Sad time

We knew it was going to be a rough weekend.  Ali was extremely close to her grandfather and she dreaded this event her entire life.  The trip didn’t get off to a great start.

The flight was scheduled to leave at 11:50.  We saw the weather forecast and there was a huge front blowing through the northeast that shouldn’t go through Philly until later in the day.  Our flight was direct so we should be able to be beat it easily.  We got to the airport early, almost 2 hours before the flight was scheduled to leave.  As we stood in line we heard the bad news, the clerk was telling people that the flight is already delayed an hour.

We approached the counter and heard the news first hand.  Ali was panicked, she was afraid that delaying the flight would wind up putting is into the time frame where the flight would be delayed further by the bad weather.  We stopped the check in process halfway through so Ali could go around and check the other carriers to see if they had flights going out, even if they only got us close to PA.  I wasn’t thrilled with the idea and thought if we just sat it out, our USA 3000 flight would get there, just later.

Well Ali checked with a couple and they had nothing available, then she went down to the US Airways counter and was talking to a helpful guy who gave her some options.  The only issue was there was no guarantee those flights would take off either.  Philly had a ground stoppage due to backed up traffic so no airline was going to fly to Philadelphia at the moment.  Ali started to cry as we talked to him, saying she didn’t know what to do.  There was no way we could not be there for Pop Pop’s funeral and she was afraid that the delays would lead to cancellations.

She eventually accepted the advice of both me and the US Airways clerk and we went back to USA 3000 and checked in.  The flight was delayed an additional hour right off the bat.  However they announced that with a ground stoppage, it could be lifted at anytime so the prospects were hopeful.  Well finally, after 5 plus hours at the airport, we took off, at around 3:20.  I spent the time going through the endless magazines I brought with. 

The flight up was ok until the approach into Philly.  There was a lot of wind preceding the storm front and as a result the descent was filled with lots of bumps.  As we made the final approach, I could see the winds tipping seriously up and down right up till our wheels hit the ground.  Ali was squeezing my hand, hard.  We made it.

We got picked up at the airport by my brother-in-law and sister-in-law.  We went right to dinner.  They suggested a place called The Melting Pot.  It is a unique sort of place where everything is made in a fondue pot.  There are several courses, none of which are the least bit healthy.  You open with a big bubbling bowl of cheese that you dip bread, vegetables, apples and other stuff in.  Then the main course comes out where you cook stuff in like a broth.  Ali and I did the vegetarian thing.  We dipped artichokes, eggplant, tofu and other stuff like that.  Finally the desert comes out where now you have a bowl of melted chocolate that you dip bananas, strawberries, cheesecake and other goodies in.  It’s a unique type of experience although I would not feel a pressing need to go back, especially after receiving the bill.  We basically prepared the food ourselves, and granted, my brother-in-law ordered a bottle of champagne, but still, the bill floored me.  Our half with tip was over 150 dollars.  I believe that may be a new record for the most I ever paid for Ali and I to eat.  Yea it was good, yea it was unique, was it worth 150 bucks? No way. Oh well.  Luckily I drank enough to soften my reaction to the sharp bill.

We got back to their house shortly after the babysitter had put our two nieces to bed.  They are little cuties, age four and two.  We were both tired but I got a chance to look at my brother-in-law’s new toy, a 50 inch Pioneer plasma that he mounted on the wall above their gas fireplace.  It looks sweeet.  He also did a nice job putting up surround speakers.  We went to bed relatively early, knowing Saturday was going to be draining and a good night’s sleep would be a big help.

Well we didn’t get one.  Neither Ali or I slept much at all.  We started the night together in the full size bed.  I slept till maybe 1 am, but after that I was constantly in and out of sleep.  For awhile Ali even moved to the floor, thinking it might work out better for both of us.  It didn’t really help.  We crawled out of the room at 6 am, both exhausted before the day even started.

The funeral was up in Orwigsburg, an old town that seems to be sheltered from change.  Most of the buildings look to be very old and there was little doubt things would stay intact for the next 30 years.  It’s a quiet little town.  The funeral home was no different, very old, very funeral homish.

