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Today was Mike's funeral. I went to the pre-cemetary memorial service, in a church. I like churches, for the most part, they have art and architecture and in their best light are a gathering place of people. Today the people were in shades of grey and black, somber for the most part. Some attendees treated it like a reunion, there were fleeting jovial moments tempered by the memory of what brought everyone together. Pictures of Mike in various stages of his recent life surrounded the entryway to the interior of the church: Mike and his helicopter, Mike in his uniform, Mike working on the helicopter, Mike and his wife Anita and their son Riley.

Riley is C's age. He meandered around but was never far from his mother. The gravity of the occasion may have tempered a typical "boy" reaction but at the same time he wasn't particularly teary. The occasional grin and introduction to some family friend or relative you could tell he hadn't seen in years peppered his pre-funereal experience.

I spent the ceremony crying quietly. Ween didn't cry all that much but, as she told me, she did her crying the last few days. I think she's numb, and I think she's probably got some more cry in her.  Me, I hadn't cried yet. I cried and cried and cried, as his friends talked about their "Monty" (our "Mike") and brought up all of the traits we remembered him having way back when: the quick reply, the sense of honor, the expectations he had of himself and others that could not be compromised. All I could think about was here is his wife and child, who would not have him in person ever again. They would have pictures, they would have memories, they would have tokens of "honey" and "daddy".

A funeral is for those left behind; Mike is either in a blackened oblivion or in a happy afterlife (and never do I get closer to wishing I had the capacity for religion as when I want there to be an afterlife for those departed). His wife is left behind and his son is left behind and now the question is how their life will change, irretrievably and irrevocably.

It makes me look at all of my daily problems and classify them as petty and stupid.

I came home and decided I would not go to book club. I cleaned a bit, which I find a sense of comfort in, and I sewed a bit (a Luke Skywalker costume I'm making for the C). 

I'm enjoying, and appreciating, the quiet. 

Is what Tuesday night has to offer on the tele, it appears.

"The Girls Next Door" which, with Holly Madison and Bridget was a fun escape into mindless consumerism and a hint of "what it would be like to be that well off and that built", and with the new girlfriends is just... meh. Artificial drama.

There is "Chopped" which features severe pressure exerted on chefs (a pressured job already). Artificial drama.

There is nothing but artificial drama everywhere. The only non-artificial drama is that supplied by CNN, and I don't want any more of that.

I miss Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers, where the biggest issue was if he'd figured out she liked him by the end of the movie. I miss Holiday Inn where two readily intelligent, sweet men were after the same readily intelligent, sweet gal, and this was somehow a win-win prospect. 

Can't we have some intelligent, fluffy escapism?

My. Oh, my. We only have two months left of this year! You know what that means: time to evaluate how I've done on the list. (One cannot forget about one's lists... they keep one humble... and apparently referring to oneself in the third person). You can read the very subjective progress report if you're in to that sort of thing below, but the practical upshot here is that if I keep my list reasonable it turns out I can actually, you know, do things.

I still have a bunch of things I want to do, and most won't get done before the end of year. Stidbomb has threatened to teach me how to drive a stick and to ski (two things I've been saying for about five years now I would learn how to do) and I have some knittery and quiltery to do. Maybe that's why I sit here, despite the "mostly done" status, and feel like I haven't got anything done, except lots of dishes, which always makes me happy.

And I suppose I can make next years list...

The List:

