Christmas... a few days early

I'll be bringing Bridget to Lafayette tomorrow to spend a few days with her parents before I head down myself on Christmas Day, so I decided we should hold a small present exchange here early, since what I wanted to get Bridget wouldn't carry easily back and forth.

See, I dislike Christmas trees - the maintenance, the set up, just about everything... I could live without, easily. Bridget, on the other hand, LOVES them. We've ad some discussions about getting one this year, but our roommate has also had som misgivings about getting one, so we held off. I talked to him today about getting her a small one, and what do you know, he'd been thinking of the same thing! So, we went off and bout a smallish tree, some ornaments, lights, and two bicycles that bridget has been wanting so we can go riding together. My roommate and I set up the tree, laid the oraments underneath it, and set the bikes up around the tree, and I led her in, hands over her eyes, to the tree. She gasped, giggled, and immediately started setting up lights. She loved it. And that makes me happy.

Poeple have been aksing what I want for Christmas - nothing, really. I'd be just as happy if I got nothing. However... if someone feels the need to get me something... I've been trying to rent Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" on DVD for some time. It seems like the kind of movie i would love... and I would love to own it, even. So, yeah. "Seven Samurai" on DVD.

Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow

Officially one of my favorite movies of the year. In the running for most favorite, even.

This movie captured the feeling of the 40s and 50s hero serials, comics, and cartoons so WELL. I felt like I was watching the old Fleischer Superman cartoons I had as a child. In fact, this movie is remarkably similar to one episode called "The Mechanical Men" (no, I didn't remember that - I looked up who made the cartoons, and a list of the episodes, and the titles reminded me of the episodes).

The movie knew when to be funny, it knew when to have a heroic moment, and it combined them both very well. Of course, being a sci-fi fan, I loved the retro era "futuristic" feel the whole movie had. There's a short story... I wish I could remember the title... about a man who can see what the present time would be like if the future imagined by the sci-fi writers of the 50s were true - we all know the pictures of "The Family of the Future" and their flying cars, and the curved glass buildings - that's kind of how this movie felt, at points.

Angelina Jolie - why did she have that role? She had like 5 lines, and maybe the same amount of screen time. The other actors did well, I felt... but I think they wasted the money on Jolie.

In Memory...

Luther Charles Veuleman, Sr, died today. For those who know him, that's Charlie's dad. We don't know the specifics of anything just yet; I just found out half an hour ago. Keep him in your thoughts, guys.

Isn't he cute?

Comics and Competition

I've been so stuck on Real Life recently. After Stumbling Upon it, I've devoured most of it - I've read most of their 5 year back issues already. I've even got Bridget hooked.

It just... reminds me of my life, I guess. The guy's a nerd/geek/whatever, has a little boring day job, lives with a couple of roommates... it's just too similar. Even Bridget thinks so.

Order of the Stick is a great stick-figure comic based on Dungeons and Dragons - absolutely hilarious stuff. Check it out, if you haven't already.

So the other day I buy a local paper, to flip through for job possibilities, and a kicking figure on the back page catches my eye. It looked like a martial arts ad, and I thought, "Sweet, maybe there's a new martial arts store opening up or something." Nope. There's a new studio opening up. Tuition cutting WAY below mine. And the instructor goes by... "Dynamite".

I kid you not.

So... I've been trying to figure out if I should feel threatened by this. I guess we'll find out.

In better news, a couple of students will be bringing by friends of theirs to check out class. Hopefully we'll get a couple of new students out of this.

Primetime at the Apollo

Don't ask about the title - it just came to me.

William calls me at about 4am, having problems balancing the credit card machine with what we've got in the computer. I was wide awake, and told I'd be there in a few minutes. He'd already been working on it for 2 and a half hours when I got there. Basically, we had one room that had checked out and paid a certain amount, but the credit card hadn't been charged... instead another one had. The card that had been charged didn't have a signed receipt, though... the other one did. The uncharged card matched the name of the guest in the room... it was hard for us to figure out what exactly had transpired close to 16 hours ago.

