Happy Mother’s Day to my Mom! My Mom still worries about me and does all that other Mom stuff that she’s supposed to do and I love her for it!

As you can see, I did get my Mom to Costa Rica this year! She’s at the top of a overlook in Montezuma. We must have drove and parked nearby because I know I didn’t make her walk up that steep hill to get there (we had walked enough as it was!).

We had problems with flights at both ends of the trip (and a piece of my luggage was lost, I’m so thankful it wasn’t one of hers!).

And to all you other Mom’s out there, just do your best and don’t worry too (so) much. As kids we’re pretty durable and can weather much more than you think we can; and I’m talking both physically, mentally and emotionally. So just be a Mom and love us, model appropriate behavior and odds are that we’ll (mostly) turn out okay!

I’ve got to go! It’s time to get over to Mom’s and make our yearly Bahama Breeze pilgrimage!

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It was the extended family Christmas celebration today, there were 20 people or so there. Most of my aunts, uncles, cousins and cousins kids were there. Just a lot of food, hanging out, playing Apples to Apples, hide and seek and all sorts of other stuff. It was great seeing everyone and it was at my Mom’s house (she hasn’t had the extended Christmas for years!) so that made it even better.

As I was unloading the chairs and stuff from my car, my iPhone reminded me of something else Christmas-ish.

So I hopped back into my car and drove over to Greenfield Village to catch the Christmas Fireworks! It’s only 3 miles from my house, so it was just a quick trip.

They do a big old fashioned Christmas evening, if you’ve never been you need to go, and they end it with fireworks so I just drove nearby to a place where I could see them. They do it about six or seven times per season, they’re still doing it through the 27th of this month (but they sell out, so don’t wait).

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Why don’t we connect with our friends enough? I had a close friend who lived in Europe for three years, when did I finally go visit him? One week before he moved (duh!). Why wait?

I’ve got friends that live close that I haven’t talked to in ages. Why not?!?

We’ve all got friends close and far that we haven’t seen. Take a minute and make plans. A few months ago I got a message on Facebook.

Hey, what are you doing around Dec 17? 
I'm hoping to be in town. Want to see Tron 2? 
I think we saw Tron 1 at the theater. 

That’s all it took, a couple of messages back and forth and I saw a friend I haven’t talked to in years and haven’t seen for over a decade who lives a 1,000 miles away. How easy was that?!?

Mark, David and I met up, had drinks and food, saw Tron Legacy at the IMAX in 3D (which was awesome!) and then went and had pizza afterwards. It was a great night. We talked a lot (lots of glory days kinda stuff) and caught up on life.

So take a minute, when you talk to someone over the holidays make a point to make plans with them and see them sometime soon…

Thanks for checking in David!

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Throughout life, even before cell phones and even before call waiting, I’ve called people on the phone sometimes initiating (but sometimes returning a call) and they don’t answer so I leave (or not leave) a message. I then move on with my day: I hop in the shower, go to work, I start some laundry, go for a bike ride or I might have even placed the call before walking into a meeting of some sort (it’s not like I’m calling people at 4:59 on a business day).

I can’t tell you the number of times I get a call back within moments and, because I’m not there any more, I can’t take the call so I end up with a message that says “why aren’t you there?”. In most of these cases I have no reason to believe they’ll be calling me back in a few minutes, I have no idea why they didn’t take my call. In a few cases, I’ve even gotten a “I don’t like that you aren’t then when I call you right back!”. I’m not on a tether, I’ve committed no crime…

Isn’t the real question,
“Where were they when I called?”?

If I don’t know you’re calling me back soon, why would I be sitting by the phone? They weren’t sitting by the phone, right? I could be there for hours and still be unavailable when you finally call. Especially these days, many people have call waiting, if they needed to click over just to say “I’ll call you back in 5, unless it’s important”, or they could text back with out even interrupting their call (although I’d prefer “I’ll be done in an hour” compared to “what do you want?”). The other problem is when someone does answer when already on a call, they say they’ll call you back in 5 minutes (or an hour) and triple the time has past. How long do you wait before leaving or calling back? If you leave, are you in trouble because they said they would call?

