A New Beginning

Last year I started a blog called "Tumbler2" to report on Judy's fight against cancer. It ended in early January with us stranded in China. We spent one extra day with our kids and then began the uncertain trip home. We had hopes of flying into Beijing on Monday, January 4 and snagging a stand-by spot. No such luck. We were stranded in Beijing by a 60 year record snow. Over 1,000 flights were cancelled in a 3 day period and rebooking was a...challenge (no, that's not descriptive enough)...daunting (still not right)...intimidating (yeah, use this word if I'm going for the sympathy of weak people)...uhhh, it was, it was...nearly an impossibility (there, that gets it).
We were scheduled to fly from Nanning to Beijing, departing at noon, Monday, January 4, arriving Beijing at 3:30. Our (delusional) thoughts were geared at arriving in time to book the 9:50 P.M. flight to Las Angeles. The plane finally left at 4:00, arriving near 8:00. We hopefully secured our luggage and found the INTERNATIONAL TICKET SERVICE. Air China had 3 agents "working" the counter. The lines were 15 people deep. We struck up a conversation with a man from Malaysia who had been in line 3 hours and the line hadn't moved AT ALL. Finally getting in touch with reality, we soothed our anguish at Starbucks. (What a haven.)
Next item--find someplace to stay until Wednesday and accept the flight we'd been able to secure while still in Nanning. Someone from Air China told us of a hotel that would provide a free shuttle, was close to the airport, would give us a good rate and had internet connections. We jumped at the opportunity. He gave us a card with the name of the hotel and it is.........you're not going to believe this...it was named....an unbelievable name. (I'll give a brief summary of our time in the yet unnamed hotel in my next post.)

The title of this posting is "A New Beginning." I decided to start a new blog that was not dedicated to Judy's battle with cancer. For the most part, that is behind us. She is free of cancer and only takes one--yes, ONE--little pill a day (and will for 5 years). Yes, she'll make semi-annual treks to MD Anderson for checkups. But we are soooooo blessed. Thus, a new beginning.
I hope to develop the discipline of blogging on a regular basis. The discipline of daily writing is a discipline I need to develop. I apologize for waiting 4 months before returning to the blogosphere, but life happens.
O.K., time for truth. The real reason I've had to start a new blog is that I've forgotten my password for the old blog and we've changed e-mail providers since the blog was established. So, the need for a new blog (but I really did want a new beginning to deal with life post-cancer). And I need to daily blog to kick-start my aging brain and keep it somehow connected to reality. (It could be interesting to see how my writing develops/changes/decays as I age.)