Goodbye!

Last night we had a party at Asuka and Carrie’s house to say goodbye to Johannes. He’s going back home to Dresden after 2 years in the US working for AMD. The people in the photo are Doris, Johannes behind me, Patrick, Asuka, Carrie, Vince, Jeremy and Edda. Carrie made chicken enchiladas, black bean soup and homemade cookies and ice cream with chocolate sauce. We talked about Carrie and Asuka’s Chrismas trip to Portugal. Apparently, the Portuguese were not helpful. Carrie quit her job at a place making high-end purses because there was no running water where she worked and her boss decided to spend the $40,000 earmarked for putting in a bathroom instead on cosmetic dentistry. Can you believe you can spend that much on your teeth?

Up Late…

I spent all night at P’ng and Judy’s place. We’re trying to put together a slideshow for Tina’s Funeral this Saturday. Everyone’s been mailing Judy all these photos and I think it’s been pretty hard on Judy – Especially since P’ng has been away at a conference for while.

I’m not looking forward to Saturday. There are going to be too many sad people there. While I try to let people grieve in there own ways, sometimes I just think it’s stupid to cry so much. For me, it’s the same thing as being diagnosed with cancer. What’s to get sad over? The only option you’ve got is to deal with it. Same with death. Sure it’s not pretty. Sure you don’t want it to happen to folks before their time. But it isn’t something you can control.

Anyway, I can’t help thinking also, that this is just the beginning of it all. The longer I live, the more funerals I’m going to go to. It’s just the way it is.

sorry if I’m a cold fish. Maybe it will be different for me when it’s someone super close to me. If it were my wife, for example, I can see myself being devastated to the point of being non-functional, but maybe that’s a special case. or maybe it isn’t

Mom

Mom was cutting the rice cake brought back from her home town when I called. She said Donald likes it and will mail to Donald pretty soon.

Doris, please request blog to get Mom in again. Mom did something that it did not work last time. I can help her while I am at her place late this evening.

Too see Mom soon 🙂

Mom is pretty low tech, just like me

After Mom got her cell phone, I have more troubles to talk to her than she was on land lines only. She does not know how to pick up her voice messages. She does not hear rings well also. Well, I am no better.

Richland locals would like to interview Mini on Friday. See what will happen.

Yesterday, I drove back to DC and shoveled the snow, watered the plants and checked out the house. Everything was fine. And I drove right back to Pittsburgh. I arrived at my hotel at 9:00 PM, not bad.

Can’t wait to see Mom on Thursday 🙂

My son loves Britney!

So, I’m borrowing all this music from the library to load onto my iPod and I decide to check out a Britney Spears album. I am especially fond of Ooops… I did it again. Which I heard over and over again in Taiwan at the Taiwan version of Walmart: the RT-Mart. They had her video playing over and over again on their display TV. So there I am in Taiwan listening to this underage girl doing whatever. So I check it out of the library to relive my Taiwan days and I pop it into the CD player and the V-man starts bopping along. He actually screamed (!?!) when I suggested that we listen to another lovely selection from the library. “I WANT BRITNEY!” screamed the 2 year-old.

Nap / No nap?

So I had decided that I wasn’t going to make Vince take a nap anymore. I was spending the whole afternoon trying to make him lie down in bed and then he would fall asleep at 3:30 pm and sleep until 5 pm. Then he wouldn’t go to sleep until 11 and Jeremy and I would be really sleep deprived. So today, we are running around the house and 2 o’clock comes around and Vince falls asleep on the study floor. What gives?