Funeral Plans

Mom passed away yesterday afternoon while in hospice care in Billings, Montana. She was 80 years old.

The funeral is going to be in Karlstad, Minnesota on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008.

This has been a difficult month for me, but as always, there were lessons to be learned. I have come to appreciate "moments" big and small. While spending a week with mom during her last days, I had a brief moment of clarity. Happiness doesn’t come from searching for perfect moments, but from finding the beauty and joy in every situation and in every day.

Through this, I have also come to realize how important my family and friends are. I thank you all for the support you have given me. I love you all very much.

...and finally, the only New Year's resolution I am making this year: to spend more time with all of you...

Song of the day: Nothing Lasts for Long -The Samples Live in Colorado

Mom

Tough day today. Mom's condition worsens a little bit every day. Her pain is constant at this point and she has to remain permanently medicated. It probably won't be long before we are unable to have any meaningful conversation with her.

I plan on staying here in Montana until Christmas morning, but am unsure if she will be around that long. I am really not too depressed about it being Christmas, though. Although it is getting difficult to sit with her for long periods of time, I really would not want to be anywhere else.

I haven't had a chance to buy a single present this year, but that all seems pretty unimportant at this point. Through this all, I have probably never been closer to my family. Priorities tend to present themselves clearly in situations like this.

I wish you all well and hope you find the time to enjoy your families during this busy season.

Cancer

I know I have disappeared, but it has been a rough week or so.

Hawaii was beautiful, but the cruise wasn’t too great. I couldn’t recommend Norwegian Cruise Lines. I also get a little bored with locations where everyone speaks English. Not exotic enough, I guess. But all in all, the trip was okay. The real spoiler was when I received news that my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer half way through the week. Therefore, I spent a good portion of my time on the boat feeling trapped and wishing I was somewhere else.

My mom’s situation was not a complete surprise, but that doesn’t make dealing with hospice care and funeral arrangements any easier. She is not expected to be with us too long, but she is still putting up a fight. I will probably stick around the rest of the week here in Montana. It is going to be hard to leave, though, since it will probably be my last good-bye.

It is a sad time, especially since it is the Holidays, but there are always things to be grateful for. I am rediscovering a stronger connection with my family. Also, it is pretty hard to go through something like this without re-evaluating one’s priorities in life. Never a bad thing.

While at the hospital yesterday, a complete stranger walked up to me and asked if she could give me a hug. She said I looked like I needed it. It was pretty cool. I guess making the world a better place doesn't always require a lot of effort, just a little insightfulness.

Hope your Holidays go well. Please help make them great for someone else,too, even if they may just be a stranger needing a hug.

Snow!

I had a chance to travel to our office in Saratoga Springs, New York last week. What a beautiful place. I even got snowed on while I was there. I spent Christmas in Billings, Montana last year, so it is kind of unusual for me to see snow two years in a row. I have to admit, I don't have the same aversion to snow that I used to, probably because I can just "visit" it, then come back to sunny Arizona. Snow does get me in the Holiday spirit as long as I don't have to live in it.

Now for a little change of pace, Jan and I are off to Hawaii next week to see how the Islanders celebrate the season. Since it is only in the 60's and 70's here, it will be nice to be back in my usual apparel, shorts and t-shirts...

Going to Shows

Did the Hold Steady show last weekend and was told I had a lot of fun. I lost my status as designated driver that night and took advantage of it. Think I liked the first show earlier this year, but I think it is just because I remember it better. One cool thing happened at this show, though. A couple of my friends met and have been spending some time together since. I work with her. She is incredibly witty and fun to hang with. And for the guy, don't know him well, but he got us back stage passes to the first HS show and is extremely smart and funny. Hopefully, their hooking up will mean I get to see more of both of them. It is impossible to have too many cool friends.

Sorry I haven't been keeping this blog thing up too well lately. I have had a lot of really important things going on. Kind of like my next big project, going to Van Halen next Friday with my friend Dan. I remember the first time I heard them. Scott Wik and I were in 8th grade, driving around with some upper classmen who impressed us by playing "Beautiful Girls" at full volume.

