Impending death, She’s getting married?!, and Quality of life, Equiptment!

Impending Death

Monday I had lunch with my ex-father in law and his girlfriend (they’ve been together for something like 17 years, IIRC), and they gave me the bad news.

Death is bad enough.  It’s a spectre that we all live under – someday, we all die, and we all know it.  But knowing when you’re going to die?  I’m not sure how I’d handle that.  

His girlfriend has somewhere between 6 and 9 months to live.  She had ovarian cancer, and they did all the stuff that needs to be done, but it wasn’t enough – it’s moved into the lymphatic system (which is always endgame for human beings.)

I gotta say, if it were me I’d finish up by spending time with friends and family, and going out and doin’ some of the things I never got around too.  And, towards the end, I’d probably hunt down a couple of people and ‘cull the herd’ a bit.  Besides the last part, that’s exactly what it sounds like Patty is gonna be doing.   They are headed to Europe to tour the place for like a month.  I’ll be helping out watch the farm while they are gone (my job it appears is going to be just making sure everything goes ok, I don’t have to do the day to day chores.  They have a younger guy who’s going to be handling that.)

She’s Getting Married?!

I didn’t get just one shocker in a week though.  I got three.  My ex-wife drops me a line and tells me she’s pregnant, and getting married in October to Nick (a mutual friend).  WOW.

Gotta say, I’m incredibly happy for her!  Kids is one of the things that’s always been a very high priority in her life, much more so than me.  And as for getting married to Nick, I think it’s a great match, and he’s one of those people who should have kids 🙂

But there’s always that part… wow, gee, I’m doing what exactly?  Nada.  Not dating, not really looking, nada.  Then again, well, I’m not that interested in looking around anymore.  But, damn, if she’s already getting re-married, should I be?

I think the answer is still no.  I’ve got things I have to do, and situations to take care of.  And quite honestly, I know what I’d like to see happen someday, but I’m in no hurry.

But Erin asked an interesting question – basically, did it make me feel wierd, like that should have been my kid?  The answer is no – if Heather had gotten pregnant while we were married, we would have potentially had a much harder time of things later if we did get a divorce.  The universe quite often doesn’t allow the “wrong thing” to happen unless you really try to make it happen.  

I sincerely hope her and Nick do well together, and I’m sure they will!

Quality of Life

As I mentioned before, I’m trying to kick drinking soda.  I’m probably more successfull with that so far than I am with quitting smoking.  I still have drank some soda (today I’ve had 3 32oz Pepsi’s, way down from the 4 – 6 52oz Pepsi’s.  The day before, I think I had one 52oz’er.)

Quite some time back, and I had forgotten about it, a friend of mine had mentioned that he had experienced arthritis issues whenever he drank a lot of caffenated beverages.  

Tonight, Meredith needed her neck looked at – she’s had a headache for three days, and so I checked out her neck and shoulders.  At one time, I was damned good at massage – I studied all sorts of techniques (some of which I learned in China from a massuse), and acupressure, reflexology, and a lot about muscle and skeletal structure.  I enjoy giving massages.  Problem -eventually, my hands started getting really really arthritic, and usually about 5 minutes of massage was enough to make ’em start hurting pretty badly.

I think there may be a corrolation here – my soda intake decreased considerably, and I managed to give Meredith a 30 minute neck and shoulder massage without my hands screaming in pain.  HM. 

I still have a caffeen addiction – but Pepsi tastes both good and way too sweet all at the same time now.  So it’s getting easier and easier to take less in.  Like a lot of things, it’s all in my head – I know what I want to do, I know what I have to do to accomplish it, and slowly my mind is convincing my body that I don’t really want that type of thing anymore.

And I don’t mind at all 🙂

On thing I found interesting – I had expected that after no long working construction, it was going to take some serious effort to shed back off the pounds I had lost while I was a lot more active.  Not so.  I’m still 217.  Hey, not bad – I don’t have to cover territory I already handled once 🙂

Saturday I’m going to start my “pre-training” – basically, a nightly (or morning, havent decided) run to get ready for (UG) running 2 miles in 8.5 minutes every other day.  I’m not going to reach that goal right off, so, I decided I’d work a little on my own first to get geared up for it.

Equiptment

In 10 days, the final pieces that are on order should be here for the movie stuff.  OMG I’m excited.  I also bought me a mini-tripod along with the real tripods so I had one to stick on my desk.  I’m going to do a little experementation with video podcasts at some point, and wanted to be able to stick one camera dead on at me in my usual workspot, and one to the side (on a regular tripod) for a second view.  A quick bit of editing, and suddenly I’ve got a High Definition capable podcast on whatever subject I like 😉

I’ve got a huge part of a script for our “test run” with the camera equipment.  I don’t have it all done though, I can’t figure out how to ‘wrap it up’ really.  I need a good solid final joke for it, then I need to work backwards on content ordering – lead with your second best joke, end with your best joke.

Soon… soon.  I’ll never be a famous actor.  I’ll never be a famous director or producer, but damn I’m gonna have a hell of a lot of fun here real soon doing something amazing – making movies 🙂


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