Don's eDiary

An eDiary of Some Key Things in Don's Life

I regularly updated my eDiary until the creation of FaceBook's 2011 "eHistory" feature, whereupon I stopped… my account then sadly crashed out while I was updating my profile [ :( ] in 2019 & I had to drill some of the "lost years" to get them back! You might consider visiting my active profile page that shares a little more info about me vs. this eDiary?

So… my eDiary is organized into decade pages, each being year-by-year with months from Jan to Dec; click on a different section to visit that decade? Main page (this page) | 2010’s | 2000’s | 80's-90's | 70's | 50's-60's… for an "historical" view, do start at the very end of my eDiary & scroll up to read backwards in time? Also, view the page full-screen? Have fun, regardless ;)

Some Active & Future thoughts…

Here are a couple of my recent thoughts, activities & key events:

First and foremost, our accelerating Global climate change is worsening each and every day, with a frightening future that is *literally* right upon us; possible actions are here for you to consider?

Knowledge of today’s “greenhouse effect” actually began over 120 years ago when the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius correctly predicted that increased carbon dioxide levels would substantially alter surface temperatures; NASA’s current report shares many reports & references that are worth taking some time to read…

It is also *so* sadly annoying that the Global Leadership (at the COP28 meeting; WiKi view) keeps shouting “Something ***Must*** Be Done!!!” yet take no real action… Let’s all hope (and wish!) that they stop ignoring the upcoming disaster?
2^nd, the now long-standing Russian attack on Ukraine has many of us on edge as they are trying to push the Russian Army out of Ukraine, with the US and others repeatedly trying to poke Vlad in the eye; all are sadly apparently unable to prevent the Russian occupation… donate?
3^rd, the ongoing fiasco with our prior president (yes, that’s a little stale but sure is funny!!) has actually moved towards sending him off to jail with his current court case!! It’s really nice to note that President Joe Biden’s thoughts on this remain private—I would personally bet that they’re mostly chuckles :)

Also spotted Joe’s recent activities actions
Finally, do go view some fresh global news?

Let me close out this section with my “future thoughts” about certain upcoming events…

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2024: This Year…

January was generally a quiet month, with some of our normal annual tasks like thinking about/planning the year’s calendar, making sure our household smoke and CO² detectors were up-to-date and active with new batteries (!), etc…

We also learned from an eye-surgeon visit in late-January that a not-so-good residual affect of one of the treatments for my ’98 brain tumor (specifically the “60 Grays in 60 Days” radiation therapy) had shown up. Our visit was to assess & possibly deploy a surgical solution for my “wandering eye” that had started showing up before our UK trip last September…

The eye-surgeon’s assessment was that there was no surgery that he could perform, as the cause was most likely from a damaged nerve to my left eye. The arrival of this (which is also causing some annoyingly tricky balance issues) was **not** great news as it added to my existing list of difficulties like being unable to read a book due to the loss of my short-term memory and being unable to recall what I did yesterday etc…

<eSigh> but on the good side? Am not yet dead!!

Our February vacation with some of our family started on Saturday, February 3^rd where we flew south to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, staying for a week at the Rose resort & then on to the Sunset Beach resort for our 2^nd week—the family left after the 1^st week after having fun++

Sandy’s birthday arrived while we were in Mexico; here are a couple snaps:

View from our Sunset Beach room

Snap of Sandy at dinner (in Rose)

Sandy's birthday dinner at Sunset Beach

Also a short video of Sandy's birthday dinner (may download vs. playing / click the download?)

More snaps will follow!

After our Mexico trip, Sandy had a really busy couple of months organizing and finally running the NFMG annual flower sale day on Saturday, April 20^th which has been running since 2001, generating income for the group—they made $20k this year, quite an improvement!!

Sandy was also interviewed by our local TV station (published April 23^rd) along with some of the hundreds of guests; click the “play” button to watch?

2023: Last Year…

In early January we flew down to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico’s Baja California peninsula to stay at our timeshare for 3 weeks… Sunset Beach; couple snaps—click to enjoy!

We traveled up to Wisconsin in February for the one-year memorial of Srini Sheshadri’s death on Saturday, Feb 11^th… we sadly couldn’t attend his 2022 funeral due to COVID

We also were blessed to stay (for a short weekend) with our Gourmet group friends at Chuck & Linda’s—we had dinner with the group; we got to visit our family up nort’ / sure snowed like crazy as we landed in Milwaukee!! Fortunately the sun shone brilliantly after that but the temps were quite brisk with the howling wind at 10℉… guess who forgot his coat as we went north!!

We then spent several days in February replacing our downstairs flooring—this really improved the general appearance!!

