Welcome to my dusty, middle-aged corner of the world.

Hello.

Yes, as you may have guessed, my name is Rick. You may be wondering why I call this part V, right? Or maybe wondering what the hell happened to parts I through IV perhaps?

Here's the way I look at my life at this point:

Part I - Childhood (18 years worth)
Part II - The Military Years (6 years worth)
Part III - The Solo Years (7 years worth)
Part IV - The Marriage Years (19 of them)
Part V - The Divorce

A quick overview of who I am:

I'm the oldest of five kids, and both of my parents were only children. That means I have no aunts or uncles. I have a daughter from my marriage who is fifteen as of this writing, and I also have a son and granddaughter in Los Angeles. Funny thing there... My son is 27, but until April of 2005 I had no idea he even existed. He is the product of a liaison I had with the wife of a coworker while I was stationed in Italy in 1977. It's a long story and I'm not going to get into that, but he's a great kid, and he and his beautiful wife have produced a very beautiful daughter, who is my first grandchild.

My wife and I split up at the end of January of this year, and I'm not bitter. Nope... As a matter of fact, my ex and I get along better now than we have in years. It was a good thing we did. It took us a long time to actually begin the process though, as each of us was waiting for the other to make the first move. She and my daughter only live 10 blocks from me here so I see them often and everyone gets along great.

Why am I starting a blog? I have no idea other than the fact that I'm a frustrated writer of sorts, and enjoy penning my words on occasion. I used to have a blog online that had over 280 entries in it, and it chronicled my midlife crisis. I deleted it finally when I no longer had negative thoughts to jot down.

You may find that I have many diverse things running through my head from time to time, or I may not like the way it's going and decide to delete the whole thing and walk away from it.

Time will tell.