morrowlife

Here’s the front of the City of Hope on February 1 of this year. They decorated the campus for Chinese New Year. I loved the decorations. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the City of Hope, and part of my famous Architecture, Event, Garden, Medical, Shannon, and Statue series.

Lots of famous series there. Today’s picture is also important to me because I took it on Shannon’s last full day of life. The City of Hope is still a sacred place to me and I’ll always remember it as the place where we had hope for Shannon’s recovery and life and where I rediscovered the sweetness of our love. That it had to be the place where her life ended doesn’t take away any of the meaning for me.

No posts on Thursday or Friday. Sorry about that, Loyal Readers. Stay loyal! I’ll try to do better. I might even succeed! But don’t count on it.

Pretty good weekend. I went out for lunch with Joanne a couple times and she invited me to a birthday party for one of her friends on Friday evening. We had a wonderful time. The honoree works for the company that runs the restaurant where the party was held, and they really did an amazing job. There was a never-ending stream of delicious appetizers. I met a few of Joanne’s friends and really like them all. Strangely, they seem to like me too. Kind of suspicious, if you ask me. Anyway, I’ve really liked everyone she has introduced me to.

Happy birthday to Nan McCulloch, my wonderful mother-in-law! I truly appreciate Nan for the kind person she is and for her loving care of Don all these years. I know she’s brought great happiness to his life and I trust it’s been a fulfilling life for her too.

Saturday evening, Mark and I went with some friends to the Jazz in the Park concert at the Clark County outdoor amphitheater. It was great! The evening was beautiful, the temperature was just right, and the music was very enjoyable. There was a bit of wind, but it never got bad enough to bother us. A few musicians had a bit of trouble keeping their sheet music on the stands, but that was their problem. Joanne and I are going to the one on the 24th of this month as well.

Shortly after we got home from the concert, the wind got very strong indeed. I thought we were in Kansas for a minute there and was starting to wonder which wicked witch my house was going to land on. I’m glad it didn’t get bad until after we got home.

Sunday, I went with Joanne to visit her late husband’s grave. He’s buried in a nearby veteran’s cemetery, and they recently notified her that his gravestone has been put in place. She wanted to see it but didn’t want to go alone. After our visit, we walked through the adjacent park and talked about her late husband Jerry and her extended family, and then we talked about Shannon and our extended family. We both needed to get some tears out. It was a good talk.

And that pretty much brings us up to today. The most notable thing I did today was to break the Business Casual Software website. I was trying to update WordPress to the most recent version and something went wrong. The installation got halfway done and broke the website. I pondered my options and decided to get on the GoDaddy website and see if I could reinstall the update through their website. It worked brilliantly and I’m back in business after just a short outage.

Spent 45 minutes or so in the jacuzzi this evening. It’s so relaxing I can hardly keep my eyes open anymore. So I’ll quit here!

I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this combination exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity and food violence news: genius chair-moving, food-stealing beagle!

Here’s Shannon at Longwood Gardens on the day after my birthday in 2012. We were there to see an amazing outdoor light installation. Those lily pad-looking things in the background there were part of it. Here’s a very brief YouTube video advertising the show. And here’s another YouTube video with a bunch of still pictures of the installation. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Shannon, Event, and Garden series.

The thing about Longwood Gardens was the immensity of the place and the perfection of everything. It was beautiful during all four seasons and it would take you days to see everything. And everything would be perfect every time you visited. Truly one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been. We went often during our year in Pennsylvania.

How I loved going places and doing things with Shannon! She was such a fun companion. It’s only been a bit more than three months since her death and nearly 15 months since her diagnosis with Leukemia, but will this aching heart ever truly mend? I can’t imagine that wound ever healing, but I know the pain has eased greatly in the past three months and will continue to improve. But life will never be the same, ever.

I’ve mentioned my friend Joanne here a few times. She and I both feel a strong connection and really enjoy being together. But she still loves and yearns for her late husband Jerry and I still love and pine for Shannon. And that’s okay with both of us. She and I are doing many of the things Shannon and I wanted to do here in Las Vegas and having a wonderful time together and it’s still totally safe for us to both miss our spouses and wish they were still here. I’m so grateful for her sweet, feminine presence in my life. I’m finally truly feeling like my heart can still be alive without forgetting or turning my back on the wonderful life that has so recently ended.

Got a little bit more done on PhotoDoc today. I really need to get back to Common Core Classroom again. I’ve been working on just getting it to compile without errors. Every time Apple updates Xcode, they break my code. Kind of frustrating, but such is the life of the iOS developer. Fortunately, I can always eventually figure out what has happened and update things to make them work again. Hopefully having finished that process in the next couple of days, I can start adding the updates I promised my little group of users.

And that’s it for today. Our housekeepers are coming early tomorrow morning, so I need to get to sleep. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: joyriding chihuahua!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s Shannon at the Grand Canyon during our family reunion there. She was such a happy person. Great Art courtesy of my old Olympus digital camera, taken at the Grand Canyon, and part of my famous Shannon, Event, and Vacation series.

Wow, I missed both Monday and Tuesday this week. Sorry about that, Loyal Readers. Can’t promise it won’t happen again.

