My sister was planning to marry again (third time the charm?), and so we were selling our house in Brooklyn and she was moving to New Jersey. We had bought it in 1981. It was now 1989 and, with the way houses were appreciating at the time, we did all right, even after reimbursing our parents the money they gave us for the down payment.

    Meanwhile, my roommate here had met someone, and they were thinking about getting together. Things seemed to be falling into place nicely. All of a sudden, I had money to “burn.” The woman who my roommate had met was involved in Real Estate. I believe they met at a Real Estate seminar. He had recently gotten his license, and he found me a nice condo a little bit south of where I currently lived, but still pretty close to the ocean.

    So he and I parted as roommates. They eventually got married and we remained friends. I thought we were going to grow old together as friends, but sadly he passed away way before his time. Miss you, bud. I really do. I respected you, I valued your opinions, and there have been times I would have loved to be able to chat with you again. One of the good ones. Bummer.

    The "road" stayed pretty steady for a while. Similar to my old place, I had access to lighted tennis courts, a pool, Jacuzzi, and a BBQ area, all of which I made good use of. I had a couple of roommates, a few “visitors”, was enjoying my job and had made new friends. Things were about to change, however.

    The company I was working for had had a number of owners and names. We were at the time, I guess you could say, a “satellite” office. The main office was in Troy, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan.

    In 1992, they decided they wanted to consolidate, so they were closing the San Diego office. At the time, I was the supervisor of Tech Support, and our department was necessary to provide 24/7/365 service. The people in my department took turns being on call and, when everything was moved to Michigan, they were going to need people to continue that support.

    As a result, another person in my department and I agreed to move there on a temporary basis. She was going to be there continuously, but I needed to maintain my condo, so I would fly there, stay three weeks, come back for a week to take care of my place, my mail, go back, etc., “rinse and repeat”.

    I started in June 1993 and spent most of the summer there. Not a fun time. We had to cover 24 hours, so we initially did 12 hour shifts while we were training people there to do support. They paid for my airfare, car rentals and put us both up in a nice two bedroom condo. That was good, but there wasn’t much time for “fun and games”. We worked our butts off, although we were nicely paid for it.

    Then November came. It was bone-chilling cold, windy, snowy, and I had gotten spoiled so I was not enjoying it. The powers that be there gave me an ultimatum. I had to make a decision, either to stay permanently or they were going to let me go. It wasn’t a difficult decision. I was gone. Came back to San Diego to stay. And collect unemployment. My coworker stayed a while longer but eventually she came back and became my roommate.

    I guess I should add this here as a “mini” fork, although it will come back in the future to bite me and is still doing so. If you recall, I mentioned earlier that I was rear-ended in a car accident in 1971. In 1979, I had some neck issues, probably related to the accident. But I was young at the time and pretty much just shrugged it off.

    It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 1993. I had just gotten home from Detroit, was newly unemployed, and I was driving to a Sporting Goods store to get my tennis racket restrung. I made a left turn from one road to another. I saw a car coming in the opposite direction, but he was in the right turn lane and so we were going to be merging onto the same road and I was prepared to let him go first and then follow him. He must have changed his mind and decided to go straight instead, and I suddenly found myself with a smoking airbag staring me in the face.

    He hit me broadside on the passenger side. My right door and seat were demolished. Thankfully I had my seat belt on, otherwise I don’t know if I would be here to be writing this. The strap broke a couple of my ribs, however, and my head had snapped pretty hard to the right.

    Since I was unemployed, there was no work to be missed, but I had to spend some time recuperating. I am feeling the effects of this and my previous accident to this very day. Some people show pictures of their kids or pets on their phone. I have plenty of pictures of my dogs, but I also show people pictures of my MRI. I had only been back a couple of weeks. Welcome home…