Sandy’s Mom has been living since April (as of this writing) under care in a hospice near her home, with her every-day difficulties as she ages…

Sandy also spent a lot of time & work organizing the North Fulton Master Gardeners’ annual flower sale, which made a great profit!!

We enjoyed our grandkids thru the summer, who got to visit with us a few times! Max & Nora had a 2-week acting class near our house in June which they thoroughly enjoyed!

Our Gourmet group traveled south to us from several places to spend a weekend in April at the Brasstown Resort just 2 hours north of our home… Sandy orchestrated this, too, and we enjoyed dinner there!!

After enjoying our summer, we spent 2 weeks in late September for a social gathering at a close friend’s historic castle in Scotland… we also visited with my brother Alan & his family for a few days! The trip is captured here… enjoy the visit!

We had a quiet Christmas day with our family either at home or traveling and an enjoyable week ending the year!

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The Year of 2022…

I spent some time in early January for a 20-year remembrance of my son Alex’s death… such a sad time considering the whys and whats for his decision to depart from us at such a young age

R.I.P. to my dearest Alex…

We flew down in late January to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico’s Baja California peninsula to stay for 2 weeks… the first week was in Sunset Beach, followed by Blanco where we were joined by some of our family. Several snaps follow, click to enjoy!

Sandy upon our arrival!	close-up	Don too ;)	at Dinner	at Lunch
Snaps	.	.
Views	.	.	.	.	.
Beach	.	.	.	Flower
From our window	.	.	Steps up to room!

A view from our room…

. . .

and of the back

A snap of Landon & Amelia with Kelly in the pool snap

(click to view); the 2 videos & with Sandy are partly why we came!!

The 25th anniversary of our wedding was in late March, where we went to the nearby Lapeer Steak & Seafood restaurant for a great evening, celebrating with wine & all those memorial thoughts!!

April let us be blessed to have our Alabama grandkids stay with us for a week; both Max & Nora had fun with their cousins Landon and Amelia!!

We also happily paid our taxes (on time!) with a small bill, spent a weekend down in Savannah in May and had our wills & trusts finally finalized! Flew up to WI for a week mid-May to celebrate a 90th birthday for Sandy’s Mom, who’s doing remarkably well!

After returning home, we had planned to have Max & Nora again for a couple weeks, but this sadly crashed out when Sandy’s brother Danny died unexpectedly; we flew back up to WI again for a few days to attend his funeral

Sandy has been very busy all year, being the co-leader for the North Fulton Master Gardeners group where they’re working to make life better for many! They’re also on Facebook; view some of their recordings here… enjoy a couple!!

Our planned 3+week July visit to WI went very well! We drove up, stopping overnight in Effingham and then staying near Lake Pewaukee for a week with Kaci, Dave & grandkids, riding on the lake and visiting SummerFest

We had an afternoon on Saturday, July 2nd at Ali’s house (the lower 1/2) then up to Green Bay to stay with Tom & Amy to see the fireworks (upper 1/2)

We then all visited Kelly Lake to let the kids see their GGM and the family headed off home; we when on to spend some time visiting with
Karon & Dan (1st snap) and then out on the big lake (2nd) with a GREAT pilot!! We caught a snap of Erica's kids (3rd) and visited with an old friend (4th)

The last few months of the year were generally fairly quiet, with some family activites (grandkids/Blue Ridge Scenic Railway, Halloween, all 4 kids at the house for a week (!), etc)

We voted (early) which was a zoo as the line took a couple hours!

Spent a week in Florida (Nov 5)
Landon’s birthday (Nov 25), blowing out the candles!
And my ongoing tree updates, specifically adjusting burial data for many people; here’s my Grandad’s page, who passed on in August of 1971 and is buried in the cemetery at St. Nicholas Parish Church in Winterbourne Clenston… view the 2 snaps at his burial for visuals?

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The 2021 Year…

Not much to report for the 1st few months of 2021… we did each get the COVID-19 shots in Jan/Feb—neither were particularly nasty, and we’ve been staying well!!

We spent a week+ in May at a beachfront resort in the panhandle of Florida… a great ocean view from our room!

