Thirty-eight years is a long time, unless you're a tree. Well, here goes. After graduation, I spent a leisurely two weeks as a carefree, single, man-about-town. Then, due to some lack of attention to detail on prom night, it was time to settle down, get married, and begin life in the outside world. Thirty-eight years, two daughters, four wives, several stepchildren, and four grandchildren later, here I sit, trying to find a way to both tell my story and keep it brief. In the late 60s, exhausted by the pressures of a few years fighting crime for the Plainfield Police Dept., I returned to IU (an interesting place during the turmoil of the political unrest of the time). Emerging as a juvenile counselor, I worked with at-risk teenagers in a wilderness program. We basically took the kids into the woods for twenty-one days and nights, hiked them, counseled them, spelunked them, counseled them, rappelled them, counseled them, rafted them, counseled them, and sent them off into the world again. It may have helped them; it certainly helped me. In the early 80s, following a move to Sarasota, FL, I met and eventually (in '90---thrice burned, you know) married my current and please God final wife, Rita. In Sarasota, I owned and operated a vintage clothing store for a couple of years, until my closet was empty, along with my pockets. Oh well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Rita and I were vacationing in Elkhart, IN, visiting her family, when we found THE PROJECT. It was a turn of the century, shingled bungalow, sitting on a low bluff above the St. Joseph River. Last lived in 5 years previously, the house was home to a family of raccoons, some lesser rodents, wasps, and other numerous but uninventoried creatures. If any of you have experience with a labor of love that is also a money pit, then you know the highs and lows that go along with a restoration of this sort. (Mike Mechem can give testimony about this house.) We returned to Florida in '96, out of money and ideas, but secure in the knowledge that we would at last be warm again. Since that time I've managed health foods stores in the Sarasota area, and have recently joined a new start-up company that develops and markets web-sites to health food retailers. It appears I've left out a few things, such as bios of my terrific daughters, Nikki and Elizabeth, my grandchildren, Brandi, Dylann, Matthew, and Mike; or any homage to my best friend and wife, Rita. I've also left out the fact that my hair fell out 25 years ago, I had heart surgery earlier this year, and my grandson just got suspended from school for smoking the weed. Life goes on. Well, that about covers it, hope to hear from one and all. Norm