So we have this other charge, the unsigned one, with a wholly different name - no one under that name in the hotel, nor has anybody checked out by that name. So i start looking back through our records... and it takes me a while... but I find out this guy had stayed and checked out TWO WEEKS AGO... and had paid cash at check-out.

So now I'm confused. Why in the world was this guy's card even charged? And, for that matter... for a wholly different amount than he paid originally? I don't really know. We left a note asking that same question. The ONLY thing I can think of is that our intrepid morning clerk was attempting to delete his old preauthorization (should have been done a long time ago), and instead charged his card. Those two procedures are TOTALLY different.

We tried to set a fairly even tone to the letter, but I think our intense aggravation may have shown through. This is not the first time this has happened - this time the totals were off by about $90, but sometimes it can run into several hundreds of dollars. I just don't know what she's doing up there. Not showing up on time, that's for sure - she's usually about 20 minutes late. EVERY DAY.

Sorry... this may seem kind of agitated. It is. Just thought people might find it interesting.

Let's go to the movies!

We tried to go see The Inredibles last night, but fortune seemed against us. The theater was having a problem with the projector, so we agonized and decided to watch Christmas with the Kranks, which for those who don't know is based on a book by John Grisham. No, there are no lawyers - well, Tim Allen's character may be a lawyer, but that's not the point. It was a good movie, although slow throughout the first half. There were a lot of genuine laugh-out-loud moments, punctuated by the guffawing woman in the back of the theater (I don't think I'd ever heard a guffaw before her, actually). The previews - oh my god the PREVIEWS. The entire theater was practically rolling in the aisle laughing. Vin Diesel's new movie The Pacifier looks absolutely fantastic. Fat Albert looks to be wonderful.

Christmas Festival weekend, for me at least, is now over. I worked the afternoon shift today, and it went pretty well - I sold all of the rooms we had empty, had only one complaint, struck up some good conversations, was generally helpful to people who were looking for rooms, and mostly surfed the 'net. Life is good with a wireless connection.

Kent has just bought a new DVD writer, and has loaned me his old one, so i am off to install it!

Western Nights

Sitting here at the BW, finished with my night audit, and wondering what in the world I've done. It was... just too easy. I clicked a button that said "Night Audit", confirmed that, yes, I wanted to run the night audit, and sat back while it did its thing. I felt powerless. At my hotel, you feel empowered, working your way through command prompts mere mortal desk clerks never even see. There were no tapes, no reboots, no balancing of the credit card machine... it was all done with one click. I feel sad.

Daisy and Joe came! There was great doubt that they would, but here they are, with Rosie Posie Gamgee in tow. She really is very cute, if a bit spoiled.

Did I mention that every 5 or 10 minutes, the Trouble alarm goes off over here? Probably a short in the panel... but it's annoying, as I have to go acknowledge the alert and enter a password - for those in the know, it's a typical password for these establishments.

I've been wanting to upgrade my computer recently - I haven't been pleased with game quality. For a long time, I was going to upgrade the CPU... but now I'm leaning towards a new video card. That should take care of a lot of what I need, actually.

Christmas Festival Weekend

This weekend is Christmas Festival, Natchitoches' one big event of the year. Something close to 100,000 people will gather to see about 300,000 christmas lights. Yay. And the hotel is packed, of course.

I will be working at the hotel next door tomorrow night; it's owned by the brother of the guy who owns this one, and they had no one to work it - and they're paying time and a half. How could I say no? Money is good.

Started playing Thief 3 - is goodness. Thief 2 was disappointing. There are some things about 3 that I'm not liking, but it is grabbing me much more than 2 ever did. I never even finished 2, as it kept crashing during the last level. We finally just watched the final cinematic, and were glad we hadn't finished playing. Part 3, so far, is much, much better.

Introspection

I'm in an... interesting mood. A rather introspective mood. (on a side note, ever meet someone who was being interspective?) I've been feeling like this for about a month now, maybe a bit longer or shorter. Anytime I start to think about me, and who I am, and where I am in my life, I get kind of... depressed. It's rather odd.

It comes down to one thing: I don't think I know who I am. I feel like I've tried to be somebody my whole life, tried to force myself into some mold I had for myself... but that I've never been honest with myself or anyone else about who I am. I pretend, day in and day out, that I know some things, or that I'm good at some things, or that I like some things. I'm not even sure that I know, am good at, or like anything (there's some Socratic wisdom for you).

