First off, as some of you know, my main interest is fire alarms with other interests crossing signals and traffic signals. The crossing signal & traffic signal interests come & go, not that I lose total interest in them. Well, that makes up for some of my explanation, but the reasoning behind it all is because some life-changing events happened. Back in the beginning of December, my grandfather fell gravely ill and ended up passing away one week before Christmas. On top of that, I ended up falling ill myself and felt miserable from Christmas Eve 'til almost New Year's. After that, work pretty much took over my life, and all my time was spent focusing on that. Well, fast-forward to April 10th and our family suffered an even more devastating blow - my aunt (age 52) and my cousin (age 22) were found murdered in their home and the person currently charged with the crimes (which include two charges each of first & second degree murder, rape, arson, burglary, & tempering with evidence among the 26 total charges) is my deceased cousin's "on & off again" boyfriend (age 28). Since then, we've been busy with my surviving cousins (my uncle died four years ago from a heart attack, so they're all alone now) arranging for the wake/funeral, making sure they have enough money to cover final expenses, cleaning out their house & putting it up for sale, and really just being there for them, as my family is pretty much the closest to them.
Anyway, today we're still dealing with all of this, but my interest in crossing signals has come alive once again, and thus, I came back (I knew I would never just leave
). I'm glad to be back and I look forward to be a part of this forum again. 