We spent an enjoyable month in July visiting friends and family in WI—great to catch up! There are many Facebook posts that were shared

On my dynamic family tree, I spent several weeks through August & September doing some major updates to improve the site… still not quite perfect, but quite a bit better! Some changes:

Both the text style & approach in my data were tweaked to improve the representation of the 90,000+ facts that the auto-creation tool uses to create the report; some are now better, others still not! I also revised my page to summarize & eliminate the auto-generation glitches!
Added the “Continent” (Europe, Asia, etc) to each of the 6,500+ places in my tree; to view some place information for this, click here, scroll down to “(Father-Created) of Godolfr” & click that link to view the places?
Updated the Help page to improve & clarify the guidance ;)
Ensured that each of the living people ( ~1,800 folk ) have *only a minimal* representation, showing just their reference ID & a snapshot; as an example of how this now works, will share the status of my Mum’s brother, Uncle Joe (who died in April, 2020) where his marriage to my Auntie June and their children (all living as of this update) are not shown
Open the tree search page, enter my Auntie’s name, “June Rawlings” and click to see her tree page… this will share a photo of her (snapped with their son, Colin). Click her “Family Explorer” link; this will show my Uncle Joe, her parents & grandparents (none of whom are living) yet *not* her children, who are living. Clicking on Joe, his page will show all the data I have about him, although their marriage & their children are not shown here as all are living; examining Colin’s explorer link shows only his Dad
Finally, I spent some time writing some code to add the words "Cause of death is not known / NFIA" to the ~13,500 unknown deaths… 90% of everyone in my tree ceased to live at some past point!! Should you observe (if you're taking a look!) someone whose death seems wrong, please feel free to share? Cheers!!

Bringing the year to an end, family birthdays were a blessing: October (Amelia), November (Landon) and December (Kelly) with a great Christmas celebration at our house!!
The snap shows (l-t-r) [front] Landon & Max [middle] Nora on Grampy Don’s lap & Sandy with Amelia on her lap [back] Quentin, Kelly, Kaci & Dave

My Family tree updates continued, with many new places and people; see the dynamic tree here? I also finalized some clarifications to the Help page for the tree structure to expand and improve the guidance! Again, should you observe (if you're taking a look!) things that seem wrong or wonky, please feel free to share? Cheers!!

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The 2020 Year…

We spent a couple weeks away in January of 2020, first visiting Nuevo Vallarta (just north of Pueblo Vallarta) at the Villa Del Palmar Flamingo’s Beach Resort & Spa, an all-inclusive week with a view of the ocean, & then a 2^nd week with our friends in the “Gourmet group”…

We had been thinking for a while about a fuel-efficient car that was worth the investment & decided to get this low-mileage 2018 Leaf in early February

As March began & the virus became a danger to all, I decided that I needed to spend a little time updating my “15-minutes of fame” history, “Just In Case” the virus decides that my time is up… The rest of the month was quite quiet with as much stay-at-home time as we could muster, fending off any arrival of the virus. We had our nearby grandkids 2-3 times a week as their schools had closed & our daughter’s patient load went from busy to pretty rare…

April, May & June didn’t bring much news other than a little excitement with someone’s 2^nd hip-replacement & my moment when a scan of my kidneys (new Doc) highlighted an apparent swelling in my bladder…turned out (checked/uncomfortably!) to be “normal” with just my prostate being enlarged!

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July started out pretty quietly, with some web-site work for my 1985 Europe trip and my transition to into Medicare… we visited our Alabama grandkids for the weekend mid-month!

August was pretty quiet… we did spend a weekend in a cabin at the Guntersville State Park with family, a nice visit at the end of August!

September’s excitement was that my desktop computer decided to get old & die… a replacement was easy to setup & the transition went well / am working on this as I do this update!

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October brought us a need to refresh our “capabilities” test at AARP which saved us 20% on our auto insurance (yes, more than a few schekles!!) and the fun of weekly watching our 5-year old grandson hit the ball, running like a rabbit to 1^st base!!

We each voted early for the Nov 3^rd national election, hoping like crazy at that time that a change in our US leadership will start to restore sanity… can happily say that Vice-president Joe Biden beat the Trump campaign by 8 million votes!

I restored my World Community Grid account on my new PC around Thanksgiving in 2020, which allows anyone with a computer, smartphone or tablet to donate their unused computing power to advance cutting-edge scientific research on topics related to health, poverty and sustainability. Through the contributions of over 650,000 individuals and 460 organizations, World Community Grid has supported 31 research projects to date, including searches for more effective treatments for cancer, HIV/AIDS and neglected tropical diseases. Other projects are looking for low-cost water filtration systems and new materials for capturing solar energy efficiently.

December of 2020 came & went quite quietly here… lots of at-home time managing the COVID avoidance. Hoping it’ll be better in a couple months!

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The End of My 2020’s Page…

Well, that's about it for this decade’s section of my eDiary; see the past decades here? You could also go to my Bio summary page, the profile page that I created a few years ago, my family tree profile or visit me on FaceBook where you can scroll down to view my events year-by-year.

I do expect certain parts of this website to improve and/or change as I tag more year-by-year info or clarify some of the threads… watch this space! Please also visit my privacy page to be aware of some legal stuff?

As a final thought, view some snaps of me & my family in my older album? Enjoy!! ;)