I forgot about this song until it came up in an iTunes genius playlist. It's one of those songs that just gets to everybody...it's so full of hope. I was recently reminded that it's not such a stigma to be ambitious. Good remix.
My dad passed away in the early hours of Monday morning. He'd been suffering for a long time with COPD and was prone to angina attacks and chest infections as a result. He had real trouble breathing and was on oxygen pretty much most of the time.
My brother called me at about 3am to tell me the news and to ask if I could come home. I got the first boat over at 8.20am and got to the house. My dad had been taken away by then and my brother and I began the process of Sorting Things Out. And in a strange kind of way it was an enjoyable time: just I, my brother and my mum in constant contact dealing with insurance policies and such like, as well as clearing out cupboards and cleaning.
There wasn't all that much to sort out in terms of material possessions; my folks moved from our family home about 10 years ago to a small one-bedroomed house, so most of the junk went during the move. And my mum is physically prepared for being on her own. She's paralysed almost completely from the neck down and has constant social care. My dad was there, but he wasn't really there in the last few months as he wasn't in good enough shape really to be of much help to my mum. Of course he was company and that's what she will miss the most.
Mum and dad were married in 1971 and my dad was 78 at the end.
The funeral was today. We didn't expect there to be a great turn out, given that my dad's family is quite small now and he wasn't really a great socialiser since moving house. But we were wrong: there was standing room only and even at that some people had to stand outside!
The service was really good, officiated by the same minister that married Brian and Lynn and me and Lorraine. He also christened all four of Brian's kids. So he's been dealing with the families births, deaths and marriages for a while and that's kind of comforting.
The service was followed by a trip to the cemetery where dad was buried and it was a nice service there too. The close family all threw a rose into the grave and I hope that Freya will remember. I think she will. Hamish probably won't though as he's only 3.
During my time at home, since Monday, I got to an AA meeting every night. It's weird to think that I spent a lot of my drinking time in Prestwick and Ayr but I'd never been to a meeting there. It was easy enough to find the meetings and it was a great help to me. It's a shame in a way that I didn't get to sit in the pub with my brother and the rest of the family after the service, but I know what that would have led to and it's not what dad would have wanted; of that I am certain. So I made up for that by getting a 32 gig iPhone. It's what dad would have done! He always was an early adopter and a gadget freak so it's the best way I can think to remember him. I also wore his cuff links at the service today and shall keep them special.
I'm not sure whether I'm grieving or not. I think being able to share at the AA meetings was a big help but whether it was letting out some of the grief I really can't say. I've never dealt with the death of a parent before. Time will tell.
I know that I am proud of my family, particularly my brother and his eldest for the way they've dealt with everything this week. And same goes for Lorraine; she's been there for me and has been a great help. And my children helped too. And so life goes on for us all.
I'd also like to thank all the friends and family who came along today. It was a great help to me to see my school friends there, even if I didn't get to talk to them for very long. If you're reading this its, thanks for coming!
Rest in Peace, Chipper.
Go forth and fill your libraries with media.
Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.
The kids were at a Hallowe'en party at the school last night and had a great time. For some reason I can't get Lightroom to export the photos in their proper colour settings on the Macbook; their costumes were more vibrant than they look here. But you get the idea.
The kids were at a Hallowe'en party last night. Doesn't Freya make a great witch?
I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.
I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.
Cheers,
via Too Much Nick:
Reminds me of hacky sack... is that cruel?Walk Don’t Run (Isogabamaware) sung by a knit rabbit and bear with ukuleles and little voices
More about the band:
Bad news. As many of you have probably noticed, the Amazon Conduit was not fixed in the last week's release. Unfortunately, there was an undetected bug that is preventing the conduit from working.
We are working on this bug fix and hope to have the Conduit back up and running this week.
I will keep you posted.
Thank you for being so patient.
Overclockers shafted me. They wouldn't repair the motherboard. I just got it back from Gigabyte and they did repair it. But it took them so long that I ended up buying another system, this time from a decent reseller (Kustom PCs). I decided to go for the latest socket:
Asus P7P55D (socket 1156)
Intel i7-860
4GB G.Skill NQ Series DDR3 12800 (1600MHz)
Noctua NH-U12P CPU cooler
I also got a SATA DVD-RW drive, so I'm ditching IDE finally. No more floppy drive either.
I built it on Thursday night and it worked! So after about 3 months of having no computer, I've got a good one! I've got Windows 7 pre-ordered so I can't really build the new system yet. I've got Win7 64-bit RC1 on it just now, but I'm not sure if it's working. I'm having trouble copying data to the new hard drive and am getting a few hard drive errors. I'm a bit worried about corrupting my data so I should probably just leave it well alone until I get the retail version of Win7, either that or I should stick XP on it just for kicks, so I can see how much quicker it runs than it did on my old AMD64.
Should food look like this?
