Boy, I do have trouble keeping current!

As I write this, it has somehow become 2011 while I wasn't looking. It just seems that I have too little time to write down what is going on in my life. It has been a very busy year with Barbara having a very serious auto accident at the end of 2009, the day before Thanksgiving, as a matter of fact. She was driving our 2003 Audi TT on her way to work, and encountered a Dodge Ram pickup truck in the middle of the road. Fortunately, all the safety systems worked to perfection and both air bags deployed, likely saving her life. She did suffer a broken sternum and contusions to both lungs. It turned out that it was not a simple, nor rapid recovery situation. She was plagued with a prolonged and difficult recovery, involving a diagnosis of COPD (which fortunately turned out NOT to be true), but she did struggle with asthma and recurrent lung infections for nearly a year. During this period, we have decided it is time for us to leave Maine and find a more moderate climate to call home. To explore areas that were candidates, we travelled to North Carolina last summer and explored the state. In two weeks, we covered most of the different locales, from the Raleigh/Durham area to the mountains west of Asheville. Of the areas we visited, we both fell in love with Hendersonville. Our decision was that we would

both like an area with four seasons, little snow, relatively low humidity, and a small town environment that was friendlier and more intimate than a large city.

Our decision was not based simply on her accident, but on my slowly changing health and my desire to do some other things beside spend my time maintaining a house that is bigger than we need during the summer and plowing and shovelling all winter. I still want to have time for my genealogy work, some teaching of research methods, and still lots of reading to do! My experience last winter with sciatica was a big wake up call that this was no longer a good place for us to be in the winter! If you can't plow and shovel in Maine in the winter, you don't belong here.

As I write thisw we have listed our home for sale and have at least one interested buyer. It is our hope that we can conclude a satisfactory sale this summer and make a move to North Carolina this fall. I will write more much sooner than last time!