days until all the family members could arrive from out of state to see her and say their last goodbyes. Friday the 16th in the afternoon we had a time of prayer with the hospital chaplain and turned off the machine. Cheryl never suffered any pain or agony or suffering.

Today I ran a 5k (3.1miles) race - the Tucson 5000. It was my first 5k, or any running race for that matter, in about 30 years.

I started training for the race a little over 3 months ago, with a friend, Deborah, from school. Our first practice run was timed at 33 1/2 minutes. We set a goal of finishing a 5k race in under 30 minutes. Last week I ran a practice 5k and did it in 26mins 22 seconds, so I expected to do a time of around 26 minutes for this race. Did I make my goal? Sure did! I ran it in 25 minutes 24 seconds!

Cheryl and I went to San Antonio, TX this past weekend. We celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary and one of the bands I play in, Latin Society, performed at the Tejano Music Awards Fan Festival.

We left thursday about 4pm, drove about 6 1/2 hours to Van Horn Texas where we spent the night, actually only about 4 hours. Then were back on the road by 6am friday for the remaining 6 hour drive to San Antonio. We stayed at a real nice apartment, fully furnished, for less than 40 bucks a night. How? A friend of mine has a niece who is one of the managers. They keep one furnished 'suite', a 2 bedroom apartment, for friends and family.

Just a quick update since my last post - I was laid off from work back in September. I had a 6 week contract job doing some PC upgrades/replacements at various Wells Fargo banks here in Tucson and up in the Phoenix area. After that contract ended I've had nothing. I've applied for over 60 jobs, and have had only 2 interviews.

With all this time available what to do? Well, some of it has been spent transribing music for one of the bands I play in. Some of you may be wondering what is transcribing?

This year Cheryl and I spent Thanksgiving in Puerto Penasco Mexico. Rocky Point, as it is known to most Americans, is located near the north end of the Sea of Cortez on the Mexico west coast.We left mid-morning Thursday, arrived in Rocky Point about 4 hours later. We stayed at the Laos Mar hotel, which is one of the 'Sandy Beach' hotels. There is the sandy beach area on the north side of town, and the rocky shore side to the south. The beach is beautiful, sandy, and warm.