Dave
Staff member
I'm finally back to work. Finally. I left work Friday and had a whirlwind weekend with highs, lows and all sorts of shenanigans.
Saturday, the wife went a couple hours North to help her sister move. I had the entire day to myself. And I had no idea what to do. I wasted the entire day doing absolutely nothing. It kinda sucked. I played a couple games and was bored. I watched some TV and was bored. I tried to read and was bored.
Sunday, we had Sammi's senior pictures taken. That was fun but busy as hell, walking around half the damned city. We did find a British-style double-decker bus and had some pictures taken on that. And then I had to leave to take my son to work and missed the taking of the second half of pictures. All told they took 1300 pictures. Quite a bit to go through.
Yesterday was the funeral. Talk about an atmosphere of tension.
My uncle died Wednesday night of cancer. As you read in the rant thread, I found out about it by the funeral home calling. But it gets worse than that.
My father found out his brother died by the phone message left on his answering machine at midnight. "Virgil died at 10."
Now, my grandpa & grandma had 9 boys. 2 didn't make it out of infancy but the others are nearly all in their 80's. They are (in no certain order) Kenneth, Virgil, Paul, Eldin, Harold, Harley & Grant. Kenneth died some years ago from cancer and Virgil is now the second. The rest are in various stages of ill health, with none of them remaining untouched by cancer or other debilitating diseases. With my father it's terrible lungs that hardly keep him alive now.
The brothers (and to a lesser extent their wives) have always been very close. Yet this time when Virgil died, they chose to exclude my mother and father from everything. They didn't even call until 6 or so Thursday night to let them know that the brothers had all gotten together and made the arrangements. When asked why they were excluded the response they got was, "How often did you visit Virgil when he was in the home?"
So at the funeral yesterday, my mother and father sat away from everyone else. This huge family with 5 remaining brothers, almost 20 kids and many more...and my parents sat alone with only members of our immediate family with them. My mother and father were (and are) extremely upset and hurt by the whole thing. After the funeral, my mother and father went to their house a few blocks away while the rest of the family had a potluck lunch in the basement of the church. I went to the church first to see some of my cousins but then went to my mom & dad's. (Yes, I ended up eating lunch twice.)
The tragedy of the whole situation is that it was not only preventable, but seems to me that ANY message of this import should NEVER be left on a fucking machine. He (the brother who left the original voice mail) should have said, "Hey, this is X. Please call me when you get this." Even if they couldn't have helped with the arrangement, they could have been told something. The whole situation is stupid and hurtful.
And that was my weekend.
tl;dr:
A guy I once knew got his penis caught in his zipper while watching two birds.
Saturday, the wife went a couple hours North to help her sister move. I had the entire day to myself. And I had no idea what to do. I wasted the entire day doing absolutely nothing. It kinda sucked. I played a couple games and was bored. I watched some TV and was bored. I tried to read and was bored.
Sunday, we had Sammi's senior pictures taken. That was fun but busy as hell, walking around half the damned city. We did find a British-style double-decker bus and had some pictures taken on that. And then I had to leave to take my son to work and missed the taking of the second half of pictures. All told they took 1300 pictures. Quite a bit to go through.
Yesterday was the funeral. Talk about an atmosphere of tension.
My uncle died Wednesday night of cancer. As you read in the rant thread, I found out about it by the funeral home calling. But it gets worse than that.
My father found out his brother died by the phone message left on his answering machine at midnight. "Virgil died at 10."
Now, my grandpa & grandma had 9 boys. 2 didn't make it out of infancy but the others are nearly all in their 80's. They are (in no certain order) Kenneth, Virgil, Paul, Eldin, Harold, Harley & Grant. Kenneth died some years ago from cancer and Virgil is now the second. The rest are in various stages of ill health, with none of them remaining untouched by cancer or other debilitating diseases. With my father it's terrible lungs that hardly keep him alive now.
The brothers (and to a lesser extent their wives) have always been very close. Yet this time when Virgil died, they chose to exclude my mother and father from everything. They didn't even call until 6 or so Thursday night to let them know that the brothers had all gotten together and made the arrangements. When asked why they were excluded the response they got was, "How often did you visit Virgil when he was in the home?"
So at the funeral yesterday, my mother and father sat away from everyone else. This huge family with 5 remaining brothers, almost 20 kids and many more...and my parents sat alone with only members of our immediate family with them. My mother and father were (and are) extremely upset and hurt by the whole thing. After the funeral, my mother and father went to their house a few blocks away while the rest of the family had a potluck lunch in the basement of the church. I went to the church first to see some of my cousins but then went to my mom & dad's. (Yes, I ended up eating lunch twice.)
The tragedy of the whole situation is that it was not only preventable, but seems to me that ANY message of this import should NEVER be left on a fucking machine. He (the brother who left the original voice mail) should have said, "Hey, this is X. Please call me when you get this." Even if they couldn't have helped with the arrangement, they could have been told something. The whole situation is stupid and hurtful.
And that was my weekend.
tl;dr:
A guy I once knew got his penis caught in his zipper while watching two birds.
