Goodbye Aunt K

Today was Aunt K's memorial. It was quite lovely, yet sad. On display was pictures of her, her and her friends and some of her art. They read one of her poems, and some passages from her diary. They were lovely, artistic and sweet, like her. My sister had the best comment on the day. "We have to figure out a better way to have family reunions". Grandma and Grandpa K, came up, and we meet Grandma and Grandpa C at the services.(Yes, I know how great it is that I have both sets of grandparents and how I wish that I had more time to spend with them. They are all amazing people who I dearly love) We saw a lot of people that I haven't seen in a long long time. Some I remember, some I didn't. My Beautiful Wife has been there all day for me. I truly appreciate her. She never got to meet Aunt K, and I really wish should could have. I think they both would of really liked each other.

I have come up with something that have made it easier to deal with her loss. The saying we've lost someone, when they have died. I like the idea that we have simply misplaced them, like your car keys or watches and will someday find them in the last place we looked (of course it's the last placed we've looked, after we find something we typically stop looking for it, but I digress). Someday things will be right back like they were. I have hope that I will see Aunt K again and she won't have any of the pain she had in this life. Also you never really lose someone that has helped you be the person you are, they are always a part of you, so they are always with you.

After the service, we met up at Mom and Dad's. We had dinner, and watched T.V. and talked about funny TV commercials, and things we had done in the past. We told jokes, and funny stories. This is how my family deals with these kind of things. We replace tears with laughter, we always have, and I kind of like it that way. Is like some sort of unwritten rule. Laughing is always better than crying. We didn't talk about Aunt K much tonight, but between the jokes, stories and food, you know that everyone still was thinking about her, I know I am. I'll miss her.

First Impressions

Today I got to spend some time in the code of the new Home Banking system. Spending time in the code is when a developers come up with their first impression. Mine is a good first impression. After spending two days with the Developers installing the product and looking at the code, I am looking forward to working with this product. I know you are thinking you, just bough the product why would you have to work with it. Well the way that most of these kind of things work is what you buy is very vanilla. So we don't buy the product for what it can do today, but what it will be able to do tomorrow.

 

Got a little bad news

Yesterday was the long day of meetings. It went as well as those kind of things go. Afterwards my boss, the people with the new homebanking system and I went out to dinner. We went to the place we always go, the steakhouse established in 1947 across the street from the WB lot. After getting there and getting seated I got a call on my mobile from my brother J. At first I sent it to voicemail because we were talking about implementation strategies and that kind of stuff. However I got a funny feeling about the call so I excused myself and tried to call him back. First time, I got his voicemail, so I check my messages and he just said to call him back in a somber tone. Now this J, he is the one that leaves me voicemails pretending to be someone else, and yelling at me for dating his daughter, or stealing his cat, or driving thru his house. So the tone of his message really meant something was up. I got nervous, so I called him again.

One of my favorite thing about J is that he doesn't sugar coat things, he just says them.  He told me that a really close friend of the family had passed away. She was someone us kids called Aunt K, because well she was like an Aunt to us. She was one of those people in your life, that lets you know that you are pretty cool just the way you are. I mean your family tells you that as you grow up, but somehow there is more validation when someone else says it, we expect our family to say that we are great. I remember that Aunt K use to say that I was a "neat kid". Well, I always thought that she was a "Neat Lady". She didn't have any kids of her own, which was what it was.  She was a very artistlc person, she would draw and write. She was the one that taught me that it was okay to be a Sci-Fi geek (mostly because she was one too). I remember going to lots, of Star Wars and Star Trek Conventions with her. I have a picture at home that she took of my brother K and me standing infront of the "Galileo" from the orignial Star Trek series. She always made me feel like I was fine, just the way I am. That is kind of a big thing for a kid, especially, when the kids at school and everything on the TV is telling you the exact opposite.

Aunt K had a great laugh, it was one of those laughs that made you smile. You knew it was her from across the room when you heard her laugh. I am really going to miss hearing that laugh. It's sad to know that this person isn't on this planet anymore. I could get into the whole argument of the unjustness of such a good person dying when there are so many bad people keep on living, but I think that would taint my memories of her, and I just don't want to do that.  I will miss her. She was one of those people that is a part of me. She really had an positive influence in my life, and my self-respect.

A light drizzle

Yesterday was much more of the light drizzle before the storm. We only had one hour long meeting. Which isn't too bad, and I was kind of charged and looking forward to the project from it. I did leave the meeting with homework. My homework that I am still working on this morning. I am install windows 2000 server in Virtual PC on my XP workstation/Laptop. That way I can have the Home banking server software running on my machine. So far it is going pretty smoothly. Though it takes a lot longer to load up then a regular machine.

Today the downpour will start. I came in early (6am) to finish up the install and have a couple of hours before it all starts. Meetings are scheduled from 8:30am to 5:30pm. It is going to be a long day. I am not looking forward to all day meetings, but I am looking forward to getting some time with the Home Banking Developer.  He is a C# guy too, even though the product is written in VB.NET. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

One of the things that cleared the clouds away last night was reading with the Little Boy. We have about 4 or 5 books that we read every night, one of them being Green Eggs and Ham. And it is one of his favorites. Well last night, we read it together for the first time. He would pick one page and "read" (recite from memory) what was on the page, and I would read the other one. It was amazing. It really made my heart glow. To see him growing and learning is just one of the most wonderful things in my life. There is something really terrific about ending the day laying in bed with my Beautiful Wife and the Little Boy and reading them to sleep. So this is going to be my umbrella today, every time I feel a drop of rain, I will think of them and be dry and warm.

 

The Calm before the storm

This weekend was the calm before the storm. Today starts three days of meetings. The first in many steps in the Home Banking Platform conversion. This is going to be the biggest project our E-Commerce department has ever taken on. I am excited and nervous about it at the same time. But enough about that, lets talk about this weekend.

Saturday morning My Beautiful Wife and I snuck out and got a cup of coffee at suckerbucks (That's what the Little Boy calls starbucks) and got to sit outside and read a newspaper. I know that doesn't sound terribly exciting, and it wasn't , but it was amazingly calming and something we hadn't done in a long time. (Since we lived in Pasadena about 3 years ago)

Upon returning home, the Little Boy was Up and full of.... Energy. So we loaded the Little Boy and Max the wonder dog up in the car and headed out to the sports park. We got there, and what did we see, people playing sports at the sports park. Honestly what did they think they were doing, we were going to have the The Little Boy and the Dog run amuck in those fields. So we couldn't let the furry that is the combination of The Little Boy and Max the wonder dog loose there. So we decide to take them to San Dimas creek. This was a good choice as no one was there. So after walking down the trail a little ways we let Max off of his leash. This had about the same affect as launching a rocket horizontially. That dog ran up and down the trail, though the streams and over the streams and up the hills and down the hills. He would jump so far down the hills that he would just about swapping head and tails except that his speed would keep him moving forward. Well after this little adventure, everyone got bath.

Sunday I had a lot of serious sitting around to do. Some of it was even done in Mom and Dad's Jacuzzi. There was also some serious gaming that needed done. So I played a couple hours of Red's Dead Revolver.

My favorite moment of the weekend was The Little Boy riding his bike with amazing speed down the driveway and skidding into the garage, and hit my Beautiful Wifes bike. He knocked it over, and startled himself.  I walked in the garage, and picked the bike up, and looked at the Little Boy, and said "A Little to fast, huh?" to which he responsed, "just a little."