I’m not a big fan of people clicking over for every incoming call, so if I’m expecting a call I’ll tell a person I’m talking to (at the start of the conversation), “I do need to take a very quick call from so-and-so” or “I’m on my way to meet someone, so if they call I need to take it for a minute”. Otherwise I generally ignore call waiting. Although, when doing a job search, I’m apt to take unknown callers when from area codes of where I’m applying.

Related sidebar: I’ve noticed times that when I don’t leave a message, I think I’m more likely to get a call back when I don’t leave one! But then it doesn’t mean they played the actual message (if I left one) that might have some useful info like “I’m running late, I’m hopping into the shower and I’ll be on my way”.

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I have friends in real life and they all get treated differently. Some are people I see weekly, some I see once a year, some I talk to once in a great while. Some I exchange pleasantries with and some I’ll complain/talk about work or my love life. Some friends I’ll travel with and and some I really only keep in touch with on the phone. Every relationship is completely different, not better or worse, just different. And I might turn down invitations with certain people for certain things, you don’t say yes to every single event/trip/movie you get invited to, do you? I don’t really like sports, a friend isn’t going to think I don’t like them just because I won’t join their group of friends in getting season passes to some team, right?

My on-line life has similar parallels. I might chat with someone often or occasionally. Some of my on-line friends are people who might have traveled to the same place I did so I friended them, but it’s so long ago I don’t even remember how we ended friends in the same place. Some are my friends in real life but I do no actual communications with them on-line. Just like real life the on-line people are treated differently treated different. So just like in real life, requests to be friends can be denied; I’m not looking for season passes that portion of your life, I’m happy with the way things are.

Plus you get on-line friends who ask you to join farmville, mob wars or what ever other junk they might play I automatically decline, I don’t play those things (I do play Scrabble though). And keep in mind when people invite you to those things, they are actually sharing some of your (possibly) private information with those games/programs, that’s how you get the invites.

In addition, I treat my real life differently than my on-line life. I occasionally talk about things to strangers on-line that I would never mention to friends or family; they might stumble across it, but it’s not like I had directly shared it with them.

I’ve actually got more friends and family on some social networks than I’d actually like. Who knows who might read something and share it with someone, like my Mom, because they assume I already have. And on the opposite side, in my real life my Mom probably shares more with friends and family than I’d prefer.

Here’s an on-line example, I’m friends with some of my cousins kids and one day talking to my mom and aunt I ask how my cousin’s son (the aunt’s grandson) enjoyed the high school dance the other night. When asked how I remembered, I mentioned that I saw some photos on-line (I did know my aunt knew there was a dance). So of course they asked to see them and I said, you know he’s shared those photos with people he knows who is going to see them and I didn’t feel right showing them; I was actually surprised how well they understood. I told them if I shared stuff he didn’t want shared, he might block me or limit my access or (even worse) he might limit himself…

It’s not like there was anything inappropriate in the photos, but it just wasn’t my info to share. And now that I think about it, I don’t even think they were his photos, I think they were just tagged with him in them.

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Have a nice Christmas everyone!!

• Be nice
• Be thankful
• Be good

And drive safe if you’re heading out anywhere!

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Everyone, please travel safe during the holiday festivities! In Michigan the roads are awful but be careful no matter how the roads are (especially if you’re drinking while celebrating).

Be thankful that you get to spend time with your family and friends. It’s a time to be nice (so don’t fight with your family about stupid things)!

And if you’re in a place that has snow, don’t forget to go for a ride and look at the Christmas lights!

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I swear that I eat more candy and desserts more the last two weeks of December than I do the rest of the year. Plus it’s usually mixed with a few drinks. Not a good mix for my stomach any time of the year let alone the holidays.

On the other hand it’s really nice to see friends and family!!!

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So we had a whole crew at Piece Pizza again (we were there two years ago), thirteen people I’m thinking. Mostly people I’d met and a few wonderful new people! Our first photo is a little blurry (but that’s because we were drinking) but it’s got the most people in it. Starting on the left is Kevin and Katie, Suzanne, Mrs. RW and Tori in front. Tori I hadn’t met before but since she brought brownies she was quickly treated like family! Suzanne was another new person and even though she was a non-blogger she was really fun too!

This is Robin and Leah at our third location for the evening (we got around). I’ve met Robin before and was thinking I didn’t know who Leah was on-line but I just didn’t remember that I did know, because when I got back to the hotel and turned my computer on, the first thing I saw was her tweeting about being pulled over by the police during her cab ride home.

