I went to a funeral today – for John Edward “Jack” Grant – the father of Melissa, a good dancer friend of Jennifer.

I never met Jack, and after the funeral and talking with people, I’d wish I had. He seemed like a great old man, with great ‘sayings’ and love for life. I guess he had a perfect sense of timing for jokes and ‘isms’, a bunch of which were read during the funeral by one of Melissa’s sisters.

In chatting with Melissa afterwards, I learned she’s been taking care of her parents for the past 9 years, Jack slowly declined in health after a stroke 9 years ago. She said something like “1/2 of my day for the past 9 years is gone”. Sad.

Two things struck me today. One, I think I want to have children, and grandchildren. I’d want them to read out my quirks and isms. Second, I wish I had more isms. Maybe I do and I don’t realize it. Maybe when I get older (34 now) I’ll get more, as I get more cantankerous.

I also wish I lived closer to my dad, and wonder when I’ll be repeating his isms at his funeral. (He has Parkinson’s, but I expect he’ll live another 10 years or so, the medicine they have these days is working well for him).

I need to remember to invite Melissa over for dinner sometime. It’s going to be tough for her, even more than it’s been the past 9 years.

I had a good vacation the past few days.. Disneyland was fun! The weather was really hot, almost like we were in Hawaii.. well, except for all the walking and thousands of other people around. We did get some good crash at the pool time almost every day, which was the only thing that kept me from not needing a vacation after a vacation. (Although, writing this on the plane at 9pm, I am pretty darn tired).

A few months ago, I decided that I would try to push myself, get out of my quiet shell that I seemed to be sinking into recently (most likely because of me working at home the past 4 years)…… so, on this trip, I went on California Screaming twice (a big, pretty scary roller-coaster), and Tower Of Terror twice. On both I got pretty nervous beforehand (what if a track breaks, what if a cable snaps, etc, etc), but seemed to push through it, and afterwards was really happy I had just gone ahead and rode the rides.

I hope to do something similar coming up…. There is a potential I will have to make a large, life changing decision over the next few weeks. Or a potential for that decision to be made for me. I need to decide whether I want to play it ‘safe’ (for mine and Jennifer’s future), or maybe risk things a bit.

Or maybe the ‘safe’ choice is the risky choice? The ‘safe’ choice is the one that will push me the most, push the both of us the most, personally and professionally?

It’s times like these that I wish I had a guardian angel to guide me….

UPDATE: Well, an email over the weekend took away a potential decision. That decision would have been the ‘obvious’ choice, the more I think about it. I’m glad that data point is gone, actually. I think I might have a guardian angle looking out for me.

Some decompressing time, it’s be an “interesting” couple of weeks at work.

Later!