So this puts me in the position of knowing that I have built this life that I don't have any connection with. That's not to say that I don't care for my friends; I do, and deeply. It's that I'm faced with the fact that I've probably lied to all of them. Perhaps not outright, perhaps no false words left my lips... but lied none the less. What kind of a person does that make me?

I'm a nice guy, or at least I try to be. Bridget has often gotten on my case about about being too nice, and I think maybe she's right. I don't feel like I let people walk over me, really... it's more like I walk over me for them. I don't know if i can change that. Most people probably don't even notice it, really.

I'm not a good friend. I'm wishy-washy. I'm absent-minded. I do things for me more often than not. I don't think to involve people that are, or I wnat to be, my friends. Combine this trait with the one above, and you get me, whose first thought of one friend is thetime I almost left him behind when going to eat - and he was in the same room with me. I don't even try to keep in touch with some of the best friends I have, and those I do, I perpetuate the lie that is my life. This, as one can imagine, leads to the long, quiet, alone moments that need these days.

(I'm not ranting, or trying to be emotional here. I don't want anyone to apologize to me, or try to talk to me about this - you may notice that comments are off. this is something I need to figure out.)

I am a violent person. Kind of lends itself to the martial arts. I also have a short temper. When I get angry, my first solution is violence. I will often be very, very angry, and will have to fight the urge not to beat the crap out of someone. If you see me clenching fists and/or jaw... well, I'm not happy. Years of practice have made it easier to swallow that reaction, and turn it into long, quiet, alone moments.

So... those are my thoughts for the day... who's next?

The coming week

The forest service job fell through - they were looking for someon who had experience with wildlife and controlled burns, and I do not. Ah well. Keeps me from making a decision about it.

Kent went home, and William left this morning. Kent, Bridget, and I have been trying to find a new roommate for when William moves out... our one prospect has decided not to. I've been checking the papers for new places, both for the three of us and for just me and Bridget. Some nice stuff in the current paper. I would try to call right now, but it is a Sunday. Better off tomorrow. Then again, they may be gone by tomorrow.

We'll be going home for Thanksgiving on Tuesday, coming back Thursday morning - Bridget works Thursday afternoon. We're going to spend time with both of our families, and maybe some time in Hackberry with Bridget's extended family. Yay, poker!

Speaking of poker, Friday night was fun. It was just me, Bridget, and Simo, but we had fun. Bouree would NOT end. And Simo seems to like High-Low Bloody Mary, which makes me happy. It can be a dangerous game, but a heck of a lot of fun.

Oh, yeah, and for the previous audioblog... check out audioblogger.

Testing the Audioblogger

Well, that's definitely interesting. Recorded that in my van, on my cell phone. I can see the usefulness of the feature... away from a computer, wanting to make a blog entry... all you've got is a cell phone. Neat.

Of forests and credit cards

Here I am, 4:30, just running the audit, because whoever worked this morning couldn't do their job correctly. Sometimes I wonder what goes on in their heads when their screwing some of these things up.

"Oh, I posted too much to VISA. I know! I'll post a negative amount to CASH, thjat will give me a zero balance on that room. All done!"

Theoretically, the next part should be: "Oh, my VISA totals in the credit card machine don't match the totals in the computer. Let me think about what I may have done wrong." Instead, if they even compared those totals, this happens: "Oh, the totals are off. The night auditor will fix it."

YOU BROKE IT! I have no idea what went on this morning, or whose rooms you may have screwed up. I have to print at least 3 reports and compare transactions one by one, matching amounts with room numbers (and sometimes people have changed rooms, so those might not even match), and now here I am, an hour and a half late, starting the actual audit process.

In better news, kind of, I've been informed of a job opening at the US Forest Service station near here. The job is on the fire line, running controlled fires, doing forest cleanup, that sort of thing. It pays nearly twice what I'm making now, plus benefits. It's a full time job, plus overtime.