As usual Dave made us cool badges to wear and these had a “Piece” theme. Get it? (Guess whose site I stole this badge picture from?) And not only did we have cool buttons too, Piece Pizza gave us some of theirs!

Speaking of Dave is it a coincidence that he’s wearing his “Zombies Ate My Brain Shirt” in this zombish looking picture (you really need to click for the full effect). That’s RW sneaking up behind him.

That’s Jenny and Mocha Momma whom I’ve both met before but I don’t have a photo of Lynne and Kosh.

We just ate and drank and chatted and after we ran around to a few other places The Velvet Hour and the Tequila bar where we went a few years ago (name anyone?). It was just a bunch of old and new friends getting together, it seems much simpler than when I have to tell people who I’m going to go see in Chicago. Some of the people didn’t get to stay the whole evening and coincidentally (sadly) some of those were the ones I talked to the least earlier in the evening (I’ll talk to them first next time!).

Argh, that’s a lot more cutting and pasting than usual. But I think I got everyone and all the names right…

I didn’t have as many photos as I thought, so maybe I didn’t get all of them recovered (or maybe they were more blurry ones than I thought).

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So a bunch of bloggers are getting together tomorrow and I’m going. It’s officially DaveCago 3 which means Dave from Blogography is in town and organizes a get together. So tomorrow evening we’re getting together to have drinks and dinner and drinks and just generally have a great time. I’ve gotten together with some permutation of this group the last two years and I wanted to do it again. I’m not even sure who’s coming, I only know of a few for sure but I’m assuming the group is more like 10-15+ people.

What else? I’m not sure if anything’s up for Sunday but if not, I’ll have my roller blades because down by the water in Chicago is one of the best places to go blading. I going to try to hit Standing Room Only for my ribs one of the days (it’s not too far from my hotel).

I’ll be taking the train, because I love the train!! I get too tired if I drive in on the same day to do stuff, the train lets me go in the morning and be awake the rest of the day (and also lets me be semi-productive for those five hours). If only I could take my bicycle on this stretch of the train, I really like having my bike in Chicago (you can really cover some ground).

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This is my Mother and I, it’s not the best picture but it is the most recent one, just a few months old (I was showing her my QuikPod more than we were posing); you can tell we were just goofing around since she didn’t make me fix my hair. Maybe we’ll take a better one later today.

She’s a been a great Mom and she had to work hard at it, she had to drop out of High School to have me and that can’t have been easy in her very Catholic family. I do remember her going back to High School when I was in the first grade; she actually went back to school during the day, she didn’t just get her GED she completed the Diploma. I don’t really remember a commencement ceremony or anything like that (although I’ll ask today if I can get it to come up) she must have just gotten the paper.

I’m sure having me changed her plans for life in many many ways. I don’t know if she ever even got a chance to think about life after high school or if al of a sudden it was all over…

Thanks Mom! You brought me up pretty good and I came out mostly okay. Statistically, I’m doing pretty great – I’m gainfully employed, educated, not in debt (other than my home) and my only complaint is that I’m single with no kids (but I’ve still got some time for that). Thank you again and I Love You!!

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Have a great a happy holiday and / or vacation!

Be nice to everyone!

It’s easier to smile than to frown (it’s a scientific fact) and the results are always better (another fact).

Drive safe!

If you’re a few minutes late everyone will still be there. (I promise).

Don’t fight with your parents! Or your kids!

It really doesn’t matter who’s right. (Although, I sure like to be right).

It’s not the dollar$ $pent, it’s really the thought.

It really is, think about the times you’re gotten a useless gift, or thought they spent too much. (Yes, I know it’s nice to get expensive gifts).

Be thankful for everything and everyone you have!

It’s all you have so take care of all of it and them.

Just smile and be nice to everyone as much as you can for the next few weeks…

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I’m SO far behind for the holidays. All my family get togethers start this Friday and I’m just not ready. I guess I’ll have to worry about it for another few days and I’ll either be caught up or I won’t!

I think a vacation day on Thursday will help me get the job done…

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Drive Safe! Eat Lots! And don’t forget to Be Thankful!

