morrowlife

Here are Mark, Heather, and Andy riding the chairlift up the mountain at Park City. Great Art taken in June during the McCulloch family reunion and part of my famous Event, Machinery, and Vacation series.

I’m back! Did you think I would never return, Loyal Readers? Is anybody even out there anymore? Hello? Is this thing on?

Anyway. Lots of things have happened since my last post. We went to Park City and enjoyed seeing everybody. Mark took my car home and I rode to Denver with Andy and Heather. Spent two nights there and then flew to Detroit, where I stayed until the 7th of July. Then I flew home.

Mark went to San Jose to visit friends again on the 15th. He’s on his way home right now. Should be here in half an hour or so. I’m looking forward to having him home again. He’s starting school at UNLV Real Soon Now.

Joanne and I were scheduled to go to a big jazz festival in Ontario, California on the 19th, but the promoters canceled it at the last minute. So we took a poll and decided to go to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico instead. We spent four days there and then went on to San Jose to see Joanne’s son Desi’s karaoke shows. While we were there, we also saw Katie, Cliff, and Mark. On our last night there, we also went to the Santa Cruz boardwalk. Fun! We finally went home and life got back to normal. We’ve been out to eat at a bunch of places, been to see other things, and generally kept ourselves entertained.

And that brings us to today. Mia arrives for a five-day stay on Monday the 4th of August. We have some fun plans for her visit. Then we’re going to Katie and Cliff’s engagement party on August 16 in Emeryville. Then I go to Michigan again. Explanation below.

Now for the difficult news. My mom has been diagnosed with liver cancer. They still don’t have many details, but she’s going for radiation prep tomorrow and we expect it will start soon. She’ll get radiation for five weeks along with chemotherapy as she can tolerate it. We don’t know what the future holds for her yet, but we hope she’ll still have several happy, healthy years after this is done. So my weeklong trip to Michigan is to be there to help her get to a week’s worth of her radiation appointments. I’m looking forward to being there again and helping however I can.

And that’s enough for my welcome back post. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: meal-eating, chair-stealing thief!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s Joanne, my newest Loyal Reader! Loyal Reader Number Thirty-Eight, to be specific. I took this Great Art at the Palazzo a few weeks ago when we attended Joanne’s friend’s birthday party. Had a great time at the party and we also had a great time together. Welcome, new Loyal Reader! Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken on May 9, 2014 at the Palazzo Hotel and Casino, and part of my famous Architecture, Event, Joanne, and Las Vegas series.

Had a pleasant day again. I got no work done, but I had a pleasant day anyway. Or maybe because. Who knows?

Well, I actually did get a bit of work done; just not paying work. I got some grocery shopping done, got my haircut, put gas in the Taurus, and exchanged a large pile of change for about $17 of groceries. Doesn’t look like much now that it’s written down. Hmm.

No post yesterday, so I’ll fill in a bit of info. The golf game with Bob and Diane was lots of fun. The fourth person was a guy named Larry, who is also a lot of fun. I want to golf with those guys again. Also, Bob and Larry have quadcopters they like to fly. I happen to have a quadcopter too and they’ve invited me to go to the park and play with them soon. Fun! I love having friends. I really do.

Joanne and I went to the meatball place for dinner and the Zombie Burlesque show afterwards last night. The meatballs were passable, but I don’t think I’d go there again. It was essentially a fast-food place that served average meatballs with sauce in a cup, along with lukewarm slices of pizza that they tried to class up by calling it flatbread. Too harsh of a review, Loyal Readers? The show was cute and fun and certainly didn’t take itself seriously. It may have been a bit juvenile, but that’s okay. Definitely not for the young or faint of heart, though. We’re going back to Planet Hollywood tomorrow night to go to the Spice Market Buffet. Hopes are high.

Mark got home last night! It’s great to see him again. He appears to have had a great time, but he says he was definitely ready to come home. I’m glad he got to take the trip. Feel free to travel when you want, Mark!

And that’s it for tonight. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: flatulent, fire-starting German cows!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a friendly-looking statue on display at the Bellagio conservatory during their Chinese New Year celebration this past February. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the Bellagio hotel/casino conservatory in February 2014 during a visit with my Mom, and part of my famous Event, Garden, Las Vegas and Statue series.

Yeah, I know you can’t see much garden there, but it was there. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.

No post yesterday. I was in Tucson helping Chris and Jack get stuff packed and sent to Florida. Chris didn’t want to move enough stuff to hire a moving company or even rent a truck, so he packed up 12 boxes and shipped it all to himself. He’s loading up his car with a bunch of other things and driving it to Florida on Thursday, as I recall. It was nice being there to help. I hadn’t seen Jack in quite a while. He’s certainly a pleasant young man. Very impressive.

I’m sorry I didn’t get to post yesterday because it was a very important day. Shannon died four months ago yesterday. So much has happened since she’s been gone. For the first while, I pretty much just stopped living. Or at least I stopped living in the present. I spent my time immersing myself in my wonderful memories of the past. It was such a recent past that I think it did a pretty good job of masquerading itself as the present. It was so comforting to spend entire days looking at pictures of Shannon with our family, with me, or just by herself. I found old voice messages she had sent me and played them over and over again. I’m so grateful to have those; they help me remember her beautiful voice. In one of them, she told me she loved me. It was just a casual “I love you” thrown in at the end of a mundane message, but it’s priceless. I slept with the pillow she had used in the hospital to keep her knees from hurting in bed as she got thinner and thinner. I even put some of her perfume on the pillow and kind of felt like I could smell her at night. I talked to her at various times, hoping maybe she could hear me. I don’t know if she could, but it comforted me to at least keep up half of the kind of conversations we had so unthinkingly for so many years. I’m not ashamed to admit any of that.

