morrowlife

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 are Shannon, Mark, and Andy checking out a historical landmark: the Sonora Pass, elevation 9,628 feet. Not the highest mountain we’ve ever been on top of, but probably the highest one we climbed in California. Assuming we accept the definition of “climbed” as “drove to the top of.” Which I do. Great Art courtesy of my old Olympus camera, taken during one of our trips to Clark’s Fork, and part of my famous Shannon and Camping series.

Pretty nice day. I had a few things that needed doing, but never quite got to them. It’s so easy to occupy my time doing other things. I’ll get to the important stuff tomorrow.

Mark and I went to Tokyo Boys for dinner with the Sushi group. It’s a nice place I’ve been to a couple times before and it’s pretty close to our house, so I was glad the group went there today. There were two people there I’ve eaten with before, but everybody else was new to me. There was a mother and daughter who were with the group for the first time tonight, which is nice.

The weekend was very nice. Joanne and I went to Lake Las Vegas for dinner on Saturday evening. We ate on the patio of an Italian restaurant that overlooks the water. There’s a stage right off the shore – maybe floating, maybe not – and there was a very nice jazz band playing. The music was loud enough to easily hear but not so loud you couldn’t carry on a conversation. There was a fairly decent-sized crowd listening, the weather was nice and warm with just a very gentle breeze, the food was great, and it was just a pleasant evening. We walked around the little village after dinner and just really had a nice time.

Sunday, Mark and I went to Ken and Melanie’s house for dinner as usual. We had lasagna and it was delicious. In a pleasant development, Tonya’s husband Diego was there. He has recently changed jobs due to a promotion (yea for them!), and thinks his Sunday evenings will be free from now on. I’m delighted about that – he’s a very nice guy and I like chatting with him. Both Tonya and Laura are married to great guys.

And that’s it for tonight. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: butter rage!

See you tomorrow.

Here are Shannon and Mark relaxing at the Yosemite Lodge back in July 2008. I don’t remember what they were waiting for – may have been the tram that took us around Yosemite Valley. Great Art courtesy of my old Olympus camera, taken at the lodge in Yosemite National Park, and part of my famous Shannon, Architecture, and Vacation series.

Pretty good day today. I started working again on the Common Core Classroom app. Today’s activities were pretty much confined to figuring out why a ton of compiler warnings have suddenly appeared. I believe it’s mainly because the latest version of Xcode comes with 64-bit compilation set as the default. I don’t think that’s a good thing for my app right now because I believe I still need to be compatible with a few older 32-bit devices. So I’ll change that back on Monday and see where I am.

Or maybe not. I just read something that says the binaries generated are universal, meaning that they include binaries for both 32-bit and 64-bit devices. So I might as well figure out how to fix the warnings. And then I can get to the actual changes I want to make. I also believe I found a bug today that can keep the last alphabetical name of a student from appearing in classroom reports. It’s always something, isn’t it, Loyal Readers?

Went to Kaizen Sushi Restaurant with Mark this evening for an all-you-can-eat dinner. It was delicious, but I’m stuffed and I’ve been very thirsty since I got home, no matter how much water I drink. Have no fear, Loyal Readers: I will survive. But I can’t believe how thirsty I am.

Anyway. The restaurant makes some really unique rolls and Mark and I tried several of them. Delicious! We’ll go again.

And that’s about it for today. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: exploding artichoke!

See you on Monday.

Here’s Shannon boarding our cruise ship after a long, fun day at one of our Canadian ports during our 2012 Maine/Canada cruise. That was such a wonderful trip. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam and part of my famous Shannon, Cruise, and Vacation series.

Pretty nice day today. I think I finished all the work we needed to do before we invite the world to our October conference. I tested the conference payment system in PayPal’s sandbox and everything seems to be working just fine. So it’s live, John’s colleagues will start inviting their community, and we’ll see what happens.

Didn’t do much else today that I can remember. How strange. Let’s see, we exercised in the morning, as usual. We had breakfast and dinner, as usual. Dinner was at Burger King. We’ve been going to much nicer places, but I’ve really been in the mood for a Whopper, so that’s what we had. We enjoyed it. Oh, I ordered some flowers today for my friend Joanne. Tomorrow is her wedding anniversary with her late husband and I expect it to be a solemn one for her. Hopefully, the flowers will cheer her up a bit. Also hopefully, she doesn’t read my blog, or I just spoiled the surprise.

Heard from my nephew Dale today. He’s coming to Las Vegas tomorrow and I hope to see him. He’s been going through some tough times lately – his divorce was just finalized – but he seems to be doing very well. I think the marriage had become a very hard thing to remain in.

My [amazon asin=B00AFGQ3Q4&text=new bluetooth headset] arrived yesterday! It’s exactly like my old headset, except this one works. The battery stayed alive on the old one and it didn’t physically break – a first for me – but it just started turning itself off this past week. I liked it so much, though, that I found another one on Amazon. It’s a different color, but the exact same product. Kind of older tech at this point, but still highly recommended. It just works.

And that’s about it for today. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: peanut butter and jelly sandwich-related knife fight!

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.