Sounds great. It's a pretty standard day job, though... it will prevent me from taking regular classes as long as I have it. I'd be restricted to internet and night courses. And that's the dilemma... kind of. I've been taking small course loads recently anyway... and it is a LOT more money. Hmmm.

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Yesterday at work pretty much sucked. I worked a swing, meaning working a shift, sleeping a shift, working a shift. So I didn't exactly get a whole lot of sleep. So here I am at work, the 7am to 3pm shift that I used to work all the time - the most stressful shift at the hotel. You've got to check people out, make sure everyone gets out in time for housekeeping to get their room cleaned, balance the credit card machine, assign rooms, and make keys for all of those rooms, and eventually start checkng people in. Really, it's not that bad... unless you have 3 schools coming in that will occupy most of your rooms right off the bat, and need to worry about the schools that are coming in omorrow, as well as the silly "flow-through rooms" that have no meaning... and I'm starting to rant, and don't mean to do that yet.

All of that was okay, but I had been forewarned that my relief may not have known she was supposed to work today. My manager even called to tell me to call her. So I did - and left a message. Not a good sign. So later I called again, and paged her. She called back 20 minutes later, FURIOUS that she was on the schedule. She was four or five hours away from the hotel.

To cut off a long story, I ended up working 4 extra hours, and then my manager came in, and William came in 2 hours early. So it earned me and William some extra money, but additional animosity... we just don't know who to aim it at.

To make matters worse, my brand new cell phone is not working. Refuses to turn on. I received a phone call from Coke, and when I ended the call I noticed the battery was nearly out, so I put it on the charger. Hasn't turned on since then.

In other news, next week is Tanksgiving, and that means vacation! Yay! I will actually probably end up with 2 days of truly being off, which will be good. The bad thing, though, is I will probably have to cancel class all of next week. Hate doing that. :-(

On another bright side, Simo may be hosting poker night soon! We haven't played poker in so long... I miss it. It was great when we all played together.

The Big Hit

I just finished watching this movie on TBS. I'd never heard of it before, and reading the description on IMDB (I love having internet at work) didn't make it seem that interesting. Still, it starred Mark Wahlberg, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Avery Brooks, which intrigued me. So I watched.

I loved it. It struck me as a mockery of action movies in general, or at least one that didn't take itself very seriously. The plot was... well, not that great, and predictable, but the action sequences were wonderful. Pretty over-the-top fights, chases, and explosions. It was fun, and enjoyable. I think I prefer movies that are just fun. Terminator 3, for instance. It wasn't the great movie that T2 was, but I don't think it tried to be; it was just fun.

I've just installed Libranet Linux onto my PC. I've tried some other Linux distributions, and have generally liked the experience. We'll see if this one sticks. Really, I could do most of my computing in Linux, as all of the major programs I use run under Linux. Gaming though... I'm stuck with Windows for a while.

Eighty-six years is a long time

The Red Sox have won the World Series. I had faith in 'em.

It's been 86 years since their last one; prior to that they had won 5. They've appeared 4 other times, and lost in Game 7 every time. Swept the series against the Cardinals in 2004, though. Will they do it again? Can they do it again? Doesn't matter, not in Boston right now.

The best part, though, is that they will receive their rings in the first game they play next season, in Fenway Park - against the Yankees.

Is it done yet?

Website update again.

Fixed some display bugs and added all three stylesheets, and a javascript to support alternate stylesheets for IE. Play around, let me know what you think.

Ever just want to SMACK somebody?

I was woken up at 8 this morning by William calling to ask if I could come in to work for him. I was groggy, but conscious enough to realize that William still being at work meant that Brandi had not shown up - again.

It seems to be this bad habit among the girls lately to show up late - like 30 minutes or longer late. I had to come in for William one day at 9:30am so he could go got class. Brandi showed up at 10 that day; she came in at 9:45 today. She, and a couple of the other girls, are sorority chicks, thus, have this great social life, apparently. Brandi said she had "gone into hibernation mode." I called her house several times, letting the phone ring repeatedly. I finally got an answer at 9am, and her roommate, who herself I must have woken up, had no idea where she was.

But why do i complain? It will do no good.

Return of the... Sox?

The Evil Empire has fallen.

