Although I still follow baseball, obviously I stopped updating this a while ago. A lot has happened in the last 5 years.
5 years + 1 month ago my best buddy Fratton the Shar-Pei passed away suddenly.
I semi adopted one of his neighborhood dog friends, Nuka the Great Pyrenees, and I got to walk him and look after him for 2 years until his arthritis got so bad that he had to be put to sleep.
They were both wonderful dogs, 15/10, would do it all over again even with the pain of the losses.
About a month after Nuka passed my apartment of almost 8 years flooded. Main pipe coming into the house broke off in the concrete wall and spent 45 minutes filling my place with water. Fortunately I lost very little of value, and had insurance. Because it was an older 60+ years old house I took advantage of my insurance and had them move everything out and into storage, and 2 months later into my new rental, a really nice top floor (4th) condo. Modern and all that.
Loved the new place, adopted another rescue Shar-Pei, and things were going great for about 14 months until Dec 11 2016. That was the day of the fire. 4 storey wood condos didn't require sprinklers on the balconies or in the attic spaces. So when an improperly disposed of cigarette (supposedly) started a fire on a 4th floor balcony, it quickly got up into the attic space. And because there's no way for the fire department to put a fire like that out, mainly due to the fact that the roofs are built with low quality materials that can only withstand 5 minutes of fire, this fire didn't stop until most of the roof had collapsed.
The key is that no one got hurt. It was 10am on a Sunday morning when the alarms went off.
Unfortunately myself and the other units on the 4th floor lost about everything. I was lucky enough that the fire department were able to go into my unit the day after the fire and retrieve all my hard drives, my PC tower, and a couple of pairs of shoes. 3 weeks later when I finally got into the unit it was surreal. No roof. 3 weeks of rain and snow aside from the fire hose had done a number on all my possessions. Not much actually burned but not much was salvageable either. I rescued a few CDs, a couple of sentimental things, and not much else. Every single card or collectible I ever blogged about was lost. And the 17000+ CDs and DVDs that made up my inventory for selling online were all gone as well.
But, I still had insurance and even though it took 6 months I got a max payout.
And I met a woman who lived in the building and we decided to try a fresh start and rented a place together. Unfortunately I didn't realize that she was an alcoholic compulsive liar narcissist gaslighter.
So after 5 months I high tailed it back to my Mom's condo, where I'd spent 2 months after both the flood and the fire. This was a more permanent move. Oh, and my poor girl Cinnamon got glaucoma and had to have both her eyes removed.
But, better days had to be ahead, right?
And for almost a year things were good. I liked being at my Mom's because she's 81 and I could do stuff around the house and shopping and stuff to make things easier for her. Cinnamon loves sleeping in front of the fire place, and my Mom had missed her during the 5 months. I rebuilt some inventory and was having good sales numbers online.
And then at the beginning of June I had a really bad upset stomach. I'd also been constipated for a month or so. Or so I thought. One Sunday I got some really bad stomach pain, then I started shaking uncontrollably, and that only stopped when I started throwing up. So the paramedics were called, but I decided not to go into the hospital because I was sure I'd get better. By the next morning that clearly wasn't happening, so 911 was called again and the came and took me in. I was admitted that night with a diagnosis of diverticulitis.
To make a really long story a bit shorter, after 2 hospital stays taking up 16 days, one colon surgery, and countless tests and specialists, I've been diagnosed with Stage 4 colon and liver cancer. I don't know if they got all the colon cancer when they removed the tumor. And I don't yet know if the cancer has spread beyond the liver. If it has my prognosis is really bad. Even if it hasn't without treatment I'd have 6-12 months. And the numbers aren't great even with treatment. So I'm waiting on another CT scan and an Oncologist appointment to find out where I stand.
So it's been a tough time. And with not having updated this for 5 years anyways, it's unlikely I'll find or have the time to do so after this. I hope this site will stick around for a long time though, as I enjoyed the posts I made and the other blogs I found. Even made some good trades as well.
All the best to everyone!