General Thoughts

I have a lot of stuff I have been thinking about lately, but little time to write. So rather than wait until I can do the ideas justice, I will just jot them down before I forget them:

Saw Into The Wild a couple of weeks ago. I thought it stayed fairly true to the book. Then again, I read it ten years ago and have a crappy memory. I could be wrong. I did really like it’s underlying themes, though: the importance of forgiveness and Tolstoy’s definition of happiness. When we don’t forgive someone, we only hurt ourself. And true happiness can only be achieved in the presence of others (family/friends). If you haven’t seen it, it is a bit long, but worth the price of admission. (And yes, Randy, just like the movie Gandhi, he dies in the end. I hope I didn't spoil it for you.)

We also saw Dan in Real Life. I am a huge Office fan, so it was hard not to like something with Steve Carroll in it. It is more “situational funny” than “ha-ha funny”, though.

My friend Steph has me listening to the new Bruce Springsteen album, Magic. I am not a huge Boss fan, but I think this may be my favorite of his.

Speaking of music, I am going to see The Hold Steady for the second time this year with my friend Kip next week. Last time, he scored us backstage passes. We got a chance to chat with lead singer Craig Finn about Twins baseball and Paul Westerberg. The band is stationed out of New York now, but two of the guys are originally from Minnesota and refer to it frequently in their lyrics.

Stuck Between Stations video

After a bit of a drought, I have finally made new contact with my old friends Vincent (Chinese with an American nickname), Ming (American with a Chinese nickname) and Joan (American with no nickname), and I hope to stay in better touch with them from here on out. I have also been trying to get Brad to start writing another movie script. He said that if I write something, he will consider it. I started this blog, in part, to fulfill that commitment.

And I see Scott has finally made comments to some of my posts, so I expect this blog will get a bit more interesting. Feel free to chime in whenever. It’s kind of fun hearing from everyone. I know some of you don’t know who the heck some of these other people are, but even foreigners from Grygla are welcome here.

And, finally, for those of you who may have missed the Halloween e-mail that was floating around yesterday, here is a shot that was circulating. I figured it was post worthy. Looks like Randy was enjoying his costume more than Logan. (It’s also obvious that son gets his good looks from his mother’s side.)

The Next Test

This is the coolest political test I have ever taken. I have a difficult time describing myself as conservative or liberal or in Democrat and Republican terms. I love and hate things about both. But after taking this test, I could really see where I was in the political landscape.

http://www.politopia.com/introduction1.htm

Check this out. You won't be disappointed.

Who's Your Candidate

First of all, let me just say congratulations to the Rockies. They played an unbelievable NLCS. Their team and their fans are totally classy. I hope they can take it all the way. I also promise to take down my Helton voodoo picture before the World Series gets started. It seems to have worked pretty well. He had a terrible series, at least at the plate. I am sure I was responsible.

Secondly, I just wanted to pass this along. My sister sent me this cool quiz. It lets you see which Presidential candidate matches your beliefs. Pretty cool. Try it out. I would like to hear your comments. Is this accurate? I will share my results later.

http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460

Dbacks versus Rockies

As we left the stadium around midnight last night, I didn’t have that terrible sense of loss I normally would in such a situation. Don’t get me wrong, being down 0-2 sucks. I have to admit, though, losing to the Rockies just isn’t as painful as losing to, say, the Yankees (or any other team I can’t stand). They are, after all, much like us, a young franchise who’s current success is built on the backs of young players.

Although the Dbacks don’t have an MVP or Rookie-of the-Year candidate to turn to, and they have a losing record this season to the Rockies, and they have a forty point disadvantage in team batting average, and they haven’t had any long winning streaks to give them momentum, and their season slugging percentage and fielding percentage trail the Rockies, all hope is not lost. In fact, now that the Diamondbacks have lost the only real advantage they had, the home field, any arguments about who the underdog is in this series can be put to rest.