So let’s see if I can think of what has been going on these past few days. The parade on Saturday morning was fun. The weather was about as inhospitable as it gets around here – 55 degrees, very windy, and a tiny bit of rain. But that was just fine as marching weather. From the look of the spectators, the weather was considerably less friendly for spectating. Crowds were restrained but polite. And we did our part for leukemia research in the hopes that future patients will have even more than we got.

Didn’t make it to the picnic. I went on a brief outing with a lady friend that turned into a much longer outing than planned and Mark and I missed our event. Mind you, the outing I did take was fun and the company was pleasant, but we missed our picnic anyway. Next time.

I got some really substantial work done on the PhotoDoc website. You can now register for the seminar and actually pay for it! I need to run it through the sandbox system at PayPal from beginning to end just to make sure there are no hiccups, but it looks like we’ll be good to go. We’re sending out invitations starting tomorrow. Wish us luck, Loyal Readers!

Had lunch with my friend Joanne today. She’s a really sweet lady who lost her husband just after I lost Shannon. We have a lot in common and I enjoy her company. Met her at a 40+ singles event. We were both very reluctant to go but feeling like we needed and wanted to socialize a bit. Somebody told me she was in similar circumstances to mine and we were introduced. I’m really glad.

And that’s about it for today. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: pea-eating-caused divorce!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s Shannon posing by an archway of orchids. This picture is significant because it’s the last one I can find of Shannon before she got sick. We were one month and a day away from the event that would change our lives forever – her cancer diagnosis. And everything was perfectly fine. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania during the Orchid Festival just about a week before we came to Las Vegas, and part of my famous Shannon, Architecture, Event, and Garden series.

I’m posting later than usual tonight because I sat outside from about 11:00 to midnight watching the lunar eclipse. It was beautiful! I sat in my comfortable chair on the back patio with the moon centered directly above me. The night was cool but pretty comfortable – temperatures in the mid-sixties. The skies were perfectly clear. It was beautiful. I tried to get pictures with the exclusive iPad-cam, but its automatic brightness adjustment made it quite difficult. This is the best I could get:

That was taken when the eclipse was at just about 100%, so you can see the iPad was trying its best to see some light there. Anyway, it was spectacular. I’m glad I stayed up to watch it.

Didn’t accomplish a whole lot else today. I bought groceries at Costco and Winco. I did some reading. Talked with a few people on the phone, including Tony, who just returned from a Caribbean and Mexican cruise. He saw Chichen Itza. That’s someplace I’d love to go someday.

Had a bit of a sick day yesterday. The wind was blowing pretty hard, and I had stuffed up sinuses and a massive headache most of the day. At bedtime, I took my temperature. It was at about 99.5. A little later, I got up and checked it again. It was 100. Even later, I checked it again. It was 101. When I got up in the morning, it had gone back down to 99 and it’s normal by now. I don’t know if the fever is caused by my allergies or if I got a bit of the flu again. It was around a couple of sick relatives on Saturday, but I don’t think I was really exposed to anything. Another mystery.

And that’s about it for today. I didn’t work, although I should have. That’s the beauty of my life right now. But tomorrow I plan to get a bunch of stuff done. Yeah, that’s it. Tomorrow.

I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this rare combination food violence news and exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: customer tries to buy beer with live alligator as currency!

See you tomorrow.

Here are Shannon and me having our first brunch together as a married couple. Wasn’t she a doll? I look a bit more pensive in this picture. I was probably wondering how I got so lucky. Great Art courtesy of Burns Newby (possibly), taken at the Twin Bridges Marriott in Arlington, Virginia, and part of my famous Shannon, Food, and Event series.

I just discovered via Wikipedia that the Marriott Twin Bridges was built in the year Shannon and I were born and demolished in 1990. It only lasted for 33 years. Sheesh.

Had a pretty good day today. Had another splitting sinus headache last night, so we didn’t exercise today. Got to feeling better mid-morning again. I’m struggling to understand the cause of these headaches. The only possible common thread is that I burned a black cherry candle a couple times recently, including last night. Did I burn it the last time I had a splitting headache? It’s an easy thing to test, but I’m kind of afraid to do it. Any other suggestions for how to perform the test without getting headache?

I did a little bit of work mid-day. Much more to do. Must . . . stay . . . focused!

Speaking of which, my good old friend Gary drove up from Las Vegas and we had a great afternoon/evening together. He took Mark and me out to dinner at Pei Wei, we chatted for quite a long time and caught up with the last 20 year of each other’s lives, and we talked about the programming job he needs done. I expressed interest, showed him a little bit of my work, and we parted with what I believe is the likelihood that he’ll use my services. In any case, we’ll stay in touch better than we have for the past 20 years. What a joy to see such a dear old friend!

I’m going to the homeowners’ association meeting tomorrow night. They’ve invited somebody from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to speak and asked if I would come. I’m so delighted with how the HOA folks have really wanted to honor Shannon’s contributions. She didn’t seek or need that honor during her lifetime, but I think she richly deserved it.

Watched the slideshow I made for Shannon last August again today. It really brings the tears to my eyes, but it feels so good to see all those pictures. I remembered today that I made that slideshow a couple days after we learned Shannon’s leukemia had overcome her stem cell transplant. At that point, we knew our chances had taken a large nosedive. We still had hope, but not like before. As it turned out, we had about six months left. What a wonderful six months they were. I’m so grateful for that.

That’s about all the news for today. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: fugitive Roman elephant! Note: the elephant is no relation to LRN12.

See you tomorrow.