So about three years ago, my wife and I had decided it was time to expand our family. There are many many joys to the process and lots of dedicated practice but the final outcome brought forth no success. My wife and I knew we were past the 'biological clock' age (that is 32 for those of you that did not know this), and we decided to go see a specialist after six months.

We learned that there were many barriers in our way beginning with age but moving forward from there. First, during our first pregnancy, my wife had a fibroid that grew to be as big as our little girl. My wife looked like she had been carrying twins. We had to have a c section because the fibroid was blocking the birthing path. Our daughter came out fine, but the fibroid never went away. The Dr's had to perform surgery to remove the fibroid. This caused damage to her uterus. Problem number 1. My problem was less dramatic but no less troublesome for our desires for a 2nd child. My 'count' was low due to age and weight.

We spent the next year and a half going through the invetro (IVF) process and were finally successful in getting pregnant (three tries ... lots of money). But after six weeks, the baby did not survive and they had to induce a miscarraige. THen we had learned that all the eggs in cryo (freezing) had died also. After visiting the Dr's again, they told us we had pretty much no chance of getting pregnant again.

We moved forward and looked into adoption. The process for state adoption is extremely long with medical exams, background checks, financial validation, screening and home inspections ... it took us about four months but finally were approved for adoption (foster to adopt), then came the waiting game for the right match for us and a kid.

During this wait, my wife was scheduled to go through ACL knee surgery on September 9th. The night before the surgery we went online to fill out the pre-surgery...

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I would have pounded my way into here on opening day but life has been anything but normal for me. Those who read this and know me, know this is nothing unusual. On July 29th I had knee surgery. The original intent was to do some repair work to my medial and lateral miniscus. About 11 years earlier I had gone through ACL surgery on the same knee ... I love basketball, but it doesn't love me back. While the Dr was in doing the miniscus work, he was also going to test the ACL. The ACl freyed undered the test and so was replaced.

The twisted part of this was that my wife had her 20 yr class reunion that weekend. I did not want to see her miss this event because it is a lifetime of great memories. Everyone should go to their reunion when the time comes. Luckily we own a Yukon Denali. I crawled into the very back of the vehicle, dropped the middle row to rest my leg, popped a few vicodin, and endured the 9 hr drive to NM for my wife's reunion. Thank God I was pain free from the surgery. I went through soreness from walking around (on crutches) and took time here and there to ice up and take a few more vicodin, but the trip was a success.

I'm back at work today and things are going well. As always, I have work to catch up on from taking ten days off, but I love my job so no complaints.

As for Mizahar, thank goodness this place is finally open!! I will always love the 'other' game world but could find no further inspiration to play in it. Too many times I saw claims to great things with no follow through from the owner. The staff would do their best for the players, but the owner would still manage to sweep in, screw it all up, piss off his staff, watch them all quit, and then scramble to restaff. The people made the game work, but the ownership simply managed to jack things up too often and then disappear. I did a lot in that game and wanted to do more, but began losing interest. Only my friends kept me around because I loved to talk to them.

Mizahar has given me a renewed...

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