1. Get the C his IEP, or 504 help. Get a written, cohesive plan on his education and school break activities. Done in March. It only took hiring an attorney.
2. Get a Finance Person, and offset my long-term fiscal goal worrying to them. Done in January. She took away things like new flooring; boo!
3. Write thank you notes. Kinda...
4. Minimize my travel, but maximize the experience. In 2008 I took -- wait for it -- 11 trips. Some as local as Portland, Whidbey, or Astoria. Some as far as Manhattan, Dallas, and Las Vegas. In 2009 I am going to Savannah and one or two other places. Fewer vacations, more staycations.  Ok so I went to Hawaii and am going to Vegas and am already eyeballing next year.... but this year wasn't the 11-trip fiesta last year was. I think.
5. Fewer projects -- or at least more practically and economically executable ones. w00t! I consider this accomplished... no more projects really planned for this year, and next year's are simple.
6. Get a promotion, or get a timeline on one. I want to be a Director, and I think I'd be a damn good one. I like managing good people and encouraging them, I like being the "go to" person.  Sorta. More about that in March.
7. Have at least one "just me" night every month.  Yep!
8. Have one "date night" out every month, at a different restaurant each time. Yep!
9. Run at least 3 half marathons. Sigh... only two...but I also did a triathlon, does that count? 
10. Lose 15 pounds. I have lost some weight with the running, and I need to lose more to get my BMI to "normal". 15 pounds lighter is lighter than I ever have been, at this height, so the odds are stacked against me. That said, I've lost 10 pounds since I've started running. Yeah? Not so much. I've lost about five more (net -- at one point I got down 10) 
11. Reduce my alcohol intake. With the exception of Christmas, Halloween, and my birthday, no more than 1 glass of wine, 1 beer, or 1 shot per day. This sounds easy, right? News flash: I had started creeping up to nearly a bottle of wine a night again. The last time I did this I was in a job I hated and it had serious health consequences. I like my job fine; I just started looking to wine to do something more than taste good. The slippery slope exists and I'd rather not slide down it. Fortunately, this one helps with the one previous. Hm. Sorta: not doing the bottle of wine a night but not doing just 1 glass either. Moderation in moderation! 
12. As a bonus corrollary to number 11: only the good stuff :) Define "good stuff"... 
13. No more than one purchased coffee per two weeks. I've got to the point where I like the coffee I make at home :) Pretty darn close on this... there have been a couple of lapses. 
14. Revise my budget to be more specific: it doesn't, for example, include running entry fees, running shoes, etc. Expenses like that have been under "spending money" but it should get tracked separately. I heart you, Yodlee. 
15. Barring last minute invitations to parties (That thereby necessitate otherwise), only one trip to the grocery store per week. Again, pretty darn close... I heart you, Trader Joe's.

I first met Mike Montgomery at Evergreen Junior High in 1986. I had just moved from California, and knew nobody. He was friends-of-friends with a guy I thought was cute.

He was the guy in the hall, not too popular but not unpopular, a pleasant persona in the otherwise angst-filled hormone-plugged roller coaster that is junior high. That status remained until high school: I left to go to Australia, and when I came back, he was my best friend's boyfriend.

He didn't like me by then, because I had (very, very, very) briefly dated and discarded one of his friends. I can't blame him. But he was a good guy, and he was good to my friend; their breakup mercifully was normal and sane and had nothing to do with me. He always wanted to go into the Army, and he did. Eventually he met and married a lovely gal, and had a son. He was stationed in Savannah. He was sent to Afghanistan seven times.

I say "was", and not "has been", because Mike is dead. Mike Montgomery is dead, and I didn't date him and I didn't really know him that well and there are a double-dozen other people on this planet who have a right to be tripped out and wrecked by this (and are). I found out over instant message from a friend in Florida. And life suddenly got weird.

Weird because Mike, a regular guy I knew, part of the nostalgic past, is dead. He's dead. I haven't had to deal with death of someone I knew before. Oh, I've had grandparents who died, but they were OLD, and it was EXPECTED. My grandfather outlived two doctors who told him he'd die in six months (Each time). But Mike? Mike was 36. He will always be 36. He will not see his son graduate from college, he will not see him get married, he will not worry about his 401k or his IRA, he will not gnash his teeth at the next football game or bemoan his requirement to pay taxes. He will not obsess over milk prices (although I don't think he was the sort to do so) and he will not ever, ever again hit the snooze button. His helicopter crashed in Afghanistan and six other people I never heard of, and Mike, died.

Seven times! He had been sent there seven times. Seven. Each deployment is a year or more. We've been at "war" with Afghanistan (whose oil does not exist, and who only seems to have the most tenuous grasp of government after six concerted years of "reparations" on our part) since 2001, right? So, we're talking 8 or 9 years (let's be generous and say 9) of war? So Mike has been in hell all but two of those years.

Dammit! HAD BEEN. HAD BEEN, because he's DEAD, because he got sent to a flippin' wartorn wasteland for dubious purpose. He signed up for the military when the purpose was to DEFEND our country, not to go off and secure oil or repair a country broken beyond it long before we got there. I'm not saying two wrongs make a right; not at all. But Mike is dead, he is DEAD, and will not ever be alive again, because he got sent there so many times. What are the odds, really, that a helicopter pilot sent into that area SEVEN TIMES would ever return? What was it, some sadistic oddsmaker in the D.O.D. saying "well, we can send 'em seven times, but we gotta watch out once it gets to eight".

