In Memoriam

On Thursday of last week, my friend lost his battle with Lou Gehrig's Disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS). My dad called to tell me. I spent most of the day weeping which both touched me and surprised me. His wife and I went to first grade together and were very close as children. We have stayed in touch over the years and while we are not very close as adults, we are still friends.

Two years ago, they came home from the mission field because Jesse was having some troubling symptoms. He was officially diagnosed with ALS. In April of 2007, they travelled to Costa Rica to undergo some experimental treatment involving stem cells. While it did bring a temporary slowing of the disease, it was no cure. They settled here in Washington and very soon he was wheelchair bound. When I last saw him in February, he could not even speak anymore but when I came through the door and when I left, he gave me a smile that filled the room.

In the last sermon I heard him preach from his wheelchair at our church, he talked about WHY? Whenever something like this happens, it is a very human tendency to ask why is this happening to me? He then went on to talk about how we need God's Wisdom, to have Humility and to Yield to God's will: W.H.Y. It was one of the sweetest and most touching sermons I have ever heard in my life. I am still amazed at Jesse's courage and his willingness to accept what had happened to him. Disease was never part of God's original plan for humanity but Jesse knew that God had a plan for him in spite of disease.

He leaves behind his wife and my childhood friend, Lisa. He also leaves behind four sons -- the youngest is 8 and the oldest is 16. My husband and I will be going to the graveside and memorial services on Saturday to remember this very remarkable man who is in heaven now.

I have not talked about my faith on this site before because I tend to be a bit private about matters of faith and belief. This doesn't mean it is trivial or unimportant to me. I know what I believe (Jesus loves me this I know) and why (for the Bible tells me so) and I also know that I will see Jesse again in heaven one day. In a time of loss, that knowledge is an amazing consolation.

Special K Chocolatey Delight

Soooooooooooo, I was suckered into buying a box of this cereal recently. The advertising for it especially on T.V. was ingenious. Plus, I love chocolate. However, I have some hard, fast rules about breakfast cereal with "chocolate" anywhere in the name in some form or another. There are certain things I have come to expect when a cereal advertises as being chocolate or cocoa. The big rule is this: when I am done eating the cereal any milk left in the bowl will be chocolate milk.

You may imagine my colossal disappointment when I finished my very first bowl of Special K Chocolatey Delight to discover the milk in the bottom of the bowl was still just plain old milk with a few hunks of less than excellent chocolate chunks submerged in what was left. I was underwhelmed to say the least and the 8 year old girl that still resides in me was almost in tears. No chocolate milk. I looked sadly into the bowl and very nearly vowed a vow to eat no more of the cereal. It could rot in the cupboard for all I cared.

The next morning as I sleepily packed my husband's lunch for work, I had an inspiration with regard to the cereal! I was so excited. I whipped out the box of Special K Chocolately Delight and poured myself another bowl. I positively danced over to the fridge and got out the milk. I poured it over the cereal and then I reached for my inspiration: Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa Mix to the rescue! I sprinkled a very generous teaspoon or so over the cereal. I sat down and ate the cereal and with a triumphant TA-DA to my 8 year old self I beheld a beautiful sight! CHOCOLATE MILK! I was happy the entire rest of the day and the little girl inside was too and let me tell you she is far more difficult to please than I am.

Emerald City Comicon

Saturday, my husband and I went to the Emerald City Comicon. It is Seattle's comic book convention. We went last year and we got there about an hour after it opened and wandered around for awhile. There were a lot of people last year but we didn't have to wait in line to get in or anything.

This year was a whole new ball of wax. We got to the convention center shortly before the ECCC was due to open and headed for the area of the convention center where it had been held the previous year. At the top of the escalator, we were directed to get in a line for the Comicon. We had already purchased tickets like last year so we figured we would get in pretty quickly. WRONG! The line snaked all over the convention center it turned out! It took us nearly an hour to reach the front of the line.

