My new web site is up!

It seems a long time since I blogged. I have been very busy getting ready for the first weekend of Samurai Camp with Klemmer in Phoenix. One major task was to get my new web site prepared.

Things were going well until I hit an unexpected hitch. The site that I had developed was unusable with my hosting service due to a software incompatibility -- one of the problems with trying to do something new in a limited time. So I was now slipping behind on my goals before I even got started.

I had already contacted the Small Business Development Center at Sam Houston State University here in Huntsville, so Monday I called them with an urgent message that I needed help in developing my web site. After playing telephone tag for a while, we finally got together, and last night they put the site together for me, using my provisional text. So today, one day before the deadline, the site is up!

It needs work still, but at least the hard work is done, and it looks a lot better than it would have done if it had been left to me. The person who put it together has worked for fourteen years on web site development. I had only about fourteen days' of experience, so the difference showed!

Go look at it -- I'm looking for suggstions for improvement. And, if you're one of the first fifty people to sign up, you'll get a lifetime free membership. (Unfortunately, the membership form is not working yet, but you have a link on the site you can use. Getting that form working and setting up the e-mail responses are my first two tasks when I return at the end of this month.)

Today, Billie and I are leaving for Phoenix. We shall be there for the weekend, then go to San Diego next Monday. That week we are staffing Heart of the Samurai, where about two hundred people, including Trent, will be taking part. What an incredible two weeks lie before us!

From San Diego, we shall leave for Ventura to have a quick visit with Paul, Alisa and Kai before returning via LAX.

We try not to let the grass grow under our rocking chairs.

To your good health and may you always have as much fun and excitement as we do!

Alan and Billie

The Good News ... and the Bad!

(No, of course that's not me in the picture! It's Trent, taken about a year ago in El Campo at Muldoon's.

I was younger then ...)


First, let's get the bad news out of the way. No less than FIVE of my friends have died in the last month (I just heard about one today). To put it in perspective, only two of them were older than me. I remember my father saying that that one of the sad things about growing older is that all your friends keep dying ...

Now for the good news.

A couple of years ago I had a diagnosis of "possible" non-Hodgkins lymphoma. (A more complete story of that is on one of our web sites -- see My Story.) This week, after another visit to my oncologist, I had another CT scan, and today I got the results.

Guess what?

No sign of lymphoma!

In fact, after a full CT scan, his only recommendation is that I follow up with my urogolist because my bladder wall is slightly to moderately thickened (which it was a year or two ago). I knew I felt healthier than I have for several years, but it's great to have the confirmation.

In other good news, Billie's son, Trent Willmon, has started working in the Texas Hill Country on the movie Palo Pinto Gold. They are shooting early every morning for a couple of weeks and we hope to go out there to watch a shoot sometime soon. Trent's playing the lead, and has also written the music for the movie. Other members of the cast include Mel Tillis, Roy Clark and Kinkie Friedman as the Governor of Texas! Check it out on Trent's web site.

Maybe we'll have a film star in the family!