(no subject)
I totally meant to post pictures from the October concerts (the ones of Ian Anderson, especially). But life and school got in the way, along with my laziness in general (which sort of is the reason why I never really write out long posts nowadays).
In terms of life-y things, my grandpa died recently. We all knew it was coming--he was getting progressively worse (TBQH, I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did--I thought for sure he would have died earlier this year or last year). He wasn't functioning at the level where he was interacting with anyone at all--he wasn't cognizant of his surroundings, of the people who visited him, of anything--he had just gotten steadily worse. But it still doesn't make it any less sad.
This all happened before Thanksgiving (the 20th of November). The Friday before that grandma had happened to see me walking home from school, pick me up, and we both went to visit grandpa (we were both the last to actually see him alive). (She made a comment on how he looked like he was getting worse, and he was. I believe he was having some trouble eating for some time.)
Anyway, cut to this weekend. We had to drive up to Salinas for the funeral, because that was where grandpa grew up, and that's where his other relatives are buried (seriously. It must be some family thing, because grandma's parents--the Strands--are buried there, I believe, and a whole generation of Blacks are buried there. Oh, and Steinbeck, which we all were surprised to find there, because we didn't know he was buried there.
And we found an Edgar A. Poe, who wasn't the poet, because that one was buried in Marlyand, but it was still quite odd).
This meant I got to see a lot of family--some whom I haven't seen in probably more than two years. Others I've seen frequently whenever they've came down to visit grandpa and grandma.
Basically, it was a lot of family. And a lot of joking, as well, because our family is big on the humor. Seriously. For example, a person working at the funeral house asked about the pallbearers, and my dad has a cousin named Paul (who, apparently, is some Presbyterian preacher or something like that--minister?--and he did the whole funeral speech thing, organizing it and such), and he said to the worker, 'Yeah, that'll be Paul, and he'll be the bearer' or something to that effect, because, you know, pun time! And the worker just maybe thought it was too insensitive or something because he didn't laugh once (and he replied, 'You better not stop breathing or you'll be next' or something like that, which was like, whoa).
Both my aunt Kathleen and uncle Kirby both told really hilarious stories about grandpa. Kirby told the story about how grandpa had to pick up some steel or something for some job, and he took some of the kids, and flew the plane (yeah, he flew a plane. He fought in WWII, I believe) down to pick up the steel. Apparently it was too much steel for the plane because he had trouble getting any lift for the plane, though eventually he got the plane in the air (despite over-loading it), and, according to my uncle, he had turned to the kids and said, 'You better not tell your mother about this'.
Overall, the whole funeral, we all agreed, was rather light-hearted, thanks to the humor. I mean there was some sadness, but overall, it was wacky and zany enough (the stories were) to be rather light-hearted.
So then after the funeral was over we went back to Uncle Nort's house (who is actually my dad's uncle. He's my grandma's brother, who had just lost his wife earlier this March, so, you know, sad times all around this year) for food, more conversations, a family picture, and then we left to my aunt's house, who lives in Antioch.
It was dark, and it started raining heavily, and we were driving in very unfamiliar territory. Luckily we got to the house safely, but still, rain + dark + driving in unfamiliar territory = 'are we lost? Where are we? What street do we turn down on?' because we didn't know our way around. We had, apparently, missed the turn that would have put us on a specific path to the house and we were taking the scenic route.
Then at my aunt's house we had more food (this really delicious turkey soup), talked more about grandpa, and we ended the night by playing through a game of Marble Pursuit, which, really, is a fun strategic game with marbles where all of us got really competitive, trying to make each other lose while we tried to win. Link to the game website, if anyone is curious.
IDK who had originally found the game. I think Kathleen had bought it a couple years back and introduced it to us one summer at Lake Tahoe, and since then it's become quite the family game. (I mean it brings us together. And then tears us apart as we just back-stab each other. I seriously urge you to play the game because it's just so fun to play). It's replaced dominoes even! Which used to be the family game to play, but since then I think maybe grandma forgot about it.
And then we left Antioch this morning, after we waited for the 18 mph (I think they were 18 mph--it was really windy) winds and the rain to settle down, although the storm followed us the entire trip. At one point it was raining so bad we had trouble seeing more than 10 feet in front of the car.
Oh, and the car. We took my grandma's car up because we knew we would be taking her with us back down. So it was my dad driving, my brother up front, and my mom, me, and my grandma all crammed in the back row. We had our feet up on the backs of the chairs in front of us because he all had to just stretch our legs and feel less cramped.
And then grandma gave me sudoku puzzles to do because I said I was bored. And that kept me pretty much distracted for the rest of the ride home. (We didn't hit LA rush hour traffic, thank God. I think it's because it was a Sunday and it was raining.)
So, yeah, busy weekend. Sad weekend. Fun weekend, at times. And I have school tomorrow and a paper due on Tuesday I really should write (or, well, correct). I have another paper due on Thursday and I've barely worked on that before I left.
(BTW, grandpa had worked for LA's RTD--Rapid Transportation District, or something like that--and George Takei, of Star Trek fame, was on that same board with him. He used to talk with grandpa when they both worked at the same place, telling him stories of filming and stuff.