I hope it was brief. I hope he didn't hurt. I hope his wife and son will get the love and support they will need to pick up and repair their very very broken lives. I hope his mother is able to find some comfort, but I don't see how.

I am sorry you are dead Mike. I am sorry your family is hurting. And I will do whatever I can to get us to stop sending people over there, because this is just not fair.

I see I have forgot to blog about the Seattle Weaver's Guild Sale.

The SWG Sale happens this time each year-- in honor of my birthday, I presume -- and is more of a "fabric arts" sale than weaver's sale. True, you can find much in the way of woven fabrics, from ragrugs to wall art to wraps to scarves. Some weavers weave first and dye next, some follow the opposite pattern. Some, you simply can't tell what they did.

Other items include knittery, crochetery, spinning-work, handmade buttons, and other knickknacks.

This is a very bland description, though, of the actual experience. Here is the detailed synopsis:

You walk into the basement of St. Mark's Cathedral in Cap Hill. You've already had to park your car with tetris-like precision, because this year, the Weaver's Guild advertised on Facebook, Twitter, and the Stranger. As you enter the basement you see four elegant elderly ladies behind what I call "church" tables -- you know, those fold-out long banquet tables -- and the tables are littered with random paper paraphernelia. It turns out this paper is to, among other things, inform you about what the Weaver's Guild does and alternately to figure out who you are and how they can get ahold of you. The four ladies watch you expectantly, attentively, and a trifle patronizingly as you inscribe your email address into their form.

There is no charge to go to the Sale, which is interesting, because it is an event.

You shift right from the table to enter the semi-circular layout that is the sale. You are immediately in the "high end" section: wall art, artsy woven shawls and pashminas, items that run from a couple of hundred bucks well into the thousands. The artist's name, their title for the item, and the price are neatly labeled in a spinsterly scrawl on preprinted cards. I saw one piece that I thought was nice (a yellow woven number with different dye patterns) and ran for $900. I don't have that kind of money; presumably somebody does.

Wandering away from the High End you travel into the Yarn and Thread section: raw wool, dyed wool, and spun wool (and acrylics, and cottons). You can get your stuff in any stage of readiness, skeins ranged from a reasonable $10 to a slightly more egregious $36; all similarly displayed so you really did need to read all of the fine print. The racks are side by side and quite close, so you end up doing a move that looks like the Charleston trying to back-and-fill into gaps so you can see if that aquamarine thread is actually wool or cotton blend.

I will point out, right now, that absolutely no one pressure sales you. Like at all. Some of the artists/crafts(wo)men are there and some are not, but if you have questions the onus is YOURS to go find someone to ask about it. They are not overtly solicitous and this works just fine by me.  I will also point out, right now, that if it werent for discreet (and by that I mean hardly noticeable) little nametags you'd have a hard time judging the tradespeople from the patrons; everyone (yours truly included) arrived wearing their latest crafted item.

Past the Yarn and Thread section was the rag-rug and Other Rug Section, and past that was what I could call the KnickKnacks section: wool felt baskets, crocheted buttons, tissue covers, the like. By this point GH and I were about crafted out, and I was to say "Hi" to my mom's friends at the cash register.

Never was another human not welcome at the register.

NOT by the ladies manning the registers, mind you, but by the 20-odd people in line, who were absolutely certain that I, with nothing to purchase in my hands, was somehow line-jumping.

Have you ever been to a bingo game with elderly people? Do you know how vicious they can get? This is about the caliber of looks you get for POTENTIAL line-jumping at the Weaver's Guild Sale. Thus deterred, we left the sale, having purchased nothing (I did drool over a few things and would've purchased if I hadn't had more craft stuff than I know what to do with) and having failed in the ancillary mission of saying "hi". However, we will be back again next year.

For my birthday :) 

I'm a simple pleasures kind of person. A decent glass (or two) of red, a warm beach, a pleasant vista, a home cooked meal. Each of these tickle my fancy. (My fancy isn't all that fancy, and I am distinctly "utilitarian" -- according to GH -- and I *like* it that way.)

Also on the list: solving a problem. Specifically, data problems.

