Gaaah! The silence… The unbelievably annoying silence… I got in the car Saturday to drive to WI for the Water Street Bridge show, and after I got gas, and actually got on the road, I turned on the iPod only to have it present me with this:

http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/

ARRRRGH! It was FINE Friday night…

Now in the grand scheme of things, a malfunctioning iPod is not at all important. I’m just used to having all my music with me, and when I want to hear something, it’s right there. I got online and did some looking, and theres a lot of people that experience this, most of the time its caused by a dead battery. I can believe this to be the case, as it did get warm while plugged in to charge, warmer than I ever remember it doing. I tried some of the tricks posted online, including putting the iPod into disk mode. It activated its disk mode charging icon for a while, and after it said it was full. (10 minutes later…) I tried rebooting it, and still got the sad iPod message.

… Today I met my new lawn mower guy. He is the youngest brother of a H.S. friend. He stopped by, to talk pricing, etc… I haven’t seen him in YEARS… He had no recollection of me, but holy crap I remember him. I remember him… in Diapers… and today he was going home to get ready for Prom. What the hell… Kids I knew in diapers should NOT be old enough to go to prom…

Happy Birthday “RB” Bob! Hope its a good one you soon to be old man you!

To all my friends who are hurting so deeply over this latest tragedy, I offer you my most heartfelt sympathies. I would be lying if I even implied he and I were close. We exchanged pleasantries a few times, and he made me laugh more times than I can recall. The world is an emptier place, and he will be missed. If there is anything I can do, if you need a shoulder to cry on, or an ear to listen, I am here do not hesitate.

I hope all my Indianna friends are OK after the magnitude 5.4 earthquake this morning. It was strong enough here that it was able to wake me up having had only ~4 hours of sleep.

Happy belated birthday Shane. Sorry I missed it, I was tied up in a special event at work until midnight and wasn’t online.

My taxes are once again done. Once again you ask? Well, I was in a rush to do them one night to get someone off my back… In my haste I missed a 1099-R on my return… I noticed it before filing the state returns though. Rather then start to fix it then, I waited until after my conference, and the anniversary of Dave’s accident. I needed to be in a less stressed mood. This was of course my original plan anyway… So today, I called in sick due to lack of sleep, which was true, and rested. Then after I got a good amount of rest, I sat down and re-computed my federal taxes, so I could file the state taxes correctly. I then went though the process of preparing an amended return for the feds. Wow there is a lot of paperwork… Despite my screwup, I did manage to come out ahead and will still get enough back form the state to cover what I owed the feds. See, when Sonja passed I received part of her retirement money. Without taxes taken out it was enough to eliminate my credit card debt. So, I waited on the taxes knowing I would end up paying a small amount to the feds now at tax time rather than getting a return. I was correct in assuming it would be MUCH less than owed than the interest earned for another month or two of credit card debt. So, now that mess is all over, I can begin to look at some of the other projects I said yes to before the conference and all.

Today, I went to the graveside on my own around noon. I knelt along side the tombstone, and talked, and cried… mostly cried…
After I regained composure, I headed over to Dave’s folks, where we were to meet up with Maggie, and one of his cousins. After Maggie arrived, we all headed back to the cemetery where we were met by a family friend. After everyone was there Maggie and I sang a song for Dave (I cant remember what one… ) Lin, and Jerry had bought a collection of balloons, one for each color of the rainbow. After Lin read a nice proverb, we each took a balloon and all together we released them, to send Dave a rainbow. We watched as the balloons soared off together into the sky. As the balloons rose the bluest one veered off on its own path, away from the rest, I followed it with my eyes until I could no longer see it. After the balloons vanished, Maggie and I sang a shortened version of sailors prayer (shortened cause neither of us could keep the words straight for some reason…) then after a few minutes we all headed back to Lin and Jerry’s to talk more.
This just doesn’t get easier… I can’t even imagine how Lin and Jerry do it.

Two years, and yet the tears still fall like a cold rain. Two years, and I still want to pick up the phone and call to talk. Two years and I still instinctivly think “Dave will love to hear about ____”

I miss you Dave.

Forgive me in advance if I’m not my normal self today or tomorrow… I’m going to Dave’s graveside tomorrow, it will have been 2 years. It’s still incredibly painful… but I’ll make it through, just cut me some slack please…

I’m home… wow what a trip… I’d say more but that would require effort.

Happy Birthday Carl! Don’t work to hard on the house today.

Well, the view out the window this morning was pretty nice… What do you think?

Anyone bored around 12:45 Central can track my flight… cause well… you’re bored of course…

Airline: Southwest
Flight: 74
Depart CHICAGO-MIDWAY (MDW) at 12:45 PM
Arrive in DETROIT METRO MI (DTW) at 2:50 PM

Guess who else is bored…

My bags are packed, I’m ready to go… wow, funny the song actually fits. I am packed (mostly, I do have to toss in the razor after I use it in the morning) and as ready as I will ever be to attend the SirsiDynix SuperConference in Detroit. While there I will be giving not one, but two presentations at the conference. I’m slightly nervous about that, but I think I’ll do fine. Hell if I can walk up to complete strangers while wearing funny clothes, and have a conversation with them about things they don’t know anything about I can certainly give a presentation to complete strangers about things they no little to nothing about while wearing funny clothes… Wierd how the same description fits both my Garb and a Suit isn’t it? If I survive the experience I’ll fill you all in on the experience. Oh, don’t expect a lot of nice pictures like I had last year… I will be staying in a mega multi-story hotel, and the entire conference takes place in it. Photos may include such sites as… Hallways… Hotel rooms… and my obligatory self portrait in a hotel hallway mirror…
Thanks to docdetroit for the pub suggestion, I have already made plans to visit it tomorrow and possibly Saturday nights for their live Irish music. Oh and just to let you all know, NO I did NOT have tickets on ATA.

Next year’s conference is in Dallas TX, during the Scarby run… MUAHAHAHAH… I am thinking I will have to arrange it so that I can get a few days in at the faire too..

Today as I was leaving the library I noticed one of the simple little yellow “Wet Floor” signs. The strange thing about this one, was that it appeared that some of our crack janitorial staff added a message in magic marker to both sides of the sign…

It appears someone else had the same question I had… “Remob?”