Memorial Day, etc.

Hey Amigos,

I had a free moment here and figured I'd blog and say hola to you all. I'm doing alright, I suppose. I've been absolutely swamped at work, it's just madness. Because of a favor to someone in my department, I am overbooked with student hours, and it's a daily, hourly, sometimes minutely battle to keep them occupied. They're great kids and I'm very grateful for the help, but I do not get one minute's peace for 7.5 hours. I have been able to eat my lunches, check emails (mostly), etc., but that's about it. So I have about 30 minutes here.

My weigh in is tonight. No idea if I've lost or not. Isn't that weird? You'd think I could tell, but I just can't. Same as last week. According to my points tracker I did OK with my points. My eating wasn't spectacular. I still have some bad habits, such as eating late in the evening, not eating as much during the day, that sort of thing. And I can't seem to resist the WW ice cream novelties, which are quite expensive. I think I have been honest in recording my points. So here's to hoping there's a downward move on the old scale tonight.

Memorial Day was fun. My family went out to visit my dad's grave, put in new flowers, tidied up. He was cremated, so it's a smallish plot. He has a new neighbor. You start to wonder about the people that you see. There's a small grave marker not far from him, it's not stone or anything, but possibly some sort of wood. It was for a little boy who died at age 9 in 2001. I wonder about him. And my sister found a marker that listed a mother, father and daughter. The father and daughter died the same day, in 1967. She was 11 or so, he was 40 something. The mother is still alive. What happened? Were they in an accident? Or something more sinister? Or did they both get sick? I guess I'll probably never know. You can almost map the flu epidemic in some of the older areas. And there's a woman's grave near my father's, whose family so obviously misses her dearly. Always new, fresh flowers. Sometimes they leave a couple pieces of maple candy there for her.

My friend Sharon's husband is buried in the same cemetery, and very near where my dad is, so I always visit him too. They got married maybe 10 years ago, in October. She got pregnant almost immediately. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor around Thanksgiving, and was dead by May. She had her baby in July. It just breaks my heart to think about it. And I never met him. She and I fell out of touch, and I contacted her when I'd heard that her father died. He's there too, so I always go visit him.

I don't find cemeteries to be depressing or gloomy or anything. Actually, this particular cemetery is huge, and beautifully landscaped. Quiet. My dad's site is very near a little fountain, and there's a huge pond nearby too. And the whole place is very, very old. So, anyway, I'm glad I did that.

We had a cookout at my brother's and that was a blast too. My nephew and I had a great time. We played Trouble. I won. I almost didn't...I was going to let him have it. But he told me he'd be OK if I won, so I figured, what the heck.

OK, back to the salt mines here. More soon, and I'll report on my weigh in later.