A memoir of a funeral yes this is long A beige car raced along the highway, driver lost in thought. The road seemed to go on forever, and overcast reflect the mood in the car, the reason they were on the road. Suddenly the sun showed its face through the clouds illuminating the man’s sleeping face. The phone rang. They had not made it in time, Jimmy was passing. Nearly breaking up, her voice asked him to say a prayer, and then the sun hid itself behind the clouds again, as if it knew. -=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The voice on the phone was deep and sad, “Michael, Jimmy passed before we were able to make it out there.” I stood there under the florescent lights and sighed, cellphone to my ear. “It would mean a lot to everyone if you could come out.” The voicemail continued. This had been a long time coming, though hope shines through the darkest days, there had been little question in my mind that this day was go...
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Back safe and sound It was indeed a bittersweet Sunday and Monday but I'm glad I went. I'm toying with an idea of combining my writing knowledge from the books I've been reading (see below) to put together a memoir of the weekend. Either way it was wonderful seeing cousins I had not seen in tens of years, but very sad to have someone pass who was just a few months older than I.
Busy weekend In an addendum to the sad passing of my cousin Jim, I have accepted the help of one of my Uncles and booked tickets to the funeral in the Midwest. I leave bright and early Sunday am with a lay over in Chicago, where in amazing serendipity, I hook up with my step sister and cousin for the second leg of the journey. I return on Monday night late via DC. It was a hard decision, but I feel the right one. Difficult because I had to take time from my jobs and definitely the right one as I did actually want to be there. Although it is a solemn occasion, I will be taking the time to reacquaint myself with some cousins I have not seen in years and years including Jims' brothers and sister, and a few other cousins. My generation will be well represented in that there will be at least one child of each of my Dad's generation's brothers and sisters (did that make sense?) Dad's generation are all originally immigrants and this is an important old world distinction.
Sad Passing I wanted to share the very sad news that my cousin Jimmy has passed due to complications from the cancer he has been fighting for some time. Jim was the son of my Uncle Elias, who is my father’s older brother. Although as adults we were not close, during college he and I hung out together a bit in my early years at Pitzer. I have very fond memories of him, and our prayers go out to his family. Sadly this is the second of Elias' children who have been afflicted in some way, as his younger brother Jeff is a survivor of a heart valve prolapse that caused a very debilitating stroke. Jeff and I were very close all through college, as he was with my brother Greg.
What cha been reading Mike? Thank you for asking. First of all I've been reading this amazing series by Writers Digest Books called Write Great Fiction. There are four books in this series written by either successful authors, writing teachers, or both. They cover Dialog, Plot, Characters,Emotion and Viewpoint, and Description & Setting. All are extremely well well written and engaging. In addition I have a few other books from that printing house that I have ready to read, and I joined the Writers Digest Book Club and got four new books for 21 bucks, and promptly quit the club. So why am I reading them? The reasons are two.. ok no Monty Python I promise. One reason is fairly simple. I want to write fiction. So I'm boning up on the subject. Also which leads nicely to the next paragraph: I'm an "interested reader" for a friend's unpublished works. So I can't tell you much about what he is writing except that it is genre bending and very well writ...
Lets hear it for Saint Anford!!!! Ok so first on Saturday Stanford dumped USC at the last min. That is UNRANKED St. Anford dumping NUMBER 2 in the nation USC. THEN The Beefalo Boils.. almost became the Buffalo Bills again on Monday night. Either way, even though they lost at the last possible minuite by .. ugh.. Dallas... their rookie quarterback and ST. ANFORD graduate Edwards did magnificently!!! Not bad for a kid that went "0-for" one of his years at Stanford. All hail!
