Observations 6.12.1

A bit of an introduction to my aunt from a post I totally forgot I had written. Click here to read the full post.

(April 14, 2013)

I'm not sure if I have ever mentioned my aunt before but I should have as she is probably one of the more interesting members of my family. In many ways I'm more like my aunt than I am my mom just as in many ways my aunt and mom are very different. Both loved art but my aunt made it her life as she graduated from two art schools and worked at a few museums including the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Never married she lived in Los Angeles and New York, at one time having an apartment just blocks from where I live now, as well as Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. The Atlanta stop I should ask her about because I never could figure that one out.

My aunt is the world traveling rebellious sister while my mom was the much more serious and at times philosophical one. In that way the two remind me a lot of my sister and I. In art my mom's interests ran more towards classical art and history while my aunt loves all things modern and abstract. When my mom lost her hair during chemo she religiously wore a Penn State cap her daughter forced on her. Last year, after being diagnosed with the same rare cancer as my mom, my aunt refused all offers from my rather large hat collection and acquired a large collection of her own, long printed scarves that flow behind her.

Observations 6.12

It's become the worst possible form of deja vu. Some fifteen years ago I watched as my mom was consumed by cancer and as many years later I watch as the disease slowly but ever so surely takes her sister, my aunt.

With my mom I found myself consumed with rage, rage against a world I felt had deserted me. In many ways I took it out on myself because I reasoned if the world had deserted me it was perfectly acceptable to desert myself. Essentially I was selfish. Now I find I'm more retrospective, thinking more about my life, what I've done and what I want to do with it. I think a lot about my family.

I'm sure one explanation of the difference in reactions is simply age, that magic wand called maturity, the different way a thirty year old's mind reacts to a situation compared to a teenager's mind. How much of the difference comes from the knowledge that I carry the same gene that destroyed both my mom and my aunt I can not say. Along with maturity comes knowledge and with that knowledge comes questions, some of those questions never have an answer. Probably the main question is the simplest, why? It's ironic how the simplest question is also one that has no answer.

It's so hard to put any of what I'm thinking or feeling into words but I had to try if for no other reason than my sanity. When I write, ramble as I might at times, I can see concrete thoughts, this is what I'm thinking. When I talk about my feelings on this or any subject I sometimes change my thoughts before the conversation is over. Normally I like that, I like that my mind is constantly changing, evolving to use an overused word. But in this case I find it all too emotional and feel like my brain is on the verge of burning out. Maybe this will help, maybe not.

But than there are the times I just can't get Birdy's "Wings" out of my head. It is what it is.

Observations from the Road 12.1

Something happened a few days ago that I found so funny I had to share the even if it says way too much about today's world and not in a good way. If you don't know I'm originally from a smallish town in Pennsylvania. I was at the final Penn State home game last weekend and due to the weather forecast decided to just go to my dad's afterwords, there was nothing I needed to do that I couldn't do from there. To understand why I found this story so funny you have to try and imagine it happening in a small town, one with a large elderly population, and in an area not exactly known as a hotbed of a liberal agenda. On top of that it happened the day before Thanksgiving.

I was driving through town when I saw three county sheriffs in riot gear standing outside a one chair barber shop. There is a small apartment above the barber and the black clad sheriffs seemed to be pointing up at it. My one uncle works in law enforcement so I texted him to see if he knew what was going on.

This is the quick version of the story I got by text over the next hour as I laughed hysterically. Apparently the sheriffs had shown up to serve a warrant to the man who lives in the apartment. He didn't answer the door and the sheriffs thought they heard a shotgun being loaded so they called for support. My uncle informed me the county rapid response team, read that SWAT team, was staging on a parking lot a block from the barber shop. This is where I couldn't stop laughing because all I could imagine is the scene in Home Alone where Macaulay Culkin  uses the TV for sound effects. As my uncle said, waste all that money, storm the building, and all they find is an empty apartment with a TV blaring what I hoped was Scarface (warning, clip is not approved for all audiences). On my way home I drove a back way to avoid the bedlam but at the last minute swung into town because I just had to see, only there was nothing to see but the original sheriffs. Apparently the long deceased suspect had been found before the team could fully assemble and the coroner had been called but hadn't yet arrived. However the event did make all the local news shows.

I can only imagine the conversations around the town's dinner tables the following day.

note - If you didn't understand what I meant by this little episode saying something about today's world it's this. Police departments, down to the smallest town it seems, are way too well armed and they look for any excuse to use their toys. Imagine what could have happened had the suspect simply been passed out drunk as the 'rapid response team' stormed his apartment.

Observations from the Road 5.28

Inspired by an uncle I was talking to this weekend and my brother's reaction to that same uncle. I could have made it longer but you'll get the point.

Some Republicans, wingnuts, and assorted nutjobs believe many things. They believe President Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya and that the current minor scandals are worse than Watergate. They have never seen a gun they didn't like or think would be perfect for self-defense or pigeon hunting. The problem is you can't get ammo for all those guns because the government seems to be hoarding all the ammo to keep law abiding citizens from getting any. In fact some think the Newtown massacre was orchestrated by the federal government to spur gun control and bring on the confiscation of guns.