I know life can get crappy at times, but be thankful for the little things. I know if you’re reading this you’ve got access to a computer with Internet access, so that’s soemthing

I know even when I get down about the things I don’t have (which are not material things), I know I have family, friends, a home, a car that runs and a job (even if it is making me insane right now). I do have a million other things (mostly things I probably don’t need), but those material things really aren’t what matters at the end of the day.

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“There’s a reason for everything”, I’ve heard this a lot lately but I don’t know if I believe this. I like to think the universe and everything in it is in some kind of strange harmony but it’s times like this when it doesn’t make any sense that makes me think there is no rhyme nor reason.

In case you don’t know, I’m in charge of a very small department at work, there’s only four of us (including myself). Two of us meticulously manipulate lots of data & records, the genius ‘computer guy’ works on all 1000 computers and the network, I do the audio/video, paperwork, meetings, and a little of the computer stuff. Last month was really busy, it was the start of the school year so it’s always cRaZy but the only part that’s important to this story is that the computer guy was off for a few weeks since they were having their second baby his wife works elsewhere in the district so we all know her. I probably mentioned to you how insane it was at that time (plus that’s when I was sick which made it even more insane). I don’t know how we made it without him for those few weeks, it seemed like everything that went wrong were all in the areas that I had the least expertise, the few weeks he was back were wonderful!

If you haven’t figured it out by now this story isn’t about me, it’s about the ‘computer guy’ and to move this story along we unfortunately just have to rip off the band-aid to get to the next part -

Early this Monday morning, completely and utterly out of the blue he just died. He was unconscious, they don’t know why and they couldn’t revive him and I don’t know if they’ll ever even figure out what happened. I’d have said he was a pretty healthy guy, he was 37 and he could have easily passed for thirty, so it’s just bizarre…

To me, this makes no sense. There is no reason. Everyone keeps talking about it different ways. I know I’ll hear it all again and they’ll probably say something like that at the funeral. But it just makes no sense to me. He had a wife he was in love with and two babies; to me, there is nothing more important than that. It’s just hard for me to be convinced there is some reason, some higher purpose that I don’t understand that’s suppose to make it all make sense in the end.

It seems like a pretty simple process to me – if the universe needs someone for ‘some other purpose’ you leave the happy couple with the newborn babies alone and you grab someone else. Unfortunately, if I were creating the formula it would weigh heavily against me – the single people who hadn’t managed to get married and didn’t have any kids should go before the couple with the babies. It just seems like a pretty simple concept to me and if we all understood the formula we could all be fruitful and multiply and live happily ever after…In case you haven’t figured it out yet I’m a pretty emotional guy. And this has been so very difficult for me probably mostly because of the surprise and shock of it all. Most other people that I’ve known who died it wasn’t a surprise, they’d been sick or old or something was going on so you kinda knew it was coming. Or it was someone I hadn’t really known well or seen for a while. It certainly wasn’t someone I was expecting to see in the next few hours. Somehow those things make it easier to take, at least it has for me in the past.

Plus, I haven’t even seen the baby yet. I don’t know what difference it makes if I see him later or if I had already, but it sure makes me feel bad. I know he knows I love kids and he won’t get to see me get excited over that. It’s just a stupid thing I can’t shake, but it’s bothering me a lot.

This isn’t the last I’ll be talking about life and the universe and actually living/experincing life, I’ve been thinking about these things a lot lately but I was feeling some were a little morbid and strange to talk about but maybe now I will.

Obviously, this is the short version of the story, the long version requires more details (which I’m not going to post here) and of course that even gets sadder than what is (bluntly) told here. I’ve rewritten parts of this a dozen times, but I can’t get it to feel how I want, I guess that’s why I’m a tech guy and not a novelist. And some of this isn’t written in the correct person/tense since I’ve been mulling it over and editing it the last few days.

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So I got some of the photos from Mom’s Surprise party up. This first one is from in front of the house, my cousin and uncle decorated it during the night. The rest of the photos are from the party.

I posted about 18 and hope some of the others with cameras will send me some. I you missed the post, the surprise party was yesterday.

These are really old school photos of my grandparents kids, my mom is in the lower-right.