The Red Sox have won the American League Championship Series, putting them in their first World Series since 1986. Not only that, they beat the Yankees. The New York YANKEES. At Yankee Stadium. Is it possible that the Curse of the Bambino is finally over?

Impossible mission completed

What in the...?

Ever since coming back from the wedding, I've had this on-again off-again pain near my right kidney. It doesn't seem to be a muscular pain, as far as I can tell. There's no knot, or tension there. It flares up when I laugh, or talk too loudly; class Tuesday was fun, let me tell you. Thankfully I had Drew to help me out. So I called my mom, a renal nurse, and she gave me some suggestions.

Bridget's loan has been approved, and we'll have it in a few weeks. Definitely help a whole lot, with the bills, moving the school, and tuition, of course.

Mmmm... CSS...

New update on the school website.

Very different color scheme. Added about 4 lines of HTML, and struggled with smacking the CSS around for a little while. I like it. I'll probably set this one up as the primary stylesheet, with the other as an alternate.

Operation:Matrimony 4

The wedding this past weekend went pretty well. Of course, the bride's family is kind of crazy. All of them seemed to have a different idea of how they wanted the wedding to run, it seemed. In the end, though, everything went fine. They got hitched, there were no major mistakes that were unfixable, and we even had a laugh-out-loud moment when I (as best man and one of the witnesses) had to ask aloud for a pen to sign the license with.

The groomsmen's presents were GREAT. He got us all, and himself and the usher, bokken, wooden practice swords, with our initials hand-burned (by him) in the handle. Beautiful, absolutely gorgeous. I'll try and get some pictures up.

The Big Talk

We had a big meeting today at the karate school, to tell all of the students about the move. I had typed up letters and maps and stuff, and we handed them out, and I spoke briefly about the benefits of the move. Everyone seemed pretty excited about it.

I've been pretty nervous about that, for some reason. I didn't quite know how everyone was going to take it. I mean, it's not like I could see real reasons for them to really complain about it or anything. But what if they did? Thankfully, of course, don't have to worry about that.

Was supposed to have a new student start today, but she didn't show up. Hopefully she'll be here Thursday.

I'm going to my friends' wedding. The groom is my first, well, only dorm roommate from college. We shared a room for two years - great guy. Love him to death. He and his soon-to-be-wife lived with my wife for a little while, meaning I lived there too, really. And I'm the best man. I'm very much looking forward to it. I was married in June; was a groomsman for my karate instructor in July; attended my wife's sister's wedding in July; and now I'm the best man at this wedding. Yay! For Marriage.

Butterfly Effect

Rented it tonight for part of my and my wife's "date night" - what a screwed up movie. My wife, the psych major, of course loved it. Great movie. Very different than I thought it was going to be. Although I -still- want to know, what comes first, the blackouts, or the memories? ARGH!

We Believed a Man Could Fly...

Christopher Reeve Dies at 52

"You'll Believe a Man Can Fly" was the tagline for the original Superman movie. And we did - how many people can hear his name and not picture Superman? Or even the other way around? He brought to life a character designed to inspire us to greatness - to embody truth, and justice, and hope. He brought us hope even after his accident. I cried when I saw the Super Bowl commercial that featured him walking.

I believed.

Reeve really was
'the man of steel'

Tribute from superman-v.com

Some great newspaper cartoons on his passing

Rats and Frats and Rabbit Dragons

At least, I think that's how it goes...

I've been unable to use the internet on this laptop tonight until just a few minutes ago. It was very odd - it started out okay, and then after 2 pages or so Firefox told me it had reached the max redirections for this URL or something. IE, when I tried it, would just keep infinitely being redirected somewhere. I rebooted, logged in as a different user, left it off for a while, took out the wireless card, but nothing worked. Finally, I turned it off, unplugged it, and removed the card. THAT finally took.

Great news! The plan for the dojo/hotel union has gone through - we'll be using the Conference Hall starting November 1. I'm also recoding the school website. You can see the current version here, and the new version over here, at my school account. Let me know what you think.

A-HA!

Seems that Mozilla's rendering engine is just much more strict than IE's. The problem wasn't that the "em" was different, just that I hadn't specified a margin between the element and other elements. IE took this to mean it was 0, Mozilla applied a standard margin space apparently.