They believe in death squads, hidden weapons of mass destruction, and that Al Qaeda is stronger than ever. They believe the 4 American dead in Benghazi are worth more hearings than 7,000 American dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As Wall Street reaches record levels they know that President Obama is at fault for the collapse of the economy. They never saw a tax cut or rich man they didn't like or a poor man that they did. They look at a collapsed bridge and say infrastructure is something we can no longer afford even as they call this the greatest nation on Earth. They think corporations are the equivalent of you and I but shouldn't have to pay the equivalent taxes. They think austerity is the best answer to everything even though the evidence would say the opposite.

Than they look at record hurricanes, heatwaves, blizzards, wildfires, floods, and tornadoes and they DON'T believe in climate change. It's just too 'out there' for them because it happens to be cold outside.

Observations 4.14

I sat down to start writing my Sunday Observations and realized I hadn't written anything all week. My excuse is that it was a busy week. I went to a concert last Sunday night, had some work to get finished, and I had some visitors. My aunt and sister magically appeared at my door.

I'm not sure if I have ever mentioned my aunt before but I should have as she is probably one of the more interesting members of my family. In many ways I'm more like my aunt than I am my mom just as in many ways my aunt and mom are very different. Both loved art but my aunt made it her life as she graduated from two art schools and worked at a few museums including the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Never married she lived in Los Angeles and New York, at one time having an apartment just blocks from where I live now, as well as Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. The Atlanta stop I should ask her about because I never could figure that one out.

My aunt is the world traveling rebellious sister while my mom was the much more serious and at times philosophical one. In that way the two remind me a lot of my sister and I. In art my mom's interests ran more towards classical art and history while my aunt loves all things modern and abstract. When my mom lost her hair during chemo she religiously wore a Penn State cap her daughter forced on her. Last year, after being diagnosed with the same rare cancer as my mom, my aunt refused all offers from my rather large hat collection and acquired a large collection of her own, long printed scarves that flow behind her.

I love my aunt dearly so I'm happy to tell the reason for the surprise visit. As I said last year she was diagnosed with same cancer my mom had. When she started treatment her CSA-125 level was in the thousands, normal is below 35. After two surgeries, months of chemo, and some personal treatments she wont divulge her most recent test showed a level below 1 prompting her doctors to say they have never seen such a dramatic shift and even inviting her to join some sort of cancer study.

So yes, after almost having an aneurysm when I saw them at my door it was a very happy surprise visit. Still, deep down I feel like I should warn her doctors what they are getting themselves into with this study invitation.

Katie's 12 Days Of Christmas

So what could be so good I saved it till Christmas night? It's a bit of country music, yes I said country. I first saw this video maybe ten years ago when music TV still played music. It was on one country channel or the other and Sean and I left it on all day so we wouldn't miss this anytime it played and laugh as we sarcastically pointed some part of it out to our own family. I think every family has small part of this Christmas in them and can relate, I like to think they do anyway. Than again maybe it's best if they not.

Merry Christmas everybody, I hope it was a good one.

Robert Earl Keene's Merry Christmas from the Family

link

Observations on Guns

The more I thought about what I wanted or needed to say about guns the more notes I had and the greater the threat of some massive post that made no sense to anybody. I decided I would break it into two parts. There is just too much swirling around in my head so first I'm going to get out some basic "facts" about why I think about guns the way I do. Maybe in the end it will be that long awkward post broken in two but I have to start somewhere.

At times it is a very emotional issue for me, at other times very fact based, which is very hard to explain to some people. Before I go any further let me get this out of the way, it has to stop. Every year more Americans die in this country from gun violence than died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Yes the second amendment guarantees the right to own guns but that right shouldn't override the most basic of Jefferson's rights, the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." When the Constitution was written muskets couldn't hit the side of a barn from 100' and there was no such thing as a semi-automatic musket. Does the second amendment give me the right to a nuke? I don't think so, so why a semi-automatic assault rifle with a hundred round magazine? Nobody needs to go to Cabella's for armor piercing bullets to go duck hunting. It's just insanity.

I grew up in a small town ruralish county in Pennsylvania, a state which has more NRA members than any other state other than Texas. In the fall the thoughts of a large part of the state doesn't turn to Penn State football but to hunting. Pennsylvania has more hunting seasons than I can remember. Small game, deer, bear, archery, and musket come to mind. All my uncles hunt and my dad does too although I always had the feeling he hunted more to be with his brothers than for any other reason. I love my uncles but I argue with them all the time and doing that has taught me two things about gun control. Like global warming it's just a bad term and if there is ever going to be a rational gun policy in this country it has to soothe the very real, if somewhat irrational, fear of rural Americans that somebody is going to come and take there hunting rifles.

