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Michael's Diary -- 2001-2003 Archive   3.13.2001   Well, it's been a long several days. The trip to Philadelphia was very stressful for a lot of reasons. On Thursday we cashed in almost all G's frequent-flier miles for first class seats. What the hell, you take your comforts where you can get them. Our flight was uneventful but at least comfortable. We got in on time and headed directly to G's grandfather's house to help clean things up. I felt kind of awkward and strange and didn't really know what to do, but I tried to make myself useful. After a few hours I was starting to get a little buggy, and I was to cook dinner for everyone anyway, so I left with G's dad and went back to her mom & dad's place. Downloaded a nice, if a little over-veggied, meatloaf recipe from Emeril (if you make it, Mom's Meat Loaf, use less peppers and onions -- and don't forget the eggs). Anyway, that was a moderate success. G and I went out for a couple of beers to depressurize at a local brewpub. Slept very poorly and awoke with a throbbing headache. Repeated appications of Excedrin Migraine through the early part of the day brought it to heel eventually. I was scheduled to talk to the Big Kahuna at 11:00 am but it got pushed back a ways. I spent some time over coffee and cereal reviewing a colleague's comments on the situation and outlining exactly what I had to say, so when the time came at 11:30 I had a well-organized case to make. The Big Kahuna said he agreed with me on some points, understood the others and also felt there should be some kind of "graceful exit" made possible. I got off the phone feeling a little better about things. At some point I called home to check for messages. Mom had called with condolences and a couple of questions, not realzing we had both already left for Philly. We hung out for a while. G's Mom and sister went shopping for some clothes. G and I stayed home and talked to her Dad, then went downtown to pick up G's sister from her college. En route my boss called with the news: work until the end of March and receive two months' severance pay. This is fair and equitable and to be honest a little more than I had expected given recent events. I can't tell you the incredible feeling of relief this engendered for G and myself, all the more so because we were away from home in this stressful, sad situation. We were so happy we went to Geno's cheesesteaks to celebrate. There is a corner in Philly with Geno's on one corner and Pat's King of Steaks across the way. Once for research purposes G and I had a steak at each (well, G split one of mine at the second place). We found Geno's to be the fresher, tastier product and the bun to be superior. The cheese fries also rule supreme. It's also a lot cleaner (looking, anyway). Preferring Geno's is apparently frowned on by some traditionalists, but I defy anyone to taste test them and proclaim Pat's to be better. Anyhow, we had cheesesteaks (I had a Pennsylvania Dutch birch beer, that delightful soda of the PA/NJ area) and some fries and headed back out to G's folks'. That night we took G's sisters to see 15 Minutes, my review of which you can find at IMDB My user name there is sQuint. In short, it stank. Back to the house and then to sleep. Saturday was the day for the service, so the house was a bustle of getting up and getting ready. My job was to be the guardian of the little envelopes to pay off the priests, singer, organist etc. Since Pop-pop had donated his body to science there was no casket, just a memorial tabel. There was a collage G and her Mom put together of photos and some nice flowers. There was a little tension at the greeting time, but the service was quite nice. The priest in his homily spoke glowingly of Pop-po's role in literally building the church we were in. He had been chairman of the building committee and had the foresight and leadership to rally support for an unpopular plan to build a new and larger church -- foresight because the parish has grown enormously since its building and the extra space proved direly needed, and leadership because he had to work through a lot of (in the priest's words) "psychological, political and economic" barriers to success. G and I were married in this very church. Anyhow the homily had some humor in it too, which was good. I read the first reading, and gave it the real Mount Sinai Old Testament treatment. The only really sad spot came when one of Pop-pop's close buddies got up to do the prayers of the faithful and started to cry. Not a dry eye in the house, I'm afraid. There was a luncheon afterwards. I spent a lot of time talking with G's sisters. Then we returned, amazingly some 7 hours or so after leaving. Hung out and watched some moives to get our minds off the whole deal. Nutty Professor II, which was pretty lame, but had some yuks, and Nurse Betty, which was really strange but kind of fun. We flew home Sunday and spent the evening in kind of a daze. So much has gone down over the last two weeks I am kind of punchy and worn-out. The weekend was exhausting. Yesterday I would have like nothing more than to crawl into a cupboard for a couple of days and not speak to anyone about anything. Not an option. Headed into the office, where I did basically nothing except to accept an request from my boss to participate in a class we are running next week. It seems pretty pointless and I really don't want to do it, but I said I would out of respect for my boss. Came home and met G on the way, who was on her way to her final exam (yet another stresser in this wacky month). Gave her a ride downtown. Traffic sucked getting back. I had hardly been back when G called -- aced her test, apparently, so I shot back down and got her. Meant to go to bed early but started poking around with "Cliffs of Moher." Unfortunately it's 10 megs as an MP3 file so I will have to send a CD if you want to hear it -- I don't have enough space on the web. Anwyay, it's pretty cool. It's an instrumental about a guy who is lying with his head over the edge of the cliffs, looking down, and he gently slides off into the air and floats and spins gently through the air, finally landing on the back of a huge bird which carries him up and away into the sun, over the sea. I don;t know where the hell this vision came from, but it did, so Im asticking with it. Anyway that was kind of therpeutic and I hav another tune percolating in my head. My debut CD can't be far behind. Today I woke up with an irritating, hacking and annoying cough. Got downtown really late and it soon became apparent that there was no good reason for me to stick around. I came home, ate lunch (turkey sandwich and beef soup), sent out some job-seeking correspondence to a recent interviewer, practiced some guitar, and here I am. Phew. This has been a really rotten few days, er weeks. I'm sorry to anyone checking in here if I have not been in touch; I've either been dealing with some brutal situation or hunkering down and catching my breath. I am starting to stabilize though! I promise I'll be in touch really soon. Now my task is to tidy up a little in the office and reorganize myself, job search materials, and so one, and do a little planning. Then I have to clean up the house a bit -- my good friend Brian is coming to town Thursday for what, I promise you, will be a blowout St. Patty's weekend and Genevieve is cramming like hell for her second (and last) final for the quarter tomorrow night. Then she gets a week off, just in time I'd say. 7:15 PM