I work with data for a living. I have worked with data for a living now for 5 years at BTCo (and 2 years beforehand in my old job), and in all my time I have never had angst as awful as the latest Feed. You see, BTCo owns some smaller STCos. I work for the strategic department within BTCo that has to define 1. how well ALL of BTCo is doing, and 2. how to make it do more well. Ergo, I play with data from all of BTCo, including the STCo's. It doesn't matter that we just acquired the last one a YEAR ago, I need to know it and own it.

And I totally would've, hadn't it been for the last SEVEN MONTHS troubleshooting the feed from this latest. We'll call them VD. I took on the VD feed when my boss (who is, and I mean this sincerely and with zero amount of snark, a Data God) threw up his hands in disgust. Yessiree, I was gonna solve this problem and make it all good. Thus ensued weeks upon weeks (and eventually, the aforementioned 7 months) of 6am phonecalls with Rome, assertations and pleadings regarding basic data hygeine, earnest reviews of input and output, and a lot of hair pulling.

I have learned that if the nice man tells you it's a duck, asserts it's a duck, and swears upon the life of his grandchildren it is a duck, and it does not quack/is not yellow/does not waddle, it's not a duck.

I could detail all of the problems with the data that I experienced, but it would mean nothing. All of it could've been avoided if they sent me their code (as requested) as I had sent them mine. All of it could've been avoided if they actually looked at the spec (and sample, and sample situations) I provided. All of it could've been avoided if they were willing to concede, at any point, that perhaps their data feed was flawed.

Tonight, after seven long months, I have solved the problem. I have figured it out. And yes, I'm patting myself on the back so hard that I've actually managed to throw it out. (Actually, I did that last night, but that's another story. Getting old sucks.) 

The Data Dominatrix has bitchslapped it into place, and it ainta-neva-gonna fugghedaboutit.

No, not really.

So I ran, and it felt a lil' sore, and I got all cocky and went to the Mushroom Show. It was interesting to see all the different fungi and the ones that looked grotesque were typically edible, the ones that looked fine were typically not. They had stuff and things and when my knee hurt getting out of the car to the show I ignored it. Hey! I ran 8 miles!

Then we got back into the car and went to Trader Joes. Then we got out of the car and my knee said, "No, actually, thanks though!". So I hobbled around Trader Joes, leaning on the cart, and getting serially cranky as we debated whether or not we needed to get ONE or TWO packages of the Fearless Flyer listed Shrimp Etoufee.

By the time we made it home, I didn't want to go anywhere, or do anything. I spent most of the evening bitching about my knee, taking ibuprofen, drinking wine, and seeing dead people.

All of this is supported my behaving myself (in physical therapy terms) and doing things like obtaining new running shoes, making an appointment to get my orthodic$, and setting up my physical therapy appointments. I have two each for the next hundred million years. She spends hours and hours working on muscle groups nowhere near my knee, and then more hours doing things to my kneecap that make me feel like she's just going to pop it off and flick it across the room. I am not sure which is more torturous: the therapy or the fact that the "Today" show and "Oprah" and "Ellen" are consecutively on during this period. I don't know enough about anything to converse on those shows, and usually spend my time whining at the therapist.

Getting older blows.

Having optimistically signed up for the half marathon, I've been in physical therapy and today, I got taped.

The tape lasted all of about 4 hours in keeping my kneecap in place. My kneecap, which is apparently as stubborn as I, has undone itself from its taping. The PT is not there tomorrow, so I go for my regular run (flat) in hopes that I don't do something too painful to it. After all, I've been doing strength training for, um, five days now. I am armed with ibuprofen.

And I want my finisher's hoodie, dammit.

Tomorrow, I may be on the phone lines for 94.9 KUOW's Fall Fund Drive. (Disclosure: I listen to KUOW on my commute religiously, and I donate in the spring. This year I decided to sign up for phone duty for the Fall Fund Drive because I have fiscal guilt and figure it would be nice to do something in addition to send my "hush money" as a friend calls it. Also, I have this feeling I should go do weird things, for me. This, therefore, counts as weird.)

Or I may not.

As I got in on the "volunteering" a little late, my scheduled time is, alas, tomorrow between 5:30 and 9:15, in the evening. This means after training my brain to do sit-ups all day long I will drive through hellish traffic to arrive in Seattle to answer the phones for people reluctantly giving money to a radio station you just KNOW they have spent 2+ hours per day listening to.

