One of the things that I didn't talk about much during FAILgust, and September was the fact that my Aunt E was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer.

That's why I was making the repeated trips down to Santa Maria-- to help get her house packed up and sorted for her move to stay with her daughter. Other bizarre circumstances made it a more complicated task than would normally be encountered, but we did it because it was Aunt E, and it needed to be done.

Friday evening, Aunt E stopped being responsive and rested peacefully until we lost her this morning about 10:30.

Two months may not seem like a really long time, but when you're facing the inevitable, it seems both way too short, and way too long simultaneously. Too much to do, and not enough time to say goodbye.

So here are my memories of Aunt E, because of all the people I know, she is on the list of those who must be celebrated:

My earliest memories of E were when she came to visit us when we were still living in Maine. This is a place where alot of my earliest memories are from, and yet I'm not sure where this place was, precisely. The things I distinctly remember, though, are getting our kitten Madame Grey there, hearing my name said by the lady with the Magic Mirror on Romper Room, and Aunt E and Cousin T coming to visit.

When we moved to California, my sister and I stayed with Aunt E while mom and dad made a trip to LA to finalize things with the rental house. Since I could remember, Aunt E has always had Basset Hounds, and I can never see one without thinking of her (and like will never be able to, either).

They say behavior is learned, but I disagree. Some of it has to be genetic. How else can you explain the similarities between me and my nephews, and between me and Aunt E? We're both huge Sci-Fi geeks (hence this post's title), avid readers, and lovers of history. Aunt E once met Patrick Stewart at a fundraiser for Shakespearian Theater somehere in Santa Barbara, I think. She asked if she could have an autograph, and when he said yes, she produced three Star Trek trading cards. He sighed and said, "ALL Star Trek?" Her reply was, "Hey, I'm a local politician who creates jobs for people so they can patronize your shows." He laughed, said "Quite right." and happily signed the cards. She gave one to me.

We're both also collectors, and her Trek collection far surpasses mine. FAR FAR surpasses. This should amaze those of you who knew me in college and actually SAW mine.



Aunt E was the only person I knew who could wear a silver lame' shirt, jeans, cowboy boots and 3 pounds of turquoise, and not stand out. It was just... right for her and her personality.

There was a period of time in college when Aunt E and I talked on the phone every couple weeks. I'm not really sure how it all started, to be honest. But the summer after a particularly horrible breakup, E knew I was hurting and just needed to get away from State College, so she offered to fly me home on the condition that I spent a week with her helping her with her computers. I readily accepted. Flew into Santa Barbara, spent a week working on her computers, and I also put together a shed for her that's still behind her house...



After the week, she lent me one of her cars, and I drove home to visit my parents. It should have been an 8 hour drive, but I decided to take 101 up, instead of 5, forgetting that the 101 bypass around SF no longer existed, and I found myself in downtown San Francisco (not to far from where I now live) in insane traffic at noon on a Friday. At this point in my life, I had a near debilitating phobia about driving in big cities, and there I was, on Van Ness in the middle of a beautiful summer day, white knuckle gripping the steering wheel. I thought to myself that I could either pull over and wait until night fall to continue, or I could just get the hell over it.

I got the hell over it, decided to take route 1 up the coast to Fort Bragg and cut over, and my 8 hour trip became a 15 hour soul cleanse.

I've never had trouble driving in a city since.



A few years ago, after I'd moved back to CA, we were talking on the phone again, and she was asking how things were going. I listed off all of the creative projects I was working on. Then she asked, "And how many of those projects are you getting paid for?" I laughed and told her, "None." To which she laughed and replied, "Jesus Christ, you're so much like your father. No wonder your mother loves you so much."

At the end of July of this year, while driving back from LA, I stopped at Aunt E's and had lunch with her and Uncle Roy. She was sleeping in a swivel chair in the kitchen with her dog, Hooch, who had just had surgery. She wanted to stay down stairs with him in case he needed anything in the night, since he couldn't make it up the stairs to the bedroom. I didn't know then that two weeks later I'd see her for the last time.

Okay, my jaw hurts now from clenching it to keep from crying as I wrote all this.

Aunt E, you are, and always will be the best. Swift journey. I love you.

me
Your very sad nephew

When I was 13, the house two houses down from ours sold, and two sisters, Patty and JoAnn moved in. They were eccentric and funny, great people, and much younger than their years.

From 13 till I graduated from high school, I would mow their lawn, for which they always overpaid me. When they would go on trips, my sister and I would take care of their animals. I house sat their dogs on several occasions.