Evidently the convention center had and hadn't prepared for the crowds that showed up. There were people in line by 6 A.M. and when we got in line there were 1,000 people in front of us at least and about that many were behind us in a matter of minutes. We shuffled up, down and around and back and forth before we could even SEE the entrance. Fortunately, the convention center put the Comicon in their largest venue this year. Good thing too because it was PACKED.

The ONLY reason I agree to go to the Comicon at all is because Dave Kellett and the guys from Halfpixel are there every year. Dave draws Sheldon (see: http://www.sheldoncomics.com/) and he is always at the convention. Part of the fun of going to see him is that when you buy his newest book he puts an original sketch in it for you. So, this year, I added Nerds on Parade to my collection and he very kindly drew General Zod for me inside the cover. Since I was asking for an unusal character sketch I brought him a pug magnet and a roll of HobNobs as a bribe and because I think he is a super person. He is always so delighted to see his fans and always cheerful and chatty.

My husband went into full on DORK MODE and thoroughly enjoyed himself. He bought some little Star Trek ships. He contemplated a large Hell Boy statue which I am VERY thankful he decided against. He pointed out various people in costume and told me who they were supposed to represent and which comic book or T.V. show the character was from which was wasted on me but very nice of him nonetheless. We looked at all kinds of merchandise but probably our very favorite thing was a t-shirt that said: UNATTENDED CHILDREN WILL BE GIVEN AN ESPRESSO AND A FREE KITTEN. It was a tan t-shirt with brown lettering otherwise I think we both would've bought one.

After a bit, the crowds started to get to John and we headed for the door. We are debating about whether we will bother going next year. I imagine, like the pain of childbirth, we will forget about the horrible crowds by the time next year rolls around and go again.

The Illustrated Man

So, I got into a little argy bargy with my cousin last week. She had posted some pictures of her tummy on FaceBook because she is tracking her 3 month old pregnancy in pictures month by month. She is 18 and has only been married a few months but they are already expecting their first child. I was appalled to discover that she has gotten two tattoos just below her stomach of two birds. I was a little shocked and I said so which she did not appreciate. I was told that I was being "judgmental" and it was a trivial matter, etc. I shot back that I was just being honest with her when I told her I didn't really approve and that I was shocked that she would get a tattoo.

Now, this may sound old fashioned and I imagine I will take flak from others because of how I feel about tattooing but I am okay with that. I am still entitled to my opinion as she is to hers. I have had a long fascination with tattoos and tattooing. I personally know a man that has gecko tattoo that he is ashamed to have now. I also knew an older man that had been tattooed when he was younger and when he got to be older, the tattoo was just a blurred outline on his skin and you could barely tell what it was supposed to be. Add to it that he had grown a thick coat of white hair on his arms and it was downright hideous to see that old tattoo standing out blue and livid but covered with white hair.

Now I come to my point about tattooing. On men, I don't mind tattoos so much but I am still not a big fan of them. No matter what it is and no matter where it is, tatoos look trashy on women. I have several friends that have them: a rose, a tiger, a Tweedy bird. None of their tatoos are that attractive to me but they at least had the sense to have them on their shoulder or their bicep where they won't migrate that much with age. My cousin with bird tattoos on her cute little flat tummy now, will soon have them stretched out of shape by pregnancy and then sag as she ages. I imagine they will be down to her knees by the time she is 80. The girls with the pin striping tattoos on their lower back? Well, in 30 years those tattoos are going to be on the backs of their upper thighs! Every young person that gets a tattoo today should ask themselves seriously: Am I really going to still want this when I am 80?

The picture I used today is the 1952 cover from The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury which is a collection of short stories that all thread together around two men, one of whom is tattooed all over. As they sleep next to each other, the tattoos on the illustrated man move and tell stories to the other man. The final story the man sees is of the illustrated man strangling him to death. It is a fascinating set of stories and another argument for not getting tattooed.

