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Here it is, the middle of January in a new year, 2005. I have missed posting here for almost a month and a half... Lets see if we can catch up...
OK... Where to begin... We left off with Jay coming home mid December... He did, Dan was home again too. Dan, after Thanksgiving had returned to school (LSU, Baton Rouge,LA) to complete his present semester and make plans for leaving school, again, when deployed, again, to Iraq with his USMC-R unit.
Dan returned to NY around December 15th while Jay had came in around December 12th. While we were all together again for a short time in NY, Rachel and I took some time off work to have some fun as a "family" unit...
In the midst of this homecoming, I was ensnared in getting a refinance on my mortgage... My brother David (Enfield, CT) works part time for a mortgage broker and insisted he could get me a great deal, better than I was offered in NY by 3 other companies, so I went with his deal. David thought it such a good deal, he refinanced his home, with the same program, 2 days after I applied. My application was held up for some reason and he closed on his loan 2 days before my closing date.
My closing was a disaster. Jay and Dan went with meand at the closing, my attorney made it clear, (not my regular attorney, mine was tied up so he got an associate to help out) he was not in favor of this loan program. The attorney, Andy, a really good guy, was upset that I was never informed that this loan program, while offering a really good rate for an ARM, (adjustable rate mortgage) was what they call a "negative amortization" loan. (too difficult to explain here...) So what happened was (here's the disaster part) we decided to hold off and walked out of the closing without finalizing the loan. Anyway...Jay and Dan and I called around to the company offering the loan, (and others) and finally got the answers we needed to make an "informed decision". Took the loan 3 days later.
With cash in hand, it was too late for all of us to really do anything with really cool, like a trip or something... Dan had to report in to Gulfport (USMC-R) by January 3rd... We did get to make one quick run to see my brother and go to Moheghan Sun Casino (CT) afterwards... We had fun... Dropped a few hundred bucks and went on home.
Prior to this time, by about a week, my Brother David had to have a kidney removed. Had a large tumor (benign, thank G-d) on it and Doc's thought it best to remove it.
My brother David... "always in tune" rests in his hospital room after his surgery to remove a kidney. David goes no where without his music...lol
He's healing though it's a slow process. We visited David again before sending Dan off to war for the second time.
OK... to now it's the beginning of January, Dan is in Gulfport MS, with his USMC-R unit, preparing to deploy, first to Camp LeJune, NC. For about 45 days... Then on to Iraq. Understand, that most USMC-R units are made up of local guys, civilians all month except for the 2 1/2 days of "drill" per month. So most have no problem having their families come to the unit to see them off when deploying. For us, it's a little different. We had to arrange round-trip air travel for the three of us, (Rachel Jay and me) plus a rental car in New Orleans for the trip to Gulfport, plus a hotel. Dan was to leave on the morning of January 9th, and we flew down on the 7th. We were able to be with Dan, on and off the evening of the 7th... Most of the Day on the 8th and were able to be with him, to see him off on the buses in the early morning hours of January 9th. The great time we had in the few hours we were with Dan will fill another whole blog entry. But, our Marine will not soon forget the family send off he got that January morning.
I have much more to add and write... But it will have to wait. Later...
