Today would have been our 41st wedding anniversary! I had pretty much put the date out of my mind and I wasn’t thinking about. Then Saturday, Deanna came down (she had to deliver a cake for Trish’s parents party) and she asked me about it. The cat was out of the bag then and the thoughts kept surfacing all day yesterday. I had planned the weekend to catch up at home and I was busy but it kept popping into my thoughts.
I re-hung the pictures in living and dining rooms, set up the system to digitize the old vinyl records and struggled with the software for that. Decided to replace my separate virus/spam/spy ware soft ware packages with the new Zone Alarm suite and bought the software on eBay. Printed and framed a photo of Jo to send to Ed for his birthday. Did my shopping and errands. Also bought and deployed a new table cloth in the dining room, this one fits the table with now extension leaves in stalled. Telephone help from Deanna for color and then a lady in the store helped select one. Looks OK, I think.
There is a lot of pressure at work right now. I have hired a new guy, a transfer into the group. But I have to wait for him to become available! New pressure from the CEO to speed up a long lingering product, if I can do that it will add four or five new people. Then we are planning to kick off our new ASIC in late Q1 or Early Q2 that ties up everyone for months at a time over the next two years. That along with the normal product and production support activities spreads me very thin. (I mention this because being busy helps but sometimes I wish the stress could be lower.)
I met with the Amex stockbroker last week and I started the process of moving most of my investments to that account. When the name changes on all the accounts are complete I will close them and transfer it all to Amex. Simple is better. After that meeting I went by the cemetery on my way home. As I have said before visiting the grave is not too emotional for me. But it is nice to see that it well kept and neat.
Now someone has glued a 15-year AA chip to the bronze plaque. It must have happened when her friends meet there on her AA birthday in November. It is cool; it would have made her very proud, the chips meant so much to her. Her friend Rob put one of his chips in the casket with her at the funeral, because he knew how much they meant to her. I often attended chip meetings with her to watch her receive the new one each year. I spoke to one of her AA friends yesterday at church. The friend told me how much she had admired Jo and that Jo was (along with her sponsor) the role model for how she wanted to live her life. She told me that she admired the peace that Jo Lynn enjoyed and showed to others. That peace came from her AA program and her faith. The friend was right she was peaceful and the program was the catalyst that brought that peace and allowed her faith to blossom. This is a long thought to thank whoever placed the chip on the head stone (it is bronze) because it reminded me of how much Jo got from her program and how much better our lives were as a result. It makes me grateful again.
[I am glad that I wrote this. Thinking about the AA chip helped me put things in perspective again.]
I moved one of the photos of Jo from the front room to the bedroom when I re-hung the photographs. I think I need to de-emphasize her pictures a little; I seem to have trouble doing that though. Oh well, it is getting better as time goes on. Last night I began to wonder if I should think about replacing the decorations in the house. Maybe I should make it more masculine! That is why I wanted to buy a new tablecloth, an odd place to start I suppose.
I will close this for now maybe later I will follow up on these thoughts.