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So today my Mom turned sixty today. She thought I was taking her our to dinner tonight but when we got to the restaurant she was surprised that I had about thirty people there! I couldn’t mention it before today, because I don’t know if she reads my blog at all, I know she knows it exists so I didn’t want to take the chance. I made a lot of phone calls, my aunt called a bunch and my cousin took care of the cake so it was all pretty easy to set up.

The people who were got there first put up all the balloons I had dropped off and put some streamers around the outside railing. We had the timing down perfectly, I think just about everyone was already there when we got there. And they were all waiting outside in front so she saw them as we pulled up. It took her a minute to process all the people that were there…

We had lots of family and friends show up. Some drove a ways to get here so that’s always nice. Lots of cards with gift cards and lottery tickets. She’ll get to do some shopping this weekend. A few showed up later and a few had to leave early and it was a great time. She really had a perfect day and she just called me up again a few minutes ago to say that and to thank me again.

My Mom is awesome, she did a pretty great job bringing me up mostly on her own. She had a lot of help from her parents the first six years and baby-sitting help from the other relatives but most of the rest of the time it was her and she did a great job making everything work out.In case you were wondering, we went to Woody’s in Royal Oak, Michigan (they’ve got two inside floors and a large rooftop area). Very casual place great service, everyone seemed happy with the food and drinks. Elizabeth was our beautiful (and efficient) waitress and did a great job. Personally, I was happy with the bill, I thought it was a good value before I even realized they had already tacked the tip on. I’d definitely recommend there for a gathering in the future.

On a completely unrelated note, while I was at the party someone bid last minute on eBay for the bike rack that I was trying to get; it was almost identical to the one that was damaged last week (and barely used). I had just upped the maximum today in case anyone else had bid on it (no one had yet). They must have used some software to bid on it (or they were sitting right there) since it was bid at the last minute

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So the bloggers met in Chicago again for DaveCago2, about half of us met early June 2006 and we had a bunch of new people too (but we were down a few too). Here’s the “blog roll call” that I’m pleasec to be a part of – Dave, Kevin, Jenny, RW and Mrs. RW, Ariana, Ajooja, Birdcolor, Diane, Kilax (who hand codes her blog!!!) and me. Several brought spouses (or spouses-to-be), it easier to not mention who than to remember who blogs (or doesn’t blog) their private life. I hope I didn’t leave anyone out, it was so hard to keep track of everyone…

Dave made us lanyards and had buttons and shirts and it made me feel like it was Christmas, I’m just happy with meeting new people. We ate at Pizano’s Pizza on The Loop (near Millennium Park) and we got a bunch of different pizza and lots of (different) drinks. Then we wandered around and found another place for more drinks (Congress Plaza Hotel, the Gazebo Ba I thinkr), that too a while since most places didn’t have space for all of us. It was great to put a face and voice to some of the bloggers and just chat and get more info on stories we’ve heard and stuff like that.Neither restaurant or bar had drinks like Mike’s Hard Lemonade or Smirnoff Ice and I was way above my daily caffine limit, so I hard to drink Long Island Iced Tea, it was my only option (really).

I do have photos, but I’ll have to get them up later. I’ve been running around all day and I’m too tired to take a chance at accidentally deleting photos.

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So I’ve certainly been catching up on sleep the last few days, I think I’ve had about 23 hours since Friday evening. This is excellent since I really haven’t been sleeping all that well these days. I haven’t gotten much accomplished this weekend but that’s okay…

What I did get accomplished was that I went out to the cemetery where my grandparents and great-grandparents (Mom’s side) are buried today. I usually get out there a few times a year (sprint/fall) just to clean up and edge where the grass is growing over the stones, but it’s been so crazy lately (life and the weather) I’m getting out much later than usual. It’s been raining/drizzling all day but it pretty much stopped when I got out there so that worked out nice.

I need to take Mom with me some time because I always come up with questions about dates, middle initials or something else about family history that I don’t know the answer to…

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On Mother’s Day (May 13) you can make unlimited free Calls (from US/Canada Skype) to anywhere in the world!!! Check out the Skype page for more details. Actually, it’s not really unlimited it’s only 200 minutes free, but that’s still a pretty good deal.

Post edited to not incorrectly refer to “today” as Mother’s Day…

Offer valid from May 13th 2007, 5:00 am (Eastern Time GMT-5.00) to May 14th 2007 4:59 am (Eastern Time GMT-5.00)

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