But things have already started to change. I still treasure my memories of Shannon, the influence she had for good in my life, the wonderful children she gave me, the way she dedicated her entire life to my happiness, the beautiful home she made for me, the way she taught me how to be self-sufficient without either of us knowing she was doing it, and so much more. My life was so intertwined with hers that I don’t know how to separate them.

But they have been separated and I’m moving forward. I know it’s healthy. I have to do it. The past is distancing itself. I’ve started working a little. It’s still hard to concentrate on that, but it’s getting better. My relationship with Joanne has been a great way to help me focus on the present – not just going places and doing things with her, which has been great fun and very emotionally fulfilling, but also being introduced into a new circle of friends with interests that are new to me. Put it all together and I have a life again, for which I’m deeply grateful.

But even though the past has started to become the past, my love for Shannon continues undimmed. Even though Joanne has become so dear to me. Even though I no longer spend large portions of every day reminiscing. Even though I sometimes go for days without crying. Please don’t think, Loyal Readers, that I’ve forgotten my dear, wonderful wife. Her soul is still entwined with mine and always will be. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but just as I discovered that my love for Katie was undiminished when Paul came along and captured my heart, and then the whole thing repeated again for Andy and Mark, so too have I learned that there’s room in my heart for Joanne without making Shannon’s place there even the least bit smaller. That’s the miracle of love.

How I miss Shannon! How I love her!

And how I now love Joanne too!

Mark comes home from San Francisco tomorrow. He’s been at Katie’s house for a couple days. I’m excited for his return. Joanne and I will be at Planet Hollywood for dinner and a late show, so I might not actually see him until he next day. But I’m still excited! Drive safely, Mark!

And it’s time for bed. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this rare toilet news: toilet seat lid assault!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s Mark at the other end of the Abby’s Million Dollar Dream banner. We had a great time! The only problems were the cold, wind, and rain. But the event was great and the cause was worthwhile. Please donate, Loyal Readers! Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken during the 2014 Henderson Heritage Day parade, and part of my famous Event, Las Vegas, Medical, and Shannon series.

Nice day today. Joanne and I went to a very fancy Italian restaurant called Gaetano’s Ristorante. The food was excellent and the service was superb. The prices were a bit high, but we had a groupon! So we have that going for us, which is nice. It was a lovely evening out with a lovely lady. She had on a very pretty black and white sweater and looked like a million bucks. I had the prettiest date in the room.

Didn’t get too much work done today, but I did catch up on some communications. Still no registrations for the PhotoDoc seminar in October. I don’t think the invitations have gone out yet. At least I hope not – it would be kind of discouraging to invite 50 people and get no responses.

Carmen, our housekeeper, will be here tomorrow, so I think I’ll end here and go to bed. She gets here at 8:00 and I need to be up and ready to go before then. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: bad-driver dog!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s the free jazz concert Mark and I attended this past Saturday evening. This was the warmup act – three jazz students from a nearby music school, as I recall. They were quite good. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the Jazz in the Park season opener here in beautiful Henderson, Nevada, and part of my famous Event and Las Vegas series.

Missed a couple more days of blogging again. I’ve been out with Joanne every night this week and I guess I’ve just been distracted. But it’s been a great week! Tuesday, we went to the Hard Rock hotel for happy hour. They had delicious pretzel fondue appetizers and amazing fried chicken. I mean amazing. Try it. Fly to Las Vegas, go to the Hard Rock, and try the fried chicken. You won’t regret it.

We went out to a really fun Italian restaurant called Capo’s Speakeasy last night. You go into a lobby, push a button and convince a guy who opens a little panel that he should let you in. Then he opens a secret door in the wall and in you go. The place is nearly pitch black inside. They seated us in a booth and brought our menus, which came with flashlights. The food was excellent, the atmosphere was fun, and we had a great time. After dinner, we went to the Fremont Street Experience and walked around for a while. It was pretty crowded and lots of fun. Some crazy stuff over there. I’m really enjoying exploring Las Vegas.

Tomorrow night, we’re going for dinner at the home of Joanne’s friends Phil and Rosie. I met them at the Hard Rock on Tuesday and like them very much. They’ve just had a koi pond built in their backyard and have invited a few friends over to see it. It ought to be fun. We have plans on Saturday too. All this social life is wearing me out!

Made some good progress on the Common Core app. I got about half the work done to allow the user to skip entering a password. Should finish it tomorrow and then I’m going to release it. Well, I do have one critical bug I have to fix first. I introduced it when I updated a bunch of variable types to facilitate Apple’s suggested change from 32-bit to 64-bit. There were some updates in the algorithm used to hash passwords. The change apparently causes the app to generated hashes differently, so existing users would be unable to get the app to accept their existing password when they update. It should be a pretty straightforward fix.

And that’s about it for today. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: lifesaving parrot!

See you tomorrow.