Ali and I stayed in the lobby a long time.  We knew Pop Pop was right around the corner lying in his casket but neither of us were in any rush to come face to face with that image.  More people started to stream in and go in to sit down.  Eventually we had to walk in but we stayed at the very back.  Shortly after entering the viewing area, Ali started to break down, crying uncontrollably at times.  Even though I tried my best to stay rock solid, I found myself quietly crying as well, partly because of the image of extreme sorrow on Ali’s face, partly because I loved Pop Pop too and seeing him lying there, permanently asleep, ripped at my emotions.  I tried to think of various non-related things to settle down and it worked for brief periods but I basically was a mess.

The viewing portion of the service was an hour and a half and we spent at least the first half of it either in the lobby or in the back of the viewing.  Finally we had to walk up to the front row where the family sits.  It was terrible.  Ali cried and cried, which again broke me down.  Being that close to Pop Pop’s body amplified the pain.  I looked very little at his still body.  I could hardly believe how some people could calmly come up to the casket and take it all in without a hiccup.  My dad, brother and sister-in-law stopped by to pay their respects at the viewing which we both appreciated.

  At one point there was a moment that struck me as ironic.  A red headed woman came up holding her baby.  I didn’t know her.  As she went up to the casket the baby which couldn’t have been more than a few months old, just stared at Pop Pop’s body lying there.  The contrast of a human being that just is beginning life, innocently staring at an man that just spent 93 years on the planet struck me.  Not that I needed anything further to think about at that moment.

Well after what seemed like the longest hour and a half ever, the service finally starts.  I couldn’t even tell you who all was there, I did very little looking around, concentrating most of my thoughts on keeping it together myself, trying to be strong for Ali.  The service was handled by a reverend that presided over Pop Pop’s church from years ago.  He asked if someone wanted to say some words.  The only person to take him up on it was Ali’s dad.  He tried to get out all he wanted to say but cut it off early, breaking down after seeing Ali crying terribly.  After that the reverend took back over and delivered a speech that was at times touching and at other times a bit baffling.  He went off on some tangents that didn’t seem very relevant and by the time he was done I believe everyone was ready for him to be.

Then row by row, starting at the back, they dismissed people to come by the casket one more time to pay their last respects.  I knew this moment was going to really be horrible.  We went last and Ali paused for a long time before approaching the casket.  She was crying and had a terrible look of fear on her face from the reality of what she was about to do.  Finally she mustered the strength, and took a couple flowers that were Pop Pop’s favorite colors and placed them with him.  Everyone that was left in the room was crying at this point.  You could literally feel the emotional pain from the moment radiating from the room.  It was bad.  I looked away and tried to calm myself down so I could attend to Ali.  Finally we left the room.  It was extremely emotionally painful and a moment I will never forget.

We piled into the cars and headed to the cemetery.  It was quite cold and windy, sadly appropriate.  Pop Pop’s gravestone had been in place for years next to his wife’s who had died 30 years prior.  It was up on a steep hill.  Ali’s dad asked me to be one of the pall bearers.  I was really concerned about it.  The hill was very steep and had muddy patches.  I was extremely worried that one of the six people could easily slip and fall, resulting in a disastrous event.  Luckily we managed to baby step it down the hill to the grave site.  We carefully placed the coffin on the lowering device and took our place with everyone else.

A few words were spoken and then flowers were handed out that people could either keep or place on the coffin.  I don’t think anyone kept one, they all placed them on the casket.  The icy wind threatened to blow the flowers off the casket but somehow they managed to stay in place.  Ali was much calmer at the cemetery.  We went up last.  She placed her flowers and quietly said her good byes.  This time I broke down all on my own.  The finality of the situation hit me hard and I hugged Ali and cried, hard.  We slowly made our way back down the steep hill and got back into the car and drove away. 

After the burial, the attendees were invited back to Hoss’s for lunch.  I felt very unsocial and didn’t really want to be there.  The combination of being extremely tired and feeling empty from all of the emotion of the past few hours just put me in a state of mind that wanted nothing to do with talking to other people.  I was happy to get back in the car and heading out.

