Regular Life

Death is at every turn lately. It has affected three folks who have commented here at least once — one of whom is a dear friend.

Within the past two weeks:

• Alvis’ uncle, age 52, died suddenly and unexpectedly,
• Jay’s best friend, age almost 30, did the same, but in completely different circumstances, and
• Carmi’s father, age 74, died suddenly.

All of this has put me in mind of the losses and near losses I have experienced. I am fortunate to have made it this far without directly experiencing anything that jolting.

Several years ago we received a wake-up call informing us that one of Shannon’s best friends, with whom she recently had reunited, had been killed in an accident. That was hard enough without the four-month wait to see how her widower — also a close friend — came out of it. He missed her funeral while he lay unconscious in a hospital bed.

My maternal grandfather died in his sleep in the very early hours of New Year’s Day, 2008. Despite the distance between us all my life, I always was close to him through letters, audio tapes sent back and forth, and faxes. Something broke in him as he watched his dear wife fade from existence before her death, but he rebounded and lived to welcome more great-grandchildren into the world.

A few years before that, we found out on Thanksgiving Day that my paternal grandmother would not be joining us because she had passed away in her sleep. I grew up seeing her a lot, and regret not spending more time keeping in touch with her as an adult. She also soldiered on after losing her one true love, who died when I was only 12 but not before they celebrated 50 years of marriage.

Shannon’s beloved aunt, like a second mother to her since she was a baby, struggled and lost against cancer back in the mid-’90’s. She was the youngest and the first of five siblings to pass on. Her loss rippled through the family and the local educational community, in which she had played a major role. Little Rock School District named a building after her.

Nearly 10 years ago my father had a heart attack. We all were fortunate that the worst casualty from that was my mother’s plan for his surprise 60th birthday party. In fact, the ensuing procedure improved his health and probably prolonged his life.

More recently my mother-in-law’s stress test revealed she needed surgical help immediately, and she, too, was given an extension.

On top of all this, death makes me think of things I will not express publicly. It’s too final for me to think about for very long.

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Alvis and I enjoyed a much more relaxing time the next morning, right about sun-up. Fog lingered in the launch field, so some in this photographic round-up are a bit hazy.

Enjoy and, as usual, click any pic to enlarge it (none of these were cropped).

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The phrase “I told you so” has become tired from overuse, but sometimes it fits a situation perfectly. Take our Saturday adventure at Plano Balloonfest 2009, for example.

“I don’t want to go outside at Balloonfest,” Benjamin said. “I want to go inside at Balloonfest.”

Usually he would rather play under the open sky than under a roof, so this caught me off guard.

“Well, son, they don’t launch the balloons inside,” I said.

He cranked up to a whine. “I want to see them inside.”

Shannon sighed. Benjamin had been whining earlier in the day, too, and my wife’s vision of finally getting out of the house after being sick all week was dying. In the back of her mind, too, was an invitation to nearby Addison’s Oktoberfest.

“I think once we get there, we’ll all have a good time,” I said.

“I don’t want to go outside at Balloonfest,” Benjamin fussed. Haven’t we covered this already?

“Then we’re not going. Just take us home,” Shannon said.

I wordlessly maintained my original heading, determined that we were going to have fun and we were going to like it. Had my wife been at the wheel, we would have ended up home in record time or tangled in wreckage.

“Okay, but when it all goes wrong, I’m going to say ‘I told you so,’” Shannon said.

I laughed. “That’s fine. I can accept that.”

A small part of me still wishes I never had said that.

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You might feel like you’ve seen this photo already, but you haven’t. It only resembles some of the others from our 17th Anniversary trip to Austin. Recently it took over wallpaper duties on my work laptop, and really pops on my cubicle’s 20-inch flatscreen LCD.

 
I fly through the magic of motion detection photography. (click to enlarge)

 
Tuesday evening, my wife was in bed sick and I had just put our son to bed.

Then I read a story about some MIT students who sent a point-and-shoot camera 18 miles up, via a weather balloon, where it took photos showing the black of space and the Earth’s curvature, then plummeted safely back to earth inside its Styrofoam cooler. They found it by tracking the included prepaid mobile phone’s last GPS coordinates before it buried into the ground. Total cost: $148.

This wasn’t the first time such an experiment was done, but something about their efforts caught my eye — they used a Canon camera with a hack applied to it. Apparently you just load a program on your SD card, add a few user-written scripts, insert the card back into the camera, and off you go.

As a Canon point-and-shoot owner, I needed some of that.

For free, I “upgraded” my $130 camera so that it now uses motion detection, time lapse, and many other features to take pictures and video. The customizations and the granularity of the controls are mind-boggling.

There’s even a detection script designed to capture lightning as it strikes. That’s fast.

If it helps you relate better, a musician named Arman Bohn used the hack for stop-motion animation in his “Combat” music video. The music is fun to listen to, as are the other songs on his CD.

Now, I just have to figure out how best to use my camera’s new capabilities. I can’t figure out whether I want money or power.

I know… both!. Muwahahahahaha!

 
Big kids and little kids love a good cone.

 
This is one from Grandpops’ visit back in early July, including Benjamin’s birthday. While I was at work, he went gallivanting about with Shannon and Benjamin, so I suffered a lack of firsthand knowledge and didn’t post up.

But I was at the ice cream shop! I can’t remember whether I posted about the birthday party — maybe because we used Shannon’s camera instead of mine. Oh well, it was fun. We held it at the Natatorium, which we first visited the previous summer.

Cake, swimming, and no sunscreen required. Sweet convergence.