Every year on my birthday (well beyond high school), there was a gift, and a card with a dollar in it for every year old I was, plus one to grow on.

Their family and extended family weren't really close by, so some Christmases or Thanksgivings, they would join us for dinner, and they truly became part of our lives.

JoAnn had traveled through Korea during (or just after) the war as part of a USO organized women's softball team. She had about 600 slides of the trip, and asked me one day about where she should take them to get them converted to digital pictures. Of course I offered to do it for her... the pictures were amazing, and it was worth every minute I spent on them just to see them. But of course she gave me way too much money for the project when I was done.

Patty was secretly in love with me. Every Christmas that they were over for dinner, she'd get a glass of wine or three in her, and when it was time to go and everyone was getting their goodbye hugs she'd whisper in my ear, "If I was fifty years younger... you wouldn't be safe!" Half the time she'd slip money into my hand and say, "Don't tell your mother. Just buy yourself another Christmas present." And most of the time I was able to get it back into her pocket before she left (for which I'd get scolded later).

I'm closer to these two women than I am to alot of my biological extended family.

Patty died about half an hour ago.

We got the call down here in Santa Maria because dad has the house phone forwarded to his cell. JoAnn wanted mom to come down to say good bye... but we're too far away.

And now I'm really sad.

me
It just doesn't stop...

So Thursday night Dad came down after dropping Mom at Aunt Elaine's*. His computer exploded, and we needed to rebuild it. The last time we'd done it was at least 4 years ago, if not more, so he was due for a replacement seeing as he does SO much freakin CAD work with it. So I ordered him a new motherboard, quad-core CPU, ginormous video card, memory and two 750 Gig SATA drives to set up in a RAID1 array for all his data.

I was hoping to be able to pull all his settings and such off of his old system drive, because it seemed that all the problems were actually with the motherboard, not the system, but alas, his system drive was pretty much DOA. Or mostly dead, at least. But there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do. Go through his clothes and look for loose change. But this was mostly dead, so I filled its lungs using a bellows and asked it what it had to live for, and it answered "To Blathe" which everyone knows means "To bluff."

I chocolate coated a miracle pill, but alas, all my cajoling wouldn't get any of the settings information off the drive. The Applications Data directory had given up the ghost.

It was a this point that my dad reminded me about Carbonite. Now, he's amazing at finding little programs on the internet, paying for them, and then asking me how they work when I've never seen them before. So at first, I assumed it was one of those. But as we discussed it, he convinced me that this was something legit. So we logged into his account on their web page. Reinstalled the software on the new machine, and lo-and-behold... there was a freakin on-line backup of all his data, AND all his computer settings... the whole Applications Data director, including his desktop items, cookies, favorites and such... all there for the downloading.

Ho. Ly. Crap.

It was a miracle.

The service is $50 per year, and the way it saved our asses, it's WELL worth it. It runs in the background and does incremental backups of files whenever they change, so the most recent version is always there, and apparently the previous version is kept for 30 days as well. How awesome is that?

So if this is something you're interested in, let me know, and I'll get you an invite code. You get a month free service for each person you refer. :)

me
Fixer of things

* This is a story for another time. That time will likely be later this week.

Pop over to kellyangel's woefully unused LJ and wish her a happy birthday!

me
The Most Annoying Brother EVAR!

My nephew, H, making a touchdown...

( video cut )

When mom started rescuing retired racing Greyhounds way back when, I had the usual anxiety about a crazy skittish dog coming into the house and disrupting everything with it's issues.

What I discovered, though, was that these amazing animals were just so thankful to have a loving home that they became immediately affectionate and well behaved. They had the most fantastic personalities, and watching them run was... just awesome. There's nothing like it. They were bred for speed and grace, and that's what they embody when they fly over the ground.

Today, mom had to take Sherman, the last of her adoptees, in to the vet for his final farewell. He was getting really old. He'd lost all his teeth, so he wasn't eating well, and he couldn't run anymore-- sometimes he could barely walk. With the latest heat wave, he'd stopped eating completely, so rather than let him suffer, mom made the hardest decision there is.
( Photos of Sherman )
Run well, Sherm. You will be missed.

me

Let me tell you, when it comes to family, I totally lucked out. Aunts, Uncles, Cousins... I come from a line of genetically designated awesomeness.

Unfortunately, I didn't REALLY realize just how awesome my parents were until about 5 years ago, when I moved back to CA. But you've heard that story before. This is a different story about the last two days, and the most recent string of "damn, my parents are great" events.