Now that I know that, we'll see how things get rolling.

Fifty Dollars

I'm holding in my hands right now fifty dollars.

And not just any fifty dollars.

Fifty one-dollar bills, freshly wrapped. Never circulated. IN SEQUENCE. This is that stack of money the guys in the FBI are always trying to pawn off on the bank robbers and kidnappers to track them. I wonder how Jay ended up with it?

I have resolved my issues with IE, mostly. I gave way to its almighty weight and went with a less grand scheme than I had wanted. It's "em" measurement is larger than Mozilla's, it seems, which is odd, as it is supposed to be one of the two "fixed" measurements in CSS.

Almost time for my shift to end. Been a strange night - hectic and slow at the same time.

Stupid IE

IE has LOUSY CSS support. So in attempting to write a site using CSS, I need to flip back and forth between Firefox and IE, hoping the view is at least somewhat similar. In many cases, it is not. As far as I can tell in the CSS community, Mozilla's rendering engine is great with CSS, and IE's is not. Should this be a surprise? Not really, I suppose. For the past few years, IE has been the only browser on the market. 95% market share, can you believe that?

Get Firefox if you haven't already. What's one of their slogans? "Safer, Better, Faster," I believe. Less system integration, better standards compliance, a brilliant rendering engine, and a bag full of extensions. Gotta love it.

Victory is at Hand

Hmmm... see, already in a better mood. I just finished re-coding some of this blog's CSS. Not having much experience with CSS, I feel a bit victorious. Kind of like I used to feel when writing raw HTML. It's been some time since I've had that feeling. It's a good one.

Mild Annoyances

The school did a demo yesterday. Really wish it could have been better. It was a small-town festival a few miles down the road, and I knew it wasn't going to go well. We did this same festival 2 years ago, and brought about 8 students, I think. This year, it was me and two students, a 9-year old and a college-ager. We showed off some basic techniques, some forms, some forms application, self defense, weapons form and application, and some sparring. We started late, as we didn't know who to talk to about where or when to do the demo, and I had forgotten to bring several items that would have helped out significantly. The students did great, though, and we had a good time.

There is this group of people staying at the hotel right now that, as the title suggests, is mildly annoying. In fact, all of the guests that I've spoken to today are mildly annoying.

Hmm... maybe they aren't, really. I've just been in a bad mood lately. Maybe that's it.

Or maybe they are just really annoying.

Old Friends

An old friend came into town today. Hadn't seen him since my wedding - so it was very good to see him. I've lost touch with so many of my friends over the years. I can divide my life in to several sections by friends:

Late college: That is, now. My wife and current crop of friends, whom I can see losing touch with as our lives move on from this area and period.

Early college: All of my friends from this time have moved away; I still keep in touch with some of them. I can feel them slipping away slowly at times, though.

High school: I had few friends in this time of my life; two, really. And now I rarely speak to them. Two of the greatest friends of my life. I do try... probably not hard enough.

Pre-high school: I have this great group of friends that lives in Massachusetts, near where my grandmother lived, and I would visit there every summer. My best man is in this group, and two of them came to my wedding. I probably keep more in touch with this group than any other besides my current friends.

I fear losing friends, because I'm so bad at keeping in touch. I wish we could all just form a commune somewhere. Wishful thinking eh?

Houston

So, we're in Houston now. Tuesday I was at the karate school, lightly taking a nap before class, when my dad called to tell me that his brother had died. I started calling students immediately and cancelling class, making preparations to head down here. Made sure I had relief at work, talked to my manager about picking up my check early, that sort of thing. And then I realized I was without anything to do, but thankfully one of my roommates suggested playing some Unreal Tournament 2004, so I did that mindlessly for a while.

Kenny was pretty bad off in the end. He was awake, nad had been for several days, which I hadn't known until Tuesday. He had really bad circulation, and his hands and feet were black from lack of blood. He would have needed them amputated even if he survived, as well as constant dialysis and 24-hour assistance. They took the respirator tube out about 3:30 Tuesday afternoon. He was dead within an hour. My mom said you could watch his heart rate slow on the monitor in the room. I'm glad I wasn't there.