Our route back took us past the cemetery.  As I looked up on the hill, I could hardly tell we were just there.  The tent had been taken down, the chairs folded up and it looked like the casket was already in the ground, presumably buried.  I could feel the sorrow welling up again.  

Saturday night we just hung out, which was fine with me.  We watched a good portion of one of the Harry Potter movies on the awesome plasma set up and had chinese food.  I got to interact with my nieces quite a bit.  The younger one especially had been intially a bit shy towards me since I have only seen her a few times.  I found that playing with them broke down those barriers fast.  They liked when I would throw them around on the couch, talk about their stinky feet and just have fun.  Once again we went to bed pretty early as Ali and I were both exhausted from the day and lack of sleep the night before.

We came up with a new sleeping arrangement, we put a futon on the floor.  Initially I was going to sleep on it but it felt very hard to me.  Ali said it felt good to her so she took the floor.  It worked out, we both slept that night and woke up the next morning feeling much less zombie-like.

On Sunday morning we had some time before we were supposed to meet Ali’s parents at Pop Pop’s house to go through some stuff.  I spent most of that downtime playing with the girls.  It was fun.  I was afraid that going to Pop Pop’s house would once again open the emotional floodgates for Ali.  I was happy to see that she handled it well, much better than I expected.  I think I had a harder time of it than she did.  Pop Pop kept almost every letter and bill he ever had.  We found W-2’s and tax records dating back to the 40’s.  Basically we went through the house to see if there was anything that we would want, rather than having it relegated to an auctioneer house or a dumpster.  Ali found several small meaningful items that she collected.  I found many things that appealed to me and my interest of old things, especially old electronic things.  I pulled out two ancient clock radios, an old penny collection, a 50 year old baseball bat, and an old wind up train set.  In the one bedroom Pop Pop had a tiny black and white TV that had what I would imagine was one of the first implementations of a “remote control”.  It had a large handheld device that made a clunky click as you moved the single button.  Each click made the rotary dial turn one spot.  It is wild to see.  I would love to add that to my collection, but the reality was it just was very impractical because of it’s size.  There are some old stools and a fake Christmas tree that Ali wants from there as well but for now it will just have to be pulled and kept up in PA until we come up with a solution for getting it down here.

We spent a good three hours there going through stuff.  Every few minutes you would hear someone say “Come look at this…”  It was amazing some of the stuff you would come across.  Ali said she is going to have to come back again to go through stuff more, there was far too much to process in a couple hours.  I told her that if someone had the time and motivation to take a lot of these old antiques to organize and sell them, there was a lot of money lying around.  The reality is no one will be willing to make that effort and more likely, the lion share will wind up in a dumpster or at the auctioneer’s house.

My dad and step mom are back from New Mexico for the holidays so we made arrangements to go to their place and in turn head to my brother’s so we could go to dinner.  When we got to dad’s we were greeted enthusiastically by Maggie, my dad’s dog.  She is an awesome dog and one of the friendliest I have ever seen.  She almost knocked both of us over greeting us.

After a bit we headed over to Todd’s.  My other niece Caroline, is getting big.  She has only seen me a few times in her life so she was very shy around me and didn’t know what to think.  She clung to my brother, dad and step mom most of the time.  We decided to go to Santino’s, a middle of the road Italian place for dinner.

We had one of the least friendly waitresses ever.  She wasn’t mean, just old, run down, and just seemed sort of overwhelmed.  I don’t know if she smiled once. The food was fine and Caroline was entertaining.  We had to drive back down to Collegeville so we said our goodbye’s in the chilly air.  My dad is talking about coming down in March sometime for a visit which would be fun.

My brother-in-law was nice enough to let Ali and I use his Mercedes to do our driving around.  It was fun to drive and had a sporty feel to it.  I didn’t feel any more important driving it but maybe some thought it looked impressive.

When we got back we had some time to play with the girls again.  I played with them while Ali got our stuff packed up.  She managed to get a few of the items from Pop Pop’s packed but much of it my sister-in-law was going to just ship to us.  We got to bed and had another decent night’s sleep.

