Well I survived the Funeral

Well we survived, it was as long or longer than I had ever hoped was possible. We began by leaving home at noon and arriving in SmallTown USA some 2 Hours later. We stopped by the widow's home (where many grandkids and parents were staging for the trip to the funeral home.)

We then changed and left to go to the Funeral Home at 4 for family prayers - unfortunately I had it in my head that this would be 20-30 minutes long (this was my previous experience) then we could leave and come back at 7 for the memorial service - no such luck. We had family prayers from 4 to 5 then it seemed like the whole population of SmallTown showed up (they had to finally close the funeral home doors) between 5 and 7 to pay their respects. S. and I finally snuck out at 6 to go and get water, gum and hard candies. Then we had a nice 20 minute memorial service.

As a note to those running funerals in the future - take care of the living! Water, tea, coffee and some small nibbles are really a blessing especially for family that has to be there for 3 1/2 hours.

This isn't happy happy joy joy...

Here's an interesting contrast, Wonderful Wife and I are going to have to travel out of province for a day to attend a family function. The contrast comes in when you compare how Wonderful Wife and I approach this situation - I'm not happy, this will involve two days of people I don't know well, dinners, gatherings etc. that will require continued personal interaction - i.e. talking. On top of all of that we're staying with relatives, so there's no escape (not that the relatives are not nice people, they are) the issue here is energy - I see this kind of situation as energy draining, with little or no ability to recover. On the other hand Wonderful Wife sees this as an opportunity to meet with family - generally an energy + evolution.

While it's true that I don't know this branch of the family well, it's also true that I find any large unlimited gathering like this as draining.

I wonder if other 5s find this kind of situation draining as well...hummm

Evan

It just isn't meant to be...

Ever have one of those weeks (months) when things just don't work out... I've been involved in a major project at work for the past several weeks, the initial work I did was horribly tedious and detailed. Requiring very small manual changes to the code that creates printable labels, now that that is all done I've finally been able to go to the client and score a success with good test result.

Now, S. and I need to go off to a family funeral - it's out of province so we'll be away overnight. We need to go, not really an option not to, and of course, one of the days we're going to be away was the day this was to be installed. I doubt that I'll even get mentioned in the 'ataboy' email...

Sigh

Ok so now it's a Deck

Well, we finally have a deck, got the platform up in a day thankfully, glad to have that project completed - now we can close up outside and get ready for the winter. Those of you who don't live in Winnipeg should realize - snow by Halloween is not uncommon - so we're just about out of time.

The Garage is much less full of 'stuff' (extra lumber and other items - much much better than it was before! I was thinking of going for a hike with the Scouts tomorrow but may stay home and clean the garage enough so that we can get the cars in - that would be nice! Then there is the Christmas lights to clean up, the roof to fix a shingle on and a couple of other 'outside' chores that need my attention - oh well and here I thought I was done...

Maybe next week (if it doesn't snow)

Evan