Wonderful and Amazing

Yesterday's post was snarky. I thought I would make up for it by showing you all that is wonderful and amazing in my life:

The Horrors of Facebook

I went to high school in a small town on the Olympic Peninsula. (Not Forks for all you Twilight fans) It was a very small private school. I got a really excellent education but I never did like small town life very well. All the people that became lasting friends from those years, moved out of that town almost as fast as I did.

Recently, on Facebook, several acquaintances from those years have sent me Friend Requests. And because I don't dislike them, I've added most of them as friends for the purposes of FB. Some of them have been posting pictures from my high school days. There are class pictures and other candid shots where I am tagged. It doesn't really bother me because I was pretty photogenic and slender in those days and I went in for more the Pat Benatar look as opposed to the gigantic hair look which was fortunate.

In a sick kind of way, it has been fun to reconnect with my old schoolmates and see what they are all up to now. Especially, since I have some pretty vivid memories of kids that grew up in that town saying how they were going to move away as soon as they could. Guess what? They didn't. I did. I am amazed at who is married with a bajillion (its a word, look it up) kids and who is STILL single. Some of their stories are hum drum, some are sad (like a classmate of my sister's with 8 children and her husband of 10 plus years walked out on her last year), some are mysterious and some are just plain strange.

Some of them have not been amused to be tagged in old photos for whatever reason. My problem has been that I simply don't remember some of the kids in my class photos. We are talking 30 people in the entire high school and I just don't remember them! It has only been 20 years since I graduated and yet I seem to have blocked out whole people from my memories. I hope that I was more memorable than they were.

The posted picture is from my senior year. We did a production of Little Women. I REALLY wanted to play Jo but I was working part time and couldn't spare enough time for rehearsals so the director said. She had me be Aunt March instead because she only had 2 scenes and they could "work" around me. So I am second from the end on the right in black. Some other time I will tell you the story of how I made that part so memorable that people still (!) remember me playing Aunt March and mention it whenever I see them. It just happened last year in fact.

The Unbearable Randomness of iPod

For Christmas, my husband suprised me with an iPod Nano. I had hankered after an iPod in kind of a vauge non-comittal way since they first came out. After I got my iPod, I wondered how I ever LIVED without it.

That being said, I do love my iPod but I loathe iTunes with a hate that I normally reserve for people who talk on their cell phones in restaurants. I can upload junk to my iPod no problem but I do not understand iTunes. I find it hard to use and frustrating and a little bit psycho too. I think I may eventually have to take a class in order to get it figured out. (By the way, I am pretty tech saavy to start with so don't go gettin' all up in my grill about how I need to learn to use a computer.)

Today, while doing a somewhat mindless job here at work, I popped my iPod in my pocket and put on my headphones. Since I wasn't sure what I wanted to listen to, I went to Music on the menu. Then I went to Songs on the sub menu and started at the beginning of the list. I have over 500 songs and the iPod puts them in hand-dandy alphabetical order. Here is what I got to hear this morning:

• The ABC Song from Sesame Street as played by the Boston Pops
• Ain't That Just Like A Dream by Tim McGraw
• Alberta (the MTV unplugged version) by Eric Clapton
• All Star by Smash Mouth (GUARANTEED to put a spring in your step)
• Always You by Sophie Zelmani
• America by Simon & Garfunkel
• Angel Band by The Stanley Brothers
• Angelia/Zooma Zooma by Louis Prima
• Animal House theme song from the movie soundtrack
• Annie's Song by John Denver
• Annie Laurie by The King's Singers
• Anon from CHANT as sung by Benedictine monks
• Anything Goes by Frank Sinatra

And the list goes on and on. I made it as far as Bein' Green (it isn't easy bein' green) also performed by the Boston Pops. The sheer goofiness of playing music this way kept me listening and laughing. I was never sure what song and artist I was going to hear next. My friend, JacQualine, was listening to her iPod too as we worked and at one point I turned to her and said, "Do you sometimes wonder why in the world you put a song on your iPod?" I had just listened to April in Paris as performed first by Ella & Louis and then by Frank and realized that I didn't really like the song no matter who sang it. She just nodded her head and laughed.