Blue skies and following seas.

Guyk has hung it up.

I'll miss his shit and wit.

I couldn't think of an Air Force saying for the title, so substituted an old Navy farewell. I do indeed hope he and his sweet thing fare well down there on the left coast of Florida.

The older I get (and I'm not old, just getting a little older every day) the more people I can look back with thankfulness for having them be a small part of my life; especially the ones who I never met except through their writings.

I sometimes think that writers have helped shape my life more than some of the actual people and events I've known and experienced.

Which is not to say that family upbringing and school didn't help shape me, it did in ways that I'm still discovering. A little time spent among the fellowship of warriors in strange and far away places has left it's inevitable mark upon my soul. A mark that is still sometimes hard to ignore.

Raising a family and trying to be a husband and father went a long way towards revealing my inadequacies and teaching me a little bit about love.

Failures, of which there have been many, have taught me much more than any of the successes that came my way. Missed opportunities have tried to teach me to seize the day and not worry about what might of been, only of what is yet to come.

Through all of these though, I have been fortunate enough to have read the works of a few writers which have caused me to think on the nature of humanity and the works of men.

The works of Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Homer, Lucretius, Shakespeare, John D. McDonald, Robert Heinlein, Moses, Isaiah, The Gospels, Nephi, Smith.....

Hell I could go on for pages and not give credit to them all. Nowadays a lot of them write blogs that are funny, sad, angry, commensense...too many to get to everyday without neglecting some of the more important things in life.

Funny the things that go into shaping a person.

Guy, for the little bit of shaping that came from you, Thanks.