My Enneagram I learned of this system while reading one of the Writers Digest Books series from "Write Great Fiction: Dialogue" by Gloria Kempton. Enneagram Test Results Type 1 Perfectionism |||||||||||| 42% Type 2 Helpfulness |||||||||||||||| 70% Type 3 Image Focus |||||||||||| 46% Type 4 Hypersensitivity |||||| 30% Type 5 Detachment |||||||||||| 42% Type 6 Anxiety |||||||||||||| 54% Type 7 Adventurousness |||||||||||| 46% Type 8 Aggressiveness |||||||||||||||| 62% Type 9 Calmness |||||||||||||||||| 78% Your main type is 9 Your variant is social Take Free Enneagram Personality Test And here is another one Enneagram Test Result Enneagram Type Indicator Results Your highest score will indicate you basic type, or it will be among the top 2-3 scores. Type 1 Type 2 Type 3 Type 4 Type 5 Type 6 Type 7 Type 8 Type 9 2 7 5 3 3 4 6 1 5 The Nine Personality Types of the Enneagram Type 1: The ...
46 today I'm working today. Taking next weekend off. Alex was perplexed regarding why I was working today, he does not get the idea of stretching out a birthday to a week at least. Dad called me at work last night, and then this am around 930. Mom called around 1230. Alex and Liza snuck birthday cards in my backpack, and I know they are planning a nice dinner tonight. So that is it, 46 not 47.... lol.
I am a Math Moron Please disregard my post from September 10 of this year. I know I was married in 1988. What I can't seem to get my head around is that this is still 2007. I have been thinking that I am about to be 47 and that my 20th is comming all year. That will be NEXT year, in 2008. Then 2009.... 30th HS reunion. Weee
20 years ago today (No it is 19, see above) (comments added when I realized my mistake) Hard to believe. Long time, yet no time at all. We got married at the Apel Inn in Altamont. It was a quite service outside, though the fireworks leading up to it almost did in the marriage, and the officiating Minister almost got replaced. The night before had been the reception dinner at the Desmond and it was a doozy, so everyone was a bit "peaked". The ceremony had lots of attendees, including three ducks and two cats. Things are tight and a bit strained so we stuck with cards this year. For the last big anniversary's we did something, but not exactly on that date. At 5 yrs we had Alex, a month earlier. At 10 yrs we closed on our house 2 mo later. At 15 yrs we took a 2nd honeymoon a year later in Paris. So there is still time to celebrate. This isn't sour grapes, nor is it an invitation to send a belated happy anniversary but it frankly surprises me how many called or sent...
Just a quick update on the car situation. They did not total the car, but the damages will take about 20 days total including parts ordering. Rental will be covered till then. Good think I have that addition to my policy! Got a real run a round by Enterprise today but finally ended up with a Dodge Magnum for a day, till they get the right "class" of car that is under my daily rental limit. It is black with tinted side windows in the back, and frankly looks like a hearse. No idea why anyone would want one of these things, it gets terrible gas mileage. So there we go, I will probably pop a picture of it on the blog tomorrow just for laughs.
When bad things happen to good people... She stopped. I stopped. The car ahead of her started. She started. The car ahead stopped. I started.. and got stopped... I looked up, she took off, I looked at my dashboard and the next thing I knew my head was on the steering wheel. She was driving a jeep and the tow bar spot nailed the front of my car... crushing the bumper, wrecking the radiator and making a general mess. The compartment was full of steam before you knew it. ZERO DAMAGE TO HER CAR. I hate SUV’s… if it had been a car I hit there would have been minimal bumper damage to both cars. This happened today around 5pm on the way to Radio Shack. Needless to say I didn't get there. I had it towed to my Insurance Company's body shop... and I won't know for a bit if it is done. I love(d) this car. Think good thoughts about a repair instead of a total. I'm quite sore. But the airbags didn't go off so part of that is from all the yardwork I did on Labor Day I figure...
Alex's 14th Birthday.. the day of
We go Whitewater Rafting tomorrow. Should be fun! Here are this nights' piccies.
