Fairweather Zealot

Well, my cousin got married on Saturday, and it took a whole weekend to fit in all of the festivities. With relatives pouring in from everywhere (most of her mom’s family is from Florida, my sister and family live in Georgia, and her sister had to come back from the Peace Corps in Ecuador), they made the most of having everybody being in the same place. The party started with post-rehearsal munchies and pool time on Friday night, ran through the wedding on Saturday and concluded on Sunday afternoon with the post-wedding brunch. It was great to see everyone, but man am I exhausted. I can only imagine how much Erin and Chas needed that honeymoon in Puerto Rico at this point. Continue reading

My sister, brother-in-law and nephew are all up in PA this week for my cousin Erin’s wedding, and for weeks I’ve been trying to figure out the schedule so that a) I could get to see them and b) we could take them for the ethnic dinners we promised when we visited in April (for some reason they can’t get good Indian or Thai out in rural Georgia – go figure). As the days grew closer to their arrival, I tried to get an idea of the schedule and worked with my father to figure out what would be the best days to go to the Franklin Institute and the Natural History museum across the street with Caleb who’s 2 1/2 going on 5. Two weeks ago, it was fairly set we would go on Friday. A week ago, it appeared it would be Monday. Last weekend it was back to Friday (aka today). Last night it was “probably tomorrow” (again, aka today).

This morning, it was 10:30 and they still hadn’t left the house. They were still going to see my grandfather, which meant that instead of meeting in Philly by noon, they wouldn’t be there until at least 1 or later. And we still had to go to the rehearsal party at my aunt’s tonight – leaving scant time for doing the Franklin Institute, let alone that AND the museum. My father is notoriously late and takes an hour to get ready for anything, so I’m a little frustrated. Why?

Because it’s frickin’ 12:30 already and they still haven’t started moving toward Philly yet. Suddenly, my ONE day with Caleb – a day I took off of work for – is becoming the ‘hi Caleb, bye Caleb’ event. At this point, Shari can’t even go because she has to go to the rehearsal dinner to take pictures.

I really wish people would get their frickin’ acts together sometimes.

Quite of the Day

“It’s not that I don’t enjoy getting involved in a great story, or caught up in an engaging article, but I have the attention span of a cat at dusk, cranked up on Shrimp Medley, during a massive bird migration.”
– from Coudal Partners

It was a long 48 hours – 48 hours that saw my grandfather step to the brink of death and back again. The good news – he’s alive and doing (relatively) well. But it was a roller coaster ride that started on Tuesday evening. Continue reading

This shot just makes me smile – and I needed it after a long day.

I had to go down to Wilmington for some software training today – a prototyping software called iRise that looks pretty cool. Complicated but cool. And of course, after spending today and tomorrow learning it, I have to have a site prototype done in the next 10 days using it. Learning curve = logarithmic.

On the way home, I decided to pop in and see my grandfather at his shop. When I got there, however, I found out that he was in the hospital – they had taken him there a couple of hours before. So, I rushed over to the ER to find out how he was. Luckily, it seems to be mostly dehydration and weakness from not eating for the last couple of days. He sounded very weak and tired when I got there, but a couple of hours of saline and a ham-and-cheese sandwich later, he seemed to have some of his vigor back.

So, back to the emu – and the fact that I makes me laugh. It’s from my trip to see my nephew in April, and I just had to get a shot of this guy trying to stare me down. He won, by the way – I wasn’t going to mess with someone who was looking at me like that.

« See Who are YOU calling UGLY? on Flickr »

Well, we’re back from our trip to see my nephew for his 3rd birthday. I haven’t gotten to see Caleb as much as I might like over the few years of his life, but we’ve been making a more concerted effort to stay in touch and see the little guy. So, for our trip to Georgia, we made an extended vacation that would allow us some time with him and my sister outside of the ‘group’ visits we’ve had (like the beach where there are 8 families, and too little private time). Continue reading

This weekend started off on a bit of a down note when I found that I could get to sleep Friday night (I didn’t get to sleep until 4 a.m. Friday night). Finally, begrudginly, I got out of bed and went downstairs to do some work, check out Flickr, work – anything that one can do in the middle of the night. But it was a message I got just after 2 a.m. that really put the weekend into perspective. Continue reading

Well, after a scare at the end of last week, things took a turn for the better over the weekend. Grandpop was back to his old self (well, at least he was back to having some strength and liveliness), although he did check himself out of the hospital a day early against doctor’s orders. Continue reading

Update

We went to see my grandfather last night at the hospital, and when we first got there I was … well, it didn’t look good. He looked – for the first time ever – feeble. He was sleeping, but his skin was gaunt and he was labored in his breathing. My aunt Fran was there waiting for him to wake up, and so she filled us in on what little she knew, filling in the stories we had already gotten. Not too long after we arrived, he woke up but was disoriented and confused. He couldn’t remember where he was, and sounded horrible – his voice was a bare whisper and he could barely move even to get a drink of water. His answers to our questions about how he was feeling were labored and didn’t always make sense. After a few minutes of consciousness, he fell back to sleep. I was really worried – this was a shell of the man that I have known my whole life.

Later, however, they brought in some saline to get his fluids back up (he had pulled out the IVs repeatedly the night before in his delirium, so they had stopped giving him IV fluids) – and the effect was almost instantaneous. He seemed more alert, his voice got stronger and his color looked better. He still confused Shari with my sister Cara, and needed to be shown the pictures we brought him again (he didn’t remember seeing them when he woke up the first time), but he was able to remember his partners home phone number, seemed to be able to recall things from the previous night and generally seemed much better. Best of all, he looked more like a man who was ready to get well instead of giving up.

We’re going to see him again tonight and hope that consistent hydration and whatever other treatments he got have continued his path to improvement.

I’ve been really busy lately, and I have been meaning to write about a lot of things – product reviews, movies, what I’ve been doing (and not doing), etc. But it’s a worrying event that got me to stop working enough to write. My grandfather is in the hospital again, and it’s not looking good. Continue reading

Well, it took almost a month, but here they are – my future broken resolutions for the year (√ = a stretch goal) Continue reading