Or not.

You see, if you are of the unfortunate few to volunteer late-ish, you may or may not actually get to volunteer. Out of their $1.1 million goal, they are at $1.01 million. It's been 10 days. They're cookin'.

I got the volunteer person call today, and it went along the lines of this:

HER: "Hi, it's [miscellaneous female name]here from KUOW, calling about our Fall Fund Drive; you're scheduled to volunteer tomorrow evening, is that correct?"

ME: "yep!"

HER: "Great! Well, we'll see you here... except we're really close to our goal so we might not. We encourage you to listen to KUOW throughout the day to see if we make our goal before heading over, okay?"

ME: "ok!"

HER: "Great! well, um, thanks!"

The thing is, I win any way you look at this:

• If they make the goal before I get there, I get a night off -- actually two! -- in which to drink a glass of red (actually two) and watch more recorded Mythbusters.
• If they don't make goal I get to go and see what answering phones is all about. I suspect it will be edumacational.
• If they don't make goal BUT make it while I'm there I get to be part of the cathartic celebration that will ensue, in which we snack on organic shade-grown free-market chocolate-covered-espresso beans and discuss how many rows of knitting we just didn't get done through the whole ordeal.

Oh yes: knitting. I have a new hobby. It's addictive. I've learned to knit (not purl) and have finished a scarf. The second project includes purl, which means I get to make a RIBBED scarf (yes, for her pleasure) instead of the plain-ol colorblock knit one I did at my mom's while drinking too much and discussing popular novelists of the 1970's.

Unless, of course, they make the goal.

Presidents are like furniture.

I was sitting in the car, in my curbside parking space next to the Top Pot Doughnuts in Bellevue, having the anecdotally convenient "driveway moment": I couldn't leave the car, because I was listening to something on KUOW. What I was listening to was Mr. Obama's speech on his Nobel Peace Prize.

Now, I'm not going to go into whether or not he deserved it (he says he didn't) or whether or not he should accept it (he did, on behalf of everybody), or if this is a good or bad thing (I think it's a "thing": recognition is nice, but let's keep our eyes on the ball, because the game is still in play). It occured to me, with all the pre-and-post peace prize punditry, that it's really a lot like furniture.

We spend a considerable amount of time and effort evaluating our options. Like a newlywed couple furnishing our new house, America pours over every glossy (or dull) detail of its candidates. Those that are eminently practical (Ikea shoppers -- yours truly included) do not care about the attractiveness or the hairstyle, and are more concerned with voting record and the like. Some like their furniture shiny and ornate, some like it simple and streamlined (but not quite so elegant). We agonize over the "cost" of the item, the sorts of financing we may have to use (or should we buy this other one directly, which is not as nice but we can afford outright?). We evaluate how it will fit into our lives: will it be durable enough? Will it be versatile enough? Can we show it off to friends and family only, or would we be proud to host complete strangers to dinner on it? Is it comfortable? Should it even *be* comfortable? Is this a long-term purchase, or is this just a stepping stone to the next, more idealized one?

In time, we buy the piece. We position it where we want it, and friends and family comment freely about it. We discuss our purchase criteria and why we picked it, we defend the small dent in the corner and point out that for the price you really couldn't beat it. It may not display exactly as you had planned, but then again it may be a lot sturdier than you thought. Your evaluation of the piece, over time and as you become accustomed to it, changes: you either come to think of it as part of your everyday life and enjoy it, or you grow to intensely loathe it until, after bitching about it incessantly, you put it on Craigslist (or vote against it).

For those pieces that don't get Craigslisted... that become part of the furniture inventory of the Union, as it were... they get a new coat of varnish every few years. Slowly the dent fades and becomes less noticeable against the character of the overall piece (much like Lincoln and Kennedy are immortalized in money and memory: no one mentions derisively the ape-like ambling or the ape-like rambling of the former and latter, respectively). Each coat of varnish, another decade or so, and the flaws and foibles fade, until we are left with the "perfect" piece, the one that no one would dream of removing.

The other pieces? The Craigslisted (or worse, donated) ones? Well, unless they were truly hideous (like Aunt Martha's vinyl 1970's chairs that new covers couldn't de-atrocify), you forget them. And if you can't forget them, at least you are thankful that they're no longer stationed on your floccati rug.