Speaking of filming, my cousin, who happens to work with film and sound, got his name in the credits for the film Surfing Mavericks or something like that. He worked on second unit for that film.)
In terms of life-y things, my grandpa died recently. We all knew it was coming--he was getting progressively worse (TBQH, I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did--I thought for sure he would have died earlier this year or last year). He wasn't functioning at the level where he was interacting with anyone at all--he wasn't cognizant of his surroundings, of the people who visited him, of anything--he had just gotten steadily worse. But it still doesn't make it any less sad.
This all happened before Thanksgiving (the 20th of November). The Friday before that grandma had happened to see me walking home from school, pick me up, and we both went to visit grandpa (we were both the last to actually see him alive). (She made a comment on how he looked like he was getting worse, and he was. I believe he was having some trouble eating for some time.)
Anyway, cut to this weekend. We had to drive up to Salinas for the funeral, because that was where grandpa grew up, and that's where his other relatives are buried (seriously. It must be some family thing, because grandma's parents--the Strands--are buried there, I believe, and a whole generation of Blacks are buried there. Oh, and Steinbeck, which we all were surprised to find there, because we didn't know he was buried there.
And we found an Edgar A. Poe, who wasn't the poet, because that one was buried in Marlyand, but it was still quite odd).
This meant I got to see a lot of family--some whom I haven't seen in probably more than two years. Others I've seen frequently whenever they've came down to visit grandpa and grandma.
Basically, it was a lot of family. And a lot of joking, as well, because our family is big on the humor. Seriously. For example, a person working at the funeral house asked about the pallbearers, and my dad has a cousin named Paul (who, apparently, is some Presbyterian preacher or something like that--minister?--and he did the whole funeral speech thing, organizing it and such), and he said to the worker, 'Yeah, that'll be Paul, and he'll be the bearer' or something to that effect, because, you know, pun time! And the worker just maybe thought it was too insensitive or something because he didn't laugh once (and he replied, 'You better not stop breathing or you'll be next' or something like that, which was like, whoa).
Both my aunt Kathleen and uncle Kirby both told really hilarious stories about grandpa. Kirby told the story about how grandpa had to pick up some steel or something for some job, and he took some of the kids, and flew the plane (yeah, he flew a plane. He fought in WWII, I believe) down to pick up the steel. Apparently it was too much steel for the plane because he had trouble getting any lift for the plane, though eventually he got the plane in the air (despite over-loading it), and, according to my uncle, he had turned to the kids and said, 'You better not tell your mother about this'.
Overall, the whole funeral, we all agreed, was rather light-hearted, thanks to the humor. I mean there was some sadness, but overall, it was wacky and zany enough (the stories were) to be rather light-hearted.
So then after the funeral was over we went back to Uncle Nort's house (who is actually my dad's uncle. He's my grandma's brother, who had just lost his wife earlier this March, so, you know, sad times all around this year) for food, more conversations, a family picture, and then we left to my aunt's house, who lives in Antioch.
It was dark, and it started raining heavily, and we were driving in very unfamiliar territory. Luckily we got to the house safely, but still, rain + dark + driving in unfamiliar territory = 'are we lost? Where are we? What street do we turn down on?' because we didn't know our way around. We had, apparently, missed the turn that would have put us on a specific path to the house and we were taking the scenic route.
Then at my aunt's house we had more food (this really delicious turkey soup), talked more about grandpa, and we ended the night by playing through a game of Marble Pursuit, which, really, is a fun strategic game with marbles where all of us got really competitive, trying to make each other lose while we tried to win. Link to the game website, if anyone is curious.
IDK who had originally found the game. I think Kathleen had bought it a couple years back and introduced it to us one summer at Lake Tahoe, and since then it's become quite the family game. (I mean it brings us together. And then tears us apart as we just back-stab each other. I seriously urge you to play the game because it's just so fun to play). It's replaced dominoes even! Which used to be the family game to play, but since then I think maybe grandma forgot about it.
And then we left Antioch this morning, after we waited for the 18 mph (I think they were 18 mph--it was really windy) winds and the rain to settle down, although the storm followed us the entire trip. At one point it was raining so bad we had trouble seeing more than 10 feet in front of the car.
Oh, and the car. We took my grandma's car up because we knew we would be taking her with us back down. So it was my dad driving, my brother up front, and my mom, me, and my grandma all crammed in the back row. We had our feet up on the backs of the chairs in front of us because he all had to just stretch our legs and feel less cramped.
And then grandma gave me sudoku puzzles to do because I said I was bored. And that kept me pretty much distracted for the rest of the ride home. (We didn't hit LA rush hour traffic, thank God. I think it's because it was a Sunday and it was raining.)
So, yeah, busy weekend. Sad weekend. Fun weekend, at times. And I have school tomorrow and a paper due on Tuesday I really should write (or, well, correct). I have another paper due on Thursday and I've barely worked on that before I left.
(BTW, grandpa had worked for LA's RTD--Rapid Transportation District, or something like that--and George Takei, of Star Trek fame, was on that same board with him. He used to talk with grandpa when they both worked at the same place, telling him stories of filming and stuff.
Speaking of filming, my cousin, who happens to work with film and sound, got his name in the credits for the film Surfing Mavericks or something like that. He worked on second unit for that film.)