Grandpa Rees died

Grandpa Rees died today. It wasn't much of a shock, because we had been expecting it of course. Mom called in the middle of the afternoon and left a message (we've been in a perpetual design meeting the last two days for our new product), and I called her back around 4 or so and she gave me the news. I guess I'm not too affected by it, since we've been expecting it for over a year it seems. Obviously dad and the aunts and uncles were pretty affected by it, though. I think the closest I came to tears was talking to dad on the phone, as he was talking about giving Grandpa a blessing on Sunday, and trying to figure out what the Lord wanted him to say. (He had come to Odessa over the weekend because of Grandpa's condition, and ended up staying). It made me think, some day I'll have this same conversation with my children, and what will I say. Or some day I'll be doing the same thing for my father. It was a touching moment, something I'll have to write a poem about.

So I think I'll be going to the funeral. They're thinking it'll be next Tuesday (so that Joel can come from Japan, and so that it's not on Sunday or Memorial Day), and dad wants Sharla to come, but she probably can't handle the drive, and isn't very comfortable with planes, so I kind of volunteered to go on the plane with her. We're just waiting for an official word on the date so we can buy tickets (which are going to be pretty expensive of course—in the neighborhood of $500, even with bereavement). If they could have done it Monday (Memorial Day), I could have gotten tickets to Dallas for only $200.

Anyway, in spite of that it was a pretty normal day. Except I've decided not to play anything for a while because of my ankle. The ankle is really frustrating, by the way. I haven't been able to work out for over a week, and I'm worried that I'll lose all my conditioning and all the weight I had worked off will come back (I'm hovering around 193 now, thanks to tri-weekly workouts at night while I'm watching TV, as well as a little self-control when it comes to lunch and dinner). I guess I could still lift weights, but I have a hard time motivating myself to do that when I can't do the rest of the training.

I went fellowshipping and we visited a lot of our ward in the Boulder's apartment area (actually, we just found out that a number of them have moved). Then I did miscellanous paperwork type stuff while watching everyone else enjoy volleyball at the church until 9:30 or so, when I took Heidi home and then went home myself. Then I made a number of phone calls (church business, talking to Aunt Sharla, etc) before calling it a night (I need to get up early tomorrow to run a training class at our office).

Oh yeah, I bought the parts for the new computer (shortly before I found out about Grandpa). So I probably won't see them until after I get back from the funeral, but I'm kind of hoping they'll arrive Friday so I can play around with them a little bit.

Posted May 25, 2004 (11:45 PM) | Comments (1)