Quite honestly, I really don't feel like I have much to say.

We went to our favorite pizza place on the west side of town.

On Saturday we're going to the West Side Market.

On Sunday, Lindsay is leaving for Nags Head. She'll be back Wednesday night.

My grandmother seems to be fading. The hospice nurse came today and said "she is slipping." What that means, I can only guess. My mom is in town, effectively until my grandmother passes, and today said "my feeling is that she is weakening kind of quickly, and wants to just let go."

Selfishly, I want her to hold on, but ultimately, if she feels she's ready to go, who am I to ask her to stay. It sucks.

So you may have noticed a distinct lack of posting lately. There are a few reasons for that. First, with all of the traveling that we’ve been doing, I haven’t really been home long enough to post. Secondly, my brother and mom have been in town the past few days, so that’s been soaking up my time also.

That brings me to the most important reason. You may remember when I was talking about my grandmother’s situation with her breast cancer. Last week we had a family meeting with her Hospice nurse. Naturally, one of the questions we had was “how long do we have left?” The answer was surprising. The nurse said realistically 2 – 3 months. It could be as little as 1 month or as many as 6 months though. This was surprising because she doesn’t really seem much different than she was 6 months ago. She has less energy in the morning now, but it picks back up in the early afternoon. She’s also on constant pain medication (a Vicadin every 8 hours wasn’t controlling the pain, so you can imagine how bad it must be.) Now she’s on a NS Contin every 12 hours, with Vicadin as a backup in case pain still gets through.

The cancer is active in her body, and has manifested itself in two open wounds where it has broken through the skin. One is on her chest and the other in her armpit. She has a lot of swelling in her right arm, but can somewhat contain that with a compression sleeve.

At this point, Hospice is helping to manage the symptoms. That’s all they can do, and all she wants. She stopped having treatment about 18 months ago. She could have gotten rid of the cancer, but it would have meant losing the functionality of her right arm. She opted to maximize the quality of her life, however long that might last. She maintains that she’s had a good full life and has no regrets. I suppose we could all be so blessed to be able to say that when facing her situation. In treating the systems, they’re giving her the best quality of life that they can.

That of course doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. She may be my grandmother, but I’ve always called her mom. She has helped to raise me my whole life. I grew up in a house two doors down from her, and when my parents got divorced and my dad was working nights, I would stay down there, eat down there, go to school from down there, etc.

Reflecting on that has made me want to take advantage of any remaining time we might have. Lindsay has helped me with that, because she lost her grandmother suddenly to cancer a few years ago. As such, I’ve been able to make some lasting memories and do things that I’ve always wanted to do with her. One of the things that she’s going to try to do for us mimics what was done in the movie My Life. She’s going to record messages for events that haven’t happened yet. Things like my cousin’s graduations, or her great-grandchildren being born. Milestone birthdays and things like that. Frankly, it’s hard to even think about that because it means that she won’t be here with us to celebrate, but they’ll definitely be treasured by us.

Anyway, that’s why I haven’t been posting much at all lately. I haven’t really been home to do so…

Let me ask you a question. Can you explain what the freak is going on with the stock market? Look at these two companies. They both announced earnings on Tuesday.

Company 1

Lost $4.20 per share in previous quarter
Projected losses of 3-4 Billion in next quarter.
Stock goes up 47%

Company 2

Earned $1.96 per share, above projections
Record earnings.
Stock goes down by 15%


Company 1 is Wachovia, WB
Company 2 is Precision Castparts, PCP

I own stock in PCP. Naturally I would like to earn money on said stock. Naturally when a company does well, you'd expect the stock price to increase. Instead, it's tanking like theirs no tomorrow.

F!

Once again, Lindsay is leaving town. She's headed to Florida tomorrow morning. She'll be back Saturday afternoon. She'll be home for an entire week after that before leaving again... that time for Nags Head.

Confucius say "When the cat's away, don't forget to feed the fish."

We got back from my brother's Little League game (game 1 of the Pony League championship series) and what did we find in our neighbors yard? A deer. Just chilling out. It was laying down by a tree, about 8 feet from our driveway.

Just last week we looked out our window and there was a deer walking right down the middle of our street.

Go away deer! We don't like your kind around here!

Lindsay's out of town for the weekend. She's going to visit her sister at Marshall and help work on her sisters sorority house. That leaves me and the dog to fend for ourselves. Well, until tomorrow anyway. My father-in-law is coming to town tomorrow. My brother-in-law lives in Cleveland during the summers, and I guess we're going to hang out and go to dinner or something. I don't think there are any solid plans at the moment.

Confucius say, "When your wife is out of town, consider eating cereal for dinner."

When the moonlight serenades you, don't be afraid to dance the funky chicken.

So the price of gasoline on the market has dropped nearly 30 cents in the past two days. Any chance that we'll see that reflected in the prices we pay at the pump? Nope. The reason?

"The gas that we've purchased in our tanks is still the same price. We won't purchase cheaper gas for a few weeks. At that time, the prices will come down."

Well, isn't that interesting? It's amazing how quickly they must purchase new gas when the price of fuel goes up on the market. It goes up by 20 cents on the market in the morning and by noon it's up at the gas station. Wow.

Silly me. That must just be a coincidence. It's all in my head that prices seem to rise with the market, but not fall with the market...

Here it is, the night of the mid summer classic, and I've got nothing to say.

What else is new lately?

Yeah, I could rail against the speculative oil prices, or the panicked stock market. All it does is get me irritated though, and I doubt anyone else actually even reads the stuff.

So all I'll say is "Someone will invite you to a karaoke party."

All of my stocks (all two of them) are tanking. Oh how I wish for the glory days of November.

That's hindsight for you though. Sometimes it's 20/20 and sometimes it's 20/200.