So back in November, I bought Mom and Dad The West Wing Complete Series for their anniversary. Dad didn't get into it QUITE as much as Mom, but Mom ate it up. And as she finished each season, she'd send it to me. A week after the Earth Shattering Porch Incident, I met Mom and Dad for breakfast at the half way point between my place and theirs (where I5 and 505 come together, if you're curious) and she handed over the last three seasons. As we were headed back to our respective recently swapped vehicles (the reason for the breakfast), she made an off hand comment about the results of the "Election" that happens in The West Wing's final season, spoiling the results for me. I played mock appalled, but it really wasn't a big deal.

So yesterday, after the Mother's Day Brunch at the restaurant, I came home to an empty house (roomies were away doing the Mother's Day Hot Tub Relaxation Event 2008) and decided to eschew the computer for a West Wing marathon. As bed time approached, I had time for one more episode, so I swapped out the disc only to discover that the next episode in line was the two part election day episode. Shaking my fist in the air, I started part one. A mere 42 minutes later, I shook my fist again and started part two. 38 or so minutes after that, I came to the realization that my mother had totally lied to me. TOTALLY lied to me. I won't spoil it for those of you who haven't seen it, but I spent both of those two episodes trying to figure out how they were going to get out of what they set up to come to the resolution that mom had "spoiled" for me previously. And then, when the episode ended, I sat there in bed, astounded and slack jawed. My mom totally punked me. Casually, without any buildup or followup, with a single sentence, she punked me. I don't know how long I laughed, but it was quite a while.

So today, I'm here at the restaurant, when iZora starts ringing. I look at her screen, and it says that it's Mom and Dad's house-- which is weird in of itself, cause for the last 4 or so years, they've had their number blocked from caller ID, and they didn't know how to turn it off. But regardless, I answered the phone, and it was Dad. Dad recently re-retired from the newspaper, so he's home focusing on Dad stuff. Today's Dad stuff was the "honeydo" list for Madeline. Did I mention that mom's driving Madeline now? Did I also mention that Mom and Dad both refer to her as Madeline, not "the white Miata?" ANYWAY, Dad was calling to ask me questions about Madeline's radio. For some reason it wasn't working, and he wanted some info before he started pulling the dashboard apart. And then he went into the list of other things he'd dealt with on the car. Droopy mirror? Fixed. Bad hydraulics on the left headlight? Fixed. Battery problem? Fixed. Now, realize that before my dad bought HIS Miata, he wasn't a car guy. But in the last decade, he's taught himself a metric butt tonne of car repair stuff, and now it's just old hat to him to strip the thing down and fix everything. He's got more "new tricks" than any "old dog" that I know. And the best part is that he's still learning, despite his protestations to the contrary.

It's actually a little intimidating to realize that the REST OF MY LIFE is going to have to be one of busting my ass to be sure that I turn out even comparably as awesome as my folks. I'm getting tired just pondering that.

me
Trying to figure out how to set the bar just a little higher...

So yes, the room that has been "my" room since college was Jimmy's when he was a kid.

I presented it to my Aunt Alyce after dinner on Thursday, complete with the story of how I found it, after most of the non-family had left. She laughed so hard she almost had to go to the bathroom.

We told Jimmy's wife about it today, and she got a big kick out of it, but she wouldn't let me wrap it for Ryan for his 18th birthday. :)

Here's the book. It's a first edition!!!!

me
She did her best work after five.

We made it, after the forever wait at O'Hare. Ug. Most boring airport in creation. Mom, Dad and I took turns passing Evie and iZora back and forth playing games for the last three hours or so.

But we arrived. Everyone waited here until we got in before heading home for the night... that was 11PM local time. By midnight most of the folks had filtered out.

The house is filled with the laughter that only comes from this family. It's as if each person's sole duty in life is to bring smiles to everyone else here. However, right now there is a tension right below the surface of the smiles. Everyone is all right until the hugs come, and for those few seconds shoulder shake and eyes tear up. How do you respond properly to "It's good to see you" when everyone wishes the events leading up to you being here never happened.

I have to concentrate really hard to maintain composure. It'll be even worse tomorrow.

We missed tonight's viewing thanks to airplanes, but apparently 40 minutes before things were scheduled to start tonight, the line to get in was already two blocks long. People waited up to an hour to pay their respects. They expect tomorrow (today now?) to be even busier.

