Wednesday, 01 October 2003

September just got away from me.

Jackie and I went to my uncle's funeral. It was a short, graveside service with a flag folding and gun salute (because uncle Jon was a veteran). There was an awful lot of praying, but it's okay with me if other people want to do that.

I got to see a lot of relatives I don't see often enough, including some where the degree of relatedness is so small as to be statistically insignificant. One guy I didn't remember ever having met before is, if I remember correctly, the son of my great-grandmother's sister.

People noticed that I've lost weight. It's hard to notice when people lose weight (at least, I tend not to notice) and some people who notice don't say anything about it. Even so, I've been a bit surprised that so few people have commented on it before. (I'm down 25 pounds since last February, about 20 pounds less than what I weighed at Clarion.)

I'm simply going to have to write a two-fisted adventure story for the Spicy Zeppelin Stories anthology, whatever the title ends up being.

We brought my mom home to stay with us for a few days after the funeral. That was great. We watched some movies, ate some good meals out, ate the apple pie she baked (yum). We put her on the plane home this morning.

I have a long list of things to do. I've decided to let my .Mac account expire, so I need to come up with an alternative for backups. I've got stories to write. I agreed to work on the membership committee for ELNA (Esperanto League for North America). I need to get ready for my trip to Frankfurt. I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting--I need to put together a to-do list.

I've been reading Quicksilver and enjoying it enormously. Wonderful fun.

Poor Jackie has a cold. She's better today, but has had a sore throat for several days.

I ran 6 miles on Sunday, but haven't run since. It's starting to get dark early, which makes running hard to fit in after work, and it's gotten cold, which makes running before work an uninviting proposition. I'll get it together to run some soon, though.

Like everybody else, there's a chance I missed some email amidst all the virus spam a week ago. If you sent me anything and didn't get a reply, please send it again.