US Air really sucks Yes that is Liza's bag on the tarmack in Puerto Rico. We watched it crawl up the loading ramp and then drop to its peril right in front of our eyes. Good thing that almost everything in there was not fragile. The one thing that did get broken was the souvenir refrigerator magnet we had bought. Not sure what we are going to do yet about this. Yes they picked it up, but not after watching four other bags get to the top of that ramp and plummet to their peril. So why else does US Air suck. DID YOU KNOW that they have the nerve to charge 5 dollars for really crummy box meals during flight? DID YOU KNOW that both our 767 going to Puerto Rico and our 757 coming out of Puerto Rico have bad audio feeds so that (god forbid) we use our own headsets to watch the movie, the sound is so crackly that the headsets could not be listened to? DID YOU KNOW that the US Air hub in Phili is so bad that very few flights but the first ones get in and out on time? DID YOU KNOW that last...
Saturday Night and Sunday Saturday Night Dinner and Martini's Our dinner at Bamboo Asian Fusion was very good. This place was a bog standard "Hibachi cooking table" restaurant, as well as the best of the fine dining at the Paradisus. The restaurant lived up to its name on both counts, very good food, but not superlative performance. The only complaint I had was that the food was much saltier than normal. I started the night with a Coconut Martini, which was actually quite good as a starter drink. I had another at the dinner, but the sweetness was a bit much so I switched to regular dry Vodka Martini's. This was a mistake because five or so later.. well I was hungover the next day. In the mean time we had a really fun time after dinner hanging out with lots of Liza's friends. You will even find a picture of one of the women we were hanging with smoking a cigar on the Photo Bucket site . Another lovely night in Paradise. Sunday - ATV ride and the Closing dinne...
Friday Night and Saturday Friday Night Dinner Our dinner Friday night was supposed to be a bit of a surprise coming in to PR. Thu night we all got cards inviting us to a special dinner in the Rainforest. So we all bundled up into four busses and headed up to the mountains. The ride was a bit hairy but when we got there were were treated to a lovely little walk through the Rainforest at night and then had a nice cocktail hour. The dinner itself, the food, was pretty disappointing, at least that was the consensus. Personally I thought the meat was ok, but somehow they had destroyed the local grouper that they cooked up for the fish. How they did that is still beyond me. After desert there was much dancing and fun. Everyone got pretty buzzed who wanted to on Bacardi Rum punches including yours truely. Liza doesnt "do" rum but she had a few herself. We got to talk to a lot of people, including Rick's Hillman's wife for quite a bit. You always get to meet the most...
Thursday and Friday Thursday - Albany to Puerto Rico. We flew from Albany to Charlotte, and then laid over an hour, and flew Charlotte to San Juan. Both legs were easy and the planes were comfortable to the most part. We met up with the other two sales people from L's division, although one of them was sans spouse as her School District would not let her have the time off so close to Spring Break. We arrived San Juan on time and took a one hour bus ride to the Paradisus Resort. This is an all inclusive resort, so the food and drink are part of the package.. so far.. the drinks are weak and the food is strictly Marriott standard... but its still all good as they say. Once we were in our bungalow we got changed and headed down to the meet and greet out by the pool. I got two great pictures of Caribbean Sunsets which you can find on the Photo Bucket site under Puerto Rico. PUERTO RICO PHOTO BUCKET SITE Remember to go from Bottom to Top!! We then had a super nice dinner inside (it...
So Winter Finally Comes to the Capital District We survived the Valentines Day Nor'Easter. School was closed on Wed and Thu, and the Mall even thought to close on Wed. L didn't go out in the storm so we all had a nice day at home, barring the 2.5 hrs that I shoveled out the cars. As you can see below that really didn't matter. Enjoy the pics and think of us digging the car out again so L can do a reset today. I took these Thu Feb 15 around 745am. Here is the Dog in the back, Yes she is SMALL but there is LOTS of snow. Here she is again. Yea thats a bit of snow. When we throw her in the snow bank its taller than she is. Looking out the front porch to the street. We DID shovel yesterday, but not yet this am. Looking back the other way from the Street. And what I have to shovel this morning with L so she can go do a reset.