I'm here now, in the bedroom that was "mine" whenever I visited in college. It pretty much looks exactly the same as it did 10 years ago, which is really a comfort. I even peeked up on top of the ceiling tiles and found the book I found there when I was 17. "The Horizontal Secretary." I don't even remember what inspired me to LOOK there, but one night I was laying in bed staring up at the ceiling, and I decided to stand on the bed and push the tile up, and there it was. I don't think I ever even read it. I just put it back and snickered. But it's still there, with a little more dust than was there 19 years ago.

It's the little things that help me maintain control.

Anyway, I should probably get to bed now. We've got a long day ahead of us.

me
Traveler... now with Underpants^TM

So here we are, hanging out at O'Hare watching the planes taxi in and out. Mom bought a book of Sudoku, Dad is studying his asprin bottle.

The 2:00 connecting flight we were supposed to be on was cancelled "due to weather" and now the 7:00 flight is delayed 56 minutes. Wheeeeee! The brother unit is prepared to pick us up should "weather" strike again (we suspect we're the only people on the flight).

So I'm sitting here wasting iZora's batteries while we wait.

Me
definately not wearing underpants... Whoops!

Edit:
Oh, wow, I didn't realize the flickr posts didn't upload all the text! My alarm didn't go off this morning, so we were rediculously late getting to the airport. Thanks to Turk for saving the day. This is also why I'm not wearing underpants. Don't rush to dress while you're still 3/4s asleep...

...within the first 15 minutes the dog manages to get chicken shit on you. :)

me
Doing laundry

I'd forgotten about this:

( image cut )

So this may not have been the most adventurous birthday¹, nor the most surprising², nor the most painful³, nor the most naughty⁴, it is notable for two reasons:

Birthday 2007 is the proud recipient of the "Longest Celebrated"⁵ and "Most Cakes"⁶ honors. 

It all started back on the 18th.  Turk and Carla joined me, Chef Forrest and family, and Catering Manager Cara and husband at Suppenküche for brunch.  Hearty German food and beers⁷... it was blissful.

Fast forward to Thursday.  Cake at Moron Life!  YAY!!  Tasty cake, too, which was fantastic.

Then comes Friday.  When I was supposed to be heading to DMV, Laura (Beer Activated Girl) kept finding excuses for me to hang out at the restaurant even though I was done.  Then there was cake and champagne and Sees Chocolate⁸.  Then DMV.  Then I got home to find a package from my parents which contained my now most favoriteist jacket.  Sooooo awesome.

Saturday brought early morning DimSum at the Hong Kong Flower Lounge in Millbrae with Cliff, Andrea, technocowboy, melibabe, lonespiritwolf2, gconnor, goldenlily, and swami_bob.  Surprisingly, the service was fantastic⁹.  Unsurprisingly, the food was great.

Post Sum, swami_bob joined me up in SF to hang out with Shaun and Hans before the Oui Be Negroes show.  I sat in on the post show jam, and then Shaun turned the closing night party into a quasi birthday party, complete with shamrock cookies and cheesecake.

Then, this morning, there was brunch with the restaurant staff at The Garage.  Mmmmm, bread pudding French toast.  Soooooooooooo tasty¹⁰.  And there was another cake.

So, yes, this year is the year of partys and cakes¹¹.

me
Older, wiser, but still me

1. See 1990, turning 19 on the bus on the way to Daytona Beach for Spring Break.
2. See 2002, first of the surprise parties thrown by silas7
3. See 2003, immediately post bionic arm
4. See-- PSYCH!  My mom reads this people, come on!
5. 8 days
6. 4 cakes¹²
7. Mmmmmmmm, beers
8. I ate too many sweets
9. Last time, not so much
10. And evil
11. If I see one more cake, I may die¹²
12. Cupcakes don't count

The tornadoes that touched down in Florida last night went right through my Uncle Bob's neighborhood.  Still no word on how he's doing.

Good thoughts appreciated.

me
A little worried

So I'll be headed off to the Outer Banks, North Carolina soon for a family reunion.  We'll be about half an hour north of Kitty Hawk, where the "first" plane flight happened.

In honor of that:

100 Years of Turbulence

A very interesting blog entry about what was going on in aviation 100 or so years ago.

me
Vacationer

So tonight was the Mother-Unit's 60th birthday.  My Aunt Elaine and Uncle Roy came out and the whole family went to dinner, which was really nice.

On the way home, though, I learned a very interesting fact:  For a period of about three weeks, my grandmother had a pet monkey that used to sit on the back porch and watch Jack Parr with her.  Apparently grandma was a monkey sitter.

Now y'all know where I inherited the crazy from.

me
A freakin monkey sitter!!! :D