It would be an unbelievable feat to come back and win this series, but defying the odds is what makes baseball so fun. In the spirit of the ‘87 and ‘91 Twins and the ‘01 Dbacks (all down 3-2 at one point in their final series’ runs), it is time to call on the underdog gods to work their magic once again. Besides, a miraculous comeback is a hundred times more fun than a sweep anyway.

The Black Swan

This may be a little deeper than I should get for just a second post, but since it’s on my mind, I figure I better roll with it. I will chat about more intellectual stuff like the Diamondbacks, The Hold Steady, and the virtues of ales over pilsners later. For today, I would rather discuss the meaning of everything.

We tend to rationalize everything. Everything must have meaning. That is just the way our brains work.

After catching an interview of Nassim Nicholas Taleb on CSPAN last week, I decided to pick up his latest book The Black Swan. I am generally not all that smart. In fact, I have a box full of old report cards to prove it. But something about the interview struck my intellectual funny bone, so I headed out to the bookstore. I quickly realized this book had way too many pages and an intimidating amount of big words, so I made a bee line for the audio book section. This Black Swan thing is over my head, but I was fascinated enough to buy it, none-the-less.

In The Black Swan and Taleb’s earlier book, Fooled By Randomness, he asserts that most of what we believe is wrong, or more precisely, what our beliefs are premised on are often incorrect. This is because we are wired to assign rational causes to the world around us, when really, the causes are more random than our minds can handle. When I first heard him talk about this concept, I thought about the traders on Wall Street. They use technical analysis--the reading of historical performance charts--to explain which direction a stock is headed. They discover patterns and assign meaning to them, but this is all done after the fact. The charts really mean nothing, the traders just assign meaning as a way of rationalizing why the stock has arrived to it’s price. Worse yet, then they try to use these chart patterns to explain what is happening with other stocks!

I remember Mr. Gust teaching this cause and effect concept in my high school English class, explaining how the Romans and Greeks used gods to explain the world around them. In other words, events happen in the world, then these things must be explained. So if the Romans kicked some butt on the battlefield, it was because their god Jupiter was in a good mood that day. This was essentially their “science”, their way of explaining the world. We do the same thing today, arrogantly believing that because we have “real” science to explain things, we understand the world better than the Romans. I would guess Taleb would say we probably miss the point. We, like the Romans, rationalize meaning into things that have little or no correlation to the event we may be trying to explain.

Taleb uses some headlines to illustrate this: “Bond Prices Up On Saddam’s Capture”. Four hours later another one exclaims “Bond Prices Down On Saddam’s Capture.” In reality, the two events had nothing to do with each other, but we needed meaning so we connect them.

I just started this audio book, so if its good, I may elaborate more on it later. But in the next post, I promise to write about something more relevant, like Lindsay versus Paris or something...

If you have an hour to kill, here is where you can find Taleb’s CSPAN interview:

http://download.rbn.com/cspan/cspan/download/podaudio/arc_btv092207_4.mp3

BTW- I am pretty sure the Diamondbacks will win the Series this year. After all, I have my lucky underwear on...

Getting Started

I am going to make this quick. I have really wanted to find an easy way to communicate with friends, share ideas, and get feedback on what is going on in the world. So today, I am officially starting my blog.

I originally was going to steal the title for my blog from my dad's old weekly newspaper column, Through The Window. Since my writing skills will never live up to his, I thought it might be better to resurrect it from an old newsletter I used to send to friends twenty years ago. After all, I am national and I love parties. It seems pretty logical.

I have to admit, since I haven't had much contact with many of you lately, the next few blogs will be a bit disjointed. As the weeks go by I will be chatting about things going on in my life. Then, over time, I see this turning into more of a social commentary site. I may chat about baseball, music, technology, politics, religion, food or anything else that may be on my mind that day.

Feel free to hit the "comment" section below each blog to add to the conversation. Let me know if I am interesting, boring, or just plain wrong. I am tough. I can take it.

I will try to post at least once a week, so bookmark me and stay tuned for more.

Hello