Following my after-dark Harvard experience, I quickly made my way back to the “T” and rode back to Davis Square, where I ate at Redbones, a southern-style barbecue restaurant. Never would I have guessed that I would find barbecue to rival that found in Memphis and Alabama (can’t speak for Kansas City). Seated at the counter in full view of the grill and the rest of the kitchen, I got a firsthand look at how it’s all done, but I took pictures of the crowd instead.

I also came away with a much better understanding of what root beer can be. Tower Root Beer in a bottle — try it if you have a chance. Apparently it started in 1914, went out of production in 1978, and just returned to the market last year. It is made with (a lot of) pure cane sugar, not that corn syrup-based crap (but they now offer a diet option, too).

I got (and this time recorded) directions from a Redbones staffer and easily made it back to the main highway and then my hotel. I found during my trip that the abbreviation she used for “Avenue” is quite common in those parts.

The next day I ended up working later than I had anticipated, and missed meeting up with Dave and his brother in Boston. I was very bummed about that, but at least he had someone along with him to still have a good time.

Widener Library on Harvard Yard (click to enlarge)

One of my goals for the trip was to see and walk around the grounds of Harvard University.

I got out of the customer’s site a little late on my last night there, so I was in a rush to get to my hotel, change clothes and grab my camera, and get to the campus before dark.

As the pictures show, I didn’t make it.

Despite that, through the course of the evening, I:

• Rode a subway for the first time ever,
• Ate an amazing barbecue sandwich and drank the best root beer I’ve ever had, and
• Added another area to the list of places I would like to live

.

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Friday afternoon, about 35,000 feet up:

“Just to remind you, folks, the captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. If you are up wandering about the cabin, please find your way back to your seat.”

The plane is shaking a bit, and a guy who walked up from the back of the plane almost fell into a lady’s lap, then over-corrected and bumped a guy’s shoulder. He didn’t spill his drink.

Which begs the question — where was he on a 757 that he was hanging out drinking his beer? Is there some special section back there that only the privileged get to see? Or had he taken his beverage to join someone in the lavatory for a drunken initiation into the mile-high club?

I sit in aisle seat 32D while nobody sits between me and the lady in 32F. Fingers askew from ball-shaped knuckles, she taps out words on her laptop while her low-sodium club soda sits on the vacant seat’s flip-down tray. Turbulence must not be too bad, I suppose, if the half-empty can is riding it out.

The guy to my left diagonally across the aisle looks so much like a young Burt Reynolds that I expect him to start chomping gum incessantly. Instead he reads web page printouts about exercising with diabetes.

The guy directly to my left across the aisle reads a book that throws in an illustration occasionally. The only word on the spine I can make out is “Conan.”

Personally, I couldn’t stay awake while trying to read. So, I pulled up Throne of Blood, a film by Akira Kirosowa, on the PocketDish. The subtitles constituted just enough reading that I got drowsy there, too. So, instead I watched Chasing Amy, a Kevin Smith joint that I recorded from IFC months ago. I liked the flick until one scene that pretty much ruined it all for me. Pulled me right out of the movie, it was so bad. At least that scene was near the end.

Can’t wait to see Benjamin and Shannon. He will be asleep when I get home, so I’ll have to settle for waking him up just long enough to tell him goodnight. On the phone with me the other day, he volunteered that it would be okay for me to do that because he could use the time to get up and pee in the middle of the night. I would have done it anyway, but he likes to think a thing is only his idea.

What I really want to do is take a pillow in there and sack out on his floor. Just like his mommy who came before him, my son means the world to me, and like with her, it’s great just to be in the same room with him.

“Ladies and gentlemen, in just a few minutes, we’ll be beginning our descent from about 35,000 feet. Should be landing at Dallas/Fort Worth in about 35 minutes…”

Time for me to put this away soon. Thanks for keeping me awake for a few minutes.

Monday morning, about 600 feet above sea level, in Tulsa:

Drove here the Saturday morning after I got home from my work trip. My son plays in the “secret sewer” under the snooker table with his three-year-old cousin. I’ll get to hang out with him once we finally get back home.

“So I’m walking Janie’s dog in the woods and he just stops. I’m like, ‘Come on, what are you doing?’ and he just sits there, panting. I pull a little bit and he doesn’t move. Then he lays down on his side and won’t move, and this dog loves to walk. I’m starting to freak out.

“I pick up the dog and I walk out of the woods. There’s this construction site, with all these workers watching me. One of them walks up and says, ‘Do you need some help?’ I say the dog needs water, so he takes me to the site’s trailer, where they got a toilet. I’m forcing this dog’s head into the toilet, but he’s not drinking. I’m starting to cry now, and the construction guys are all around me watching me stick this dog’s head in the toilet.

“I call the vet from the trailer phone and he tells me if the dog’s panting, he’s fine. They tell me, don’t put a big bowl of wate in front of him ‘cuz that’s not good. I get off the phone and turn to look at the dog, and he’s not panting anymore.

“I put the dog in my car and drive to the vet. They go all doggy ER and hook him up to IV’s and monitors and all of that.

“‘He got overheated and dehydrated,’” they say. His owners shouldn’t have shaved off all his hair during the hot summer.

“Janie gets there while all this is going on, ‘cuz I had called her. She’s freaking out worse than I was, and she doesn’t hear half of what the vet says. They say she can take him home. I tell her I’ll follow her.

“A couple miles down the road, she pulls her car over and jumps out. She runs up to my car, and she’s screaming, ‘He’s dead! He’s dead!’

“It was just awful.”