morrowlife

Here’s a bit of a modern take on the organ console. This thing appears to be made entirely of standalone electronic keyboards. Kind of an interesting idea. Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken in March 2012 at Northlandz in beautiful Flemington, New Jersey, and part of my famous Electronics series.

Great weekend! Joanne and I went for dinner and swimming at the home of her (and now my) friends Phil and Rosie on Friday night. Had a great time! They are such kind, friendly people. All of Joanne’s friends have just latched on to me as if I was their oldest and best friend. It’s such a gratifying feeling. Saturday afternoon, we went to a little party at her friend Kim’s home. Another very nice visit with more new best friends. We had lunch together today.

They aired an interview done by the 11-year-old girl behind Abby’s Million-Dollar Dream today. Abby’s raising a million dollars for leukemia and lymphoma research in memory of Shannon. My Loyal Readers will recall that Mark and I marched in the recent Henderson Heritage Day parade to support Abby. The interview is pretty sweet. Have a look, Loyal Readers! And please donate, even if it’s just a couple dollars. I think it will make a difference.

Got a little bit of infrastructure work done here in my office today. The hard drive containing my media files had outgrown its backup drive. I knew it would happen, as the media drive is 1.5 terabytes in size and the backup disk was only 1 terabyte. So it was just a matter of time until the media drive got full enough to result in failed backups. Well, that time came a few weeks ago. After deep contemplation on the subject, I decided to take another 1 TB drive that was underutilized and add it to the existing backup drive in a JBOD array, resulting in a 2 TB virtual drive. Got that done today and all my computers are busily backing themselves up once more. Life is good again.

Spent some time on the phone with John today, talking about recent progress on PhotoDoc. We have no conference registrations yet, which was troubling both of us. Found out on Sunday that our colleagues who are identifying candidates for our October seminar hadn’t sent out any invitations yet. No problem – there’s still plenty of time. John also showed me some very useful additions he’s making to the app. We’re going to release them sometime in the next few months.

And that’s about it for today. I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: car salesman-biting spider monkey! It’s your chance to be a hero!

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.

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 on the beach at Half-Moon Bay back in March of 2011. That was a great weekend with good friends. The weather was a bit chilly for beachgoing, but it was just perfect for being together. Great Art courtesy of my old Olympus digital camera and part of my famous Shannon and Vacation series.

And I think this is the where my daily pictures of Shannon end. I have many more that I will continue to share, but I think it’s time to add some Great Art from the present too. Life is becoming easier and easier to live in the present. That’s how it should be, I think. I still want my old life back so, so badly. But it’s not there anymore. And my new life is a happy one too.

Pretty good day today. I got a bit of progress made on my iOS program. I have all the warnings eliminated except for the one telling me to update my distribution certificate soon. I’ll take care of that shortly. Tomorrow, the changes start being applied.

Mark and I went to Roberto’s for dinner today. I meant to make something, but it got late again before I did anything. I have some really good steaks to barbecue. Just need to take the time. Maybe tomorrow.

After dinner, we went over to the Sunset Station bowling alley to meet Joanne’s children and grandson. They were there for her grandson Riley’s sixth birthday. Several of them are really good bowlers. Note to self: think twice before accepting an invitation to go bowling with those guys. But the important thing was meeting her family. They’re all delightful, fun, happy, quirky young people. Just like their mom. It was a pleasant visit and Joanne reports they like me too.

Let’s see, what else happened today? I got an email from my parents-in-law. I had been thinking about them the other day and it struck me how devastated I would be if one of my children were to die – possibly even more devastated than I have been since my wife died. So I sent a note expressing condolences for the effect Shannon’s loss has had on them and thanking them – especially Shannon’s dad – for the great foundation in life they gave her and for their ongoing love. I also mentioned once again how crucial her dad’s example has been to me in my bereavement. Today they responded with a very kind note expressing their love for Shannon and for me. It was touching. I took a moment to cry, which is something that has been happening less and less lately but is still there just below the surface.

And that’s it for today. My Loyal Readers will be surprised to hear that it’s very late and I need to get to bed. I’ll leave them with this shocking food violence news: banana break-in!

See you tomorrow.

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.