Prelude To The Storm

The remainder of 2018 went by without a hitch. Terry and I went to a minor league baseball game with the Binghamton Rumble Ponies when they still had Tim Tebow. He doubled. They lost. I ended up in the emergency room with a severly sore neeck due to pinched nerve. I got a lovely morphine shot which meant Terry had to drive The Truck home some 13 miles (an new record!) at something like 1 o'clock in the morning--in the drizzling rain--chasing some poor fawn down the road for half a mile. (The neck and nerve issue would return in 2020 and send me back for x-rays and a diagnosis of spinal stenosis but not bad enough for surgery--yet.) I went fishing in northern Quebec with Joe as per usual. It was something like our 20th trip. Then, Joe helped me rebuild my deck which I then stained a couple months later. We had company from Milwaukee come in for Thanksgiving. I went hunting in the back yard but got skunked. We went into New Jersey on Christmas Eve to celebrate with my sister, her two daughters, and their two daughters (lots of women!) and a few spouses here and there. All in all a pretty good year. Little did I know what lay on the horizon.