October 17, 2005

Min got home from work around 7:30 this morning and got Oreo out of bed to hang out with her in the office until I got up at 9:30. I got dressed and ready to go and we went out to leave to go to the Covington Presbyterian Church where the funeral service is going to be at. We got into my car and I noticed that my driver’s door was ajar and that my seat had been completely moved since the last time that I was in the car. We searched the car but couldn’t find any signs of attempted hot-wiring nor was anything visibly missing from the car or from the garage. So we were at a total loss as to what might have happened. I started driving down the driveway and the brakes started making some noise so I decided that we should take Min’s car and so we went back to the house and switched cars.

The funeral service was at 11:00 and after all of the issues with the car we only just made it in time. It was a really beautiful service. Dominica and I both noticed that the chapel at Covington Presbyterian is just like the church in Dibley from The Vicar of Dibley. But it made sense once I thought about it because growing up in Peoria is a lot like growing up in Dibley, I imagine.

There was a memorial lunch down at Brian’s USA Diner in Leicester after the funeral. There were a of people there. We weren’t able to stay really long because Dominica hadn’t had a chance to get to bed yet and she was so tired that she was barely able to talk to anyone. She was falling asleep at the table. So we headed for home as soon as we could so that she could get to bed.

My grandmother, Euphemia Miller, and her sister, Elizabeth Wood, taken in the 1980's

I decided that I needed to post a picture of my grandmother today. This picture is of her and her sister Elizabeth who died several years ago. My grandmother, Euphemia Miller, was the eldest of all of her siblings and had two full siblings – her sister Elizabeth and brother Bill. My great Uncle Bill is the last of the three left alive and he is fading fast in a nursing home in Canton, Ohio. We are hoping to be able to all see him this weekend when we are in Ohio. Dominica and I had gone out to Ohio and had hoped to have seen him last winter but no one felt that he was probably up to it. Grandma’s mother, my great grandmother, died in the Great 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Grandma was born October 31, 1915. She was only three years old when great grandma died. Elizabeth and Bill were twins. Great grandpa remarried and there were a number of siblings that were half-siblings to my grandmother. Of them, only my great Aunt Ruth is still alive, I believe.

The sun actually came out today. I think that today is the first direct sunlight that I have seen in at least two weeks. Oreo was ecstatic. He immediately laid down in the sunlight in the office to sleep.

I am extremely excited that the Anonymous Game Developers have released a new journal update today stating that their remake of Sierra’s classic “Quest for Glory II” is still underway. There has been no updates to the developer’s journal since July and a lot of us were getting nervous. I am quite looking forward to seeing their rendition of the game. Their versions of the classic “King’s Quest I” and “King’s Quest II” were amazing and significantly better than the originals. Which isn’t quite fair because the technology now is significantly better as well but still the games are really amazing.

It just occurred to me this afternoon how much the Lord has been watching over us that grandma’s death didn’t come until my Wegman’s project was completed. I would have been in a very difficult position trying to deal with everything while having to be out of town three nights a week. Had the Wegmans project gone just one week longer I would not have been around for the couple of days just before she had died. That would have been awful.

Since Min has been too busy to be able to keep up with things I took care of submitting her to jobs today. She hates job hunting so took over job hunting duties. It is really helpful that I know just about everyone that she needs to talk to about positions already.

I watched some movies while working. I watched The Rugrats Go Wild which I didn’t even know that we had. That wasn’t very good but Tim Curry does one of the voices and it is almost worth watching anything if it has Tim Curry doing a voice. Almost worth watching. Not really worth watching but you could see where it started to come close because of Curry. After that I watched A Cinderella Story. That was cute. Very entertaining. Not what I would call serious cinema but it was enjoyable.

I wrapped up job hunting a little after 7:00 and got to work on my paperwork for Empire State. That is my one and only major priority right now.

Dominica woke up around 8:30 pm and decided that there wasn’t enough time between then and when she had to go to work to bother going back to sleep so she got up and got mostly ready to go to work and started making dinner while I watched the one episode of Roswell that she had all ready seen and that I hadn’t and then she came down to the theatre and we watched an episode together. We managed to get in one whole episode together while we ate dinner and then she got to stay for about fifteen minutes of the next episode before she had to leave for work. We were down to the final disc of the final season so I decided that I was going to wrap up the show and see how it all ended. It was just after midnight when I finished watching the last episode. It was sad seeing the series end. When you watch long series of shows that have a good emotional storyline you tend to get into the show quite a bit and it can be really sad when the show comes to an end. Roswell was definitely a very involved, emotional show and it was sad to see it go. It is extra sad because it is years later now and we know that the show was not continued or resurrected in any way.

Dominica called from work because she was doing some research on the Disney Food and Wine Festival that is going to be going on while we are in Disney World. This is a major draw for us to go to the park when we are going because we think that this event is going to be a lot of fun. Disney has this event every year and a whole bunch of countries that don’t normally have a presence in the World Showcase come and set up small displays and offer a small selection of traditional local dishes that you can get inexpensively and try. We are really looking forward to doing that. She found a website that is listing all of the 2005 Walt Disney World Food and Wine Festival Menus so that we can get ourselves all super hungry way ahead of time. There are a lot of vegetarian, vegan and vegaquarian meny options which is very exciting. We are going to have an amazing time eating in the park. We are planning on probably coming back to Epcot’s World Showcase almost every evening which is totally what Eric, Mark and I did when we were there last.

Eric, Mark and I totally figured out the formula for getting the most out of Disney World on our last trip. We had such a good time and on a decent budget too. We were in Florida for ten days. We stayed just barely off property but closer enough that we could walk into the park. That was one of the best decisions ever. If it is your first time at Disney World I suggest saving up and taking advantage of one of the midline or better Disney resorts. They are some of the best hotels in the world and by staying on property you get a level of immersion that you just don’t get when you are off property at all. I wouldn’t even suggest staying in one of the nice “semi on property” hotels in the hotel area. Best to be in an all Disney resort. When I first went there with my parents we stayed at the Contemporary Resort and that was an excellent choice. You never, ever had to leave the park. You really felt like you were in the “Magic” at every moment. It was really a completely different experience than being somewhere else at night and returning to the park in the morning. Then when my family went back when I was a little older we stayed at the then new Carribbean Beach Resort which was also very nice but not nearly as cool. But if you are three bachelours on a serious budget you might need to be off property. But I digress.

We managed to stay inexpensively for $45 per night or less for the hotel. We would skip breakfast and go straight to the park in the morning and go to whatever park we wanted to do first thing in the morning. We would normally do that all day until that park closed and then we would work our way over to Epcot late in the evening and get dinner very late in the World Showcase. One of the great things about the World Showcase is that a lot of kids don’t tend to find it very interesting so it is mostly adults and it is a lot more mature and much less crowded than other areas of the park even though it is such a great place to go.

Often, after the World Showcase would close, we would then find our way to The Boardwalk or Disney Downtown to get the maximum bang for our bucks. We never went to Pleasure Island. None of us found the club scene to be our thing and paying to go there didn’t make much sense. We had a much better time hanging out in the tamer but more “Disney” areas.

It is 1:30 in the morning and Dad is going to be here in a but under six hours to pick me up so that we can meet Min for breakfast at the Omega Grill. So I am going to get off to bed so that I can get at least a little sleep before he gets here. I only got about three hours of sleep last night. But I shouldn’t complain because I am still way ahead of Dominica. She has been having a terrible time trying to get caught up on her sleep at all and she has to go from work in the morning to breakfast with dad and I and then she has to drive out to Canandaigua for class and she won’t get a chance to go to sleep until at least 2:00 in the afternoon!

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