We got up and ready on Monday for our flight out that left at 11:10.  I had a good time with the girls and although they were a bit unsure of me on Friday, by the time we left Monday morning they both gave me a hug goodbye and seemed comfortable in my company.  My brother-in-law dropped us off.  Monday was the coldest of the four days.  The high was not supposed to get out of the 30’s.  We were both relieved to have the dramatic weekend behind us and to be returning to the warmth and familiarity of Florida.

The flight back went off without a hitch.  I spent most of it doing what I did on the flight up to PA, watching movies on my Treo.  I watched Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift on the way up.  It was incredibly cool to be able to watch a divx movie on my cell phone.  The movie was entertaining although predictable.  The plot pulled from standard lines, hell raiser trying to do good, revenge, guy gets the girl stuff you always see. They did some cool things like putting a rice burner motor in an old Mustang and racing aorund parking garages. The action was good and I LOVED the ending.  SPOLIER ALERT.  At the end after the main character has vanquished all the baddies, gotten the girl and is at the parking garage where they do nightly drift races, he is told some American wanted to race him.  After some objections he agrees to race.  They cut to the starting line, he looks over, who is it but none other than Vin Diesel, the star of the first F&F.  He is sitting in his old American muscle car.  They fire off the line and the movie ends, it was sweeet.  It gets a surprising B+ from me. 

On the way back home I watched Jackass 2.  There were some very funny moments in it but I found myself fast forwarding a lot.  There were way too many stunts involving a man’s anus for me.  The horse scene got skipped as well.  There were many silly, silly stunts that had me laughing, I have to admit though, I didn’t find it quite as funny as I imagined.  B-

We landed safely and after a stop at Subway for lunch, headed home.  Nicki was crazed with excitement to see us.  The house seemed intact which was all we could ask for.  It is so nice that our neighbors are able to watch the pets for us.  It makes life much easier.

In less than an hour the bags were unpacked, the trash was out front, and Ali had the laundry assembly line in motion.  I didn’t hit my goal in WoW before we left but Charlie had said he would log in and play my character till he hit it for me.  I logged in to check and saw that I was still a bit short of the number I needed.  Monday was the last chance I had so I started the grind. 

Evidently the rush to hit reputation levels has pulled a bunch of “noobs” into the instance.  The alliance which was winning almost every match now was losing almost every match because we had  a bunch of idiots in the game that didn’t know what to do.  As a result, getting my number was taking much longer than it should.  I was getting angry and spouted off several insults to the morons that were screwing up again and again.  Finally, shortly after the Eagles game started, I made my goal.  I bought my stuff and the virtual drama has ended.

The Eagles game was not impressive.  It was so unimpressive to me that I fell asleep shortly into the third quarter.  Their defense is still a mess.  That touchdown they gave up at the end of the half was textbook for what is wrong with this team.  And from what I read about the ending, the defense was an ass hair away from collapsing once again at the end and almost lost the game for them.  Only a shitty pass from Jake Delhomme averted it.  So the Birds are now 6-6 and in the wildcard hunt.  I can’t tell you how little faith I have they will be in it in a couple weeks.  The defense is just broken.

Garcia has done a good job of filling in although I think the numbers look a little better than the reality.  6 touchdown passes and no int’s, wow.  But when you watch the guy he is so f’in nervous.  He does not have a strong arm at all.  Although he made some throws, he also missed a bunch.  He just seems frantic, right on the edge of control, at all times.  That isn’t something that makes me feel comfortable as a fan.

The Eagles secondary sucks more or less.  Hanson and Roderick Hood don’t belong in the NFL.  Michael Lewis is a chump.  I can count the big plays Trotter has made this year on one hand.  It’s a shame.

To make matters worse, I had the Eagles D as my fantasy defense.  Their shitty performance resulted in a two point loss for my team…..

Back to the grind.  Lots to do around here, decorations to hang, chores to do, trees to get and gifts to buy.  It’s going to be a pretty frantic charge into the 3 weeks preceding Christmas.