My grandmother is taking it pretty hard at times. We watched home video footage she had taken of my wedding, and immediately following it was footage of my uncle opening presents. She started crying, and my dad started crying. I've rarely, if ever at all, seen my father cry.

Later on, she was showing us various photographs of her grandkids at various stages of growth, and she found some pictures of Kenny and her youngest son, Matt. She again broke down. What must it be like to outlive two of your children? She's started harping on my dad to quit smoking, so she doesn't have to bury him, too.

Of course my dad is fond of telling a story about this 90-year old musician who was told smoking would kill him. The musician replied, "You mean I'm gonna die? Do you smoke?" The questioner, I think my dad said it was Ed Sullivan, responded, proudly, that he did not. The musician responded, with a big smile, "Well, you gonna die, too."

So the memorial service is tonight, at 7. He's being cremated, and there will be no viewing of the remains, just a small service. The family would like no flowers sent, to instead make a small donation to charity, or just donate blood. I will probably do the latter, here at the hospital he was in.

Miss you uncle Kenny.

Objects of Newness

So there's the possibility of the ultimate blending of my two jobs. We've known for a while now that we need a new location for the karate school. The hotel operates a 2400 square-foot conference hall out in back, complete with air conditioning, a storage room, and two bathrooms. Sounds like a match.

Bad news, my manager/owner of the hotel rents the room for more per day than I pay for a month's rent at my current location. Still, I will approach him with a full proposal - the building is RARELY used on the days I'll be needing. It would be sitting there, earning him no money, while I could be using it AND paying him, albeit much less than what he normally makes. On the other hand, we won't be bringing food, or drinks, or loud music. So, hopefully he'll like the ideam and take into consideration that I've worked for him for longer than all of his other desk clerks combined.

Weariness

Figures my first real post here would be a bit dramatic...

7:20 AM - I get a call from the hotel where I work. My mother wants me to call her on her cell phone. This, of course, is immediate cause for alarm; with my uncle in the hospital and my brother becoming more and more th ever-rebellious teenager neither myself or my sister ever were, a plethora of morbid possibilities ran through my head.

The worst ones about my brother weren't true, thankfully. He's still alive, at least until I get my hands on him.

My uncle Kenny, though... is in bad shape. He's been the hospital in an induced coma for almost a month now. His liver has failed, and they apparently are unable to take him off of dialysis, meaning his kidneys are shot, too. I talked to my dad, briefly, and the doctors were going to be talking to my cousin sometime this morning - probably meaning they'll be taking him off of life support.

I've never been particularly close to my uncle. I've always enjoyed seeing him, and visiting him. My dad, though... this will be the second brother he's lost. His younger brother, Matt died when I was maybe 4 years old. I don't even remember him, which is what makes me the saddest. My dad used to be a professional photographer, carried his camera everywhere, so we have lots of pictures from that time, including my uncle. Looking at them makes me wonder what he was like. My sister can remember, although I don't know whether it's a real memory or one induced by being told the story many times, climbing on my uncle Matt while he was in the hospital. She was about 2. I don't even have that.

My family seems to be dying off in droves recently. My cousin Jason died in early 2001. It was a shocker, as we'd thought he was getting better, but not unexpected with a brain tumor. My grandmother died December 27, 2001 - I had talked to her on Christmas Day, and she sounded fine. She died during a routine dialysis appointment.

Her son, my uncle, died 6 months later, from a drug overdose. I was on vacation with my then-girlfriend-now-wife's family. Interestingly enough, my mom was on vacation in the same area, and we were scheduled to get together - of course, I didn't expect her first words to be "Uncle Kevin is dead." Kind of puts a dampener on things.

My grandmother's mother attended all three of those funerals. She died last year, though she lived far longer than anyone expected. I can remember one of the last times my mother visited Massachusetts with us kids she cried when we left my great-grandparents's house. She said this may be the last time she ever saw them. Her grandfather lived a decade longer, I believe. Her grandmother lasted 6 more.

Whew. So that's my stress relief for today.

Voa-voa and Voo-voo... miss you.