Thursday

May 3, 2001

white poodle looks longingly at eXtreme team in manuever

There is always time to do it over or do it again, time to learn, time to change. Until each of us reaches our end. I heard that an ex-colleague succumbed to a long battle with cancer today. He wasn't my best of friends, we didn't see eye-to-eye all that much. Still, the death of someone you know always gives you pause. You think...his kids must be 10 and 12 or so. You think of them as smaller, because you remember when they were born. You feel for them. It always ends this way, you remember. Life that is. It's good to remind yourself of that. It makes stupidity at work seem trivial, it puts everything in a different light.

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Had lunch with the parents again. Set the sprinkler to go off in a few minutes with a one-minute stay on each station. Went inside and ate. Came out to watch it go around the yard. Seemed to work. Set it again for Dad to watch at 7AM with ten minutes per station. He seems better today. He came out into the garage with me. He says he thinks they moved just in time because he and mother have gone down since. "Or maybe it is just your care," he says. That hurt me a little although clearly he is joking. I think that they gutted it out until they got down here and then relaxed a little. Mom seems to feel pretty good although her mouth hurts from some dental work. They complain they can't hear the messages on their answering machine phone. Hmm...perhaps this big volume thing will help. I call from the second line to get a message there to test.

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At the end of the day a colleague wants to have a drink. I suggest that he meet me at home since FFP is out planting things. We all end up going to Four Seasons, having a nice dinner, listening to Rebecca, talking to friends. We do too much talk about work. But it's OK. FFP is used to it.

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Tomorrow will be busy, but I'm thinking the weekend will be nice. Just enough to do. Some free time. Yes!

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