For years I owned gun, a completely legally purchased and licensed hand gun. My one uncle taught me how to shoot it, took me to a safety class, and often took me to a shooting range where, to be brutally honest, I quite enjoyed shooting it and did much better than hit the side of a barn. Why did I enjoy it? Have you ever played a shooter computer game? If you have you and enjoyed it you understand even if you don't want to admit it to yourself. It's the same feeling just a 'real' feeling and not a 'virtual' one. Beyond that I wont get into it because it's one of those no win emotional issues of the gun debate. One extreme will say I'm evil because I enjoyed firing a gun and the other will say I'm bad because I got rid of my gun to prove a point.

Why do some people react with near hatred of the right when it comes to gun control? Because they have to deal with people like Texas Governor Rick Perry who yesterday told a wingnut meeting that teachers should be able to carry guns. Then there is former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee who thinks a mass shooting in an elementary school is the natural result of taking god out of schools. If his god is that spiteful it would allow twenty children to die to prove a point I'm so glad I don't believe in it. As for the National Rifle Association I'm not sure I can discuss them, least at the national level, without a touch of loathing. There answer to everything seems to be more guns. Guns in school, guns in church, more guns everywhere as if 300 million weren't enough.

But now it all comes down to one simple fact, twenty small children died in a way nobody deserves to die. As I wrote somewhere last Friday, what does it say about a country when it kills its children?

So you can see that, even when I'm trying to not be emotional, when it comes to guns in America emotion is never far away for anybody.

Observations from the Road 11.22

It officially begins, the holiday season. It begins with warm pastries, coffee, and a newspaper with enough Black Friday ads to kill a tree. Somewhere in this house my dad surely has a case of win hid but I haven't begun to seriously look for it yet. He started hiding it years ago when he bought a case of wine to last the entire month and I drank most of it over Thanksgiving weekend. My wingnut uncles will do that to me and I can call them wingnuts in writing because I've been known to call them wingnuts to their face. They laugh it off though because they know Katie never has been all there. Little do they know, Katie is just fine but they aren't all there. This is how it goes at our Thanksgiving dinner and I love every wine soaked minute of it.

Somewhere Christmas music is playing now. Probably that overly sentimental sister of mine preparing herself for an early round of shopping tomorrow morning. I know its not my brother because it isn't noon yet so he wont be awake. But I lie, he was up as early as me and made the coffee. Much better coffee than I could have made I might add.

It's a gorgeous if cold morning in Pennsylvania. The turkey seems to be suitably thawed and it looks like a nice if somewhat unlucky bird, it didn't win the White House turkey pardon lottery. Wine, cook, dinner, football, wine, argue, stomp out to the porch for a cigarette, football. I think that covers it but did I mention wine?

Strange but as much as I sometimes dislike this time of year it's also the time of year I'm the least cynical. I really don't understand why that is so I guess it just gets filed in the 'I'm just an enigma' category. So what am I thankful for, it always comes down to my family, really that's all I need and I would't change a thing about any of them. Hell I even enjoy arguing with the crazy wingnut branch of the family but maybe that's just because of the wine. I know they don't celebrate our Thanksgiving in the middle east but the Gaza ceasefire seems to be holding for now. That's something to be thankful for too.

Honestly I don't understand why everybody doesn't celebrate our Thanksgiving Day. I mean seriously, who wouldn't want to remember a group of religious zealots landing in a new land, celebrating with the native population, enjoying their gifts of food, all the while wondering how they could be rid of them in the spring. It's just so American. Sarcasm! Just prepping for my uncles.

Happy Thanksgiving people

Observations 10.22

Ash showed me an old blog post she thought I would like and I thought I would do my own version of it. I seem to have lost the link but I remember the quote by Robert Brault it started with; "Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." It was a list of the thirty little things that matter in her life, small things that normally get overlooked or are taken for granted. Hers was maybe a bit too faith based for my liking but still it was a good idea, for what it's worth here is my much shorter list. It was off the top of my head so don't give it more weight than it deserves.

The color black. Yeah I know, is black even a color? By definition black is a total lack of color because it absorbs all light and with it all color. I had an 'argument' with a professor once because I said if black absorbs all color isn't it a saturation, or combination, of them all? To this day I stick by my argument whenever I see him.

The color blue. Indigo, turquoise, and all 60 shades in between. Good coffee and music. The smile on the face of a total stranger. A warm bath with candles on a cold night. Cold nights. Art museums, granted this isn't a small thing or always cheap but it's my list and I love museums, all the paintings and the smell of old oil paints. Chili peppers.

I haven't had this happen in some time but that feeling I get when I work on a painting than suddenly step back and realized it's finished. You can't understand it unless its happened to you and photos don't count, I've found it just isn't the same.

A good movie, the kind you watch, go back to the beginning, and watch all over again. The moments before a snow storm when it is totally calm and quiet. Walking barefoot on a wet beach. Books, real paper in the hand type books. Getting the Sunday New York Times before the sun comes up, a weirdly priceless thing. Vintage photos. van Gogh. Paris.

My last two are in no way small things but I can't make any kind of list of this sort without mentioning them. Talking to a small group of close friends that have been with me for years, like my sisters. And finally, my family, always my family, any time I can spend with them. I should add I mean my immediate family and not the conservative branch that thinks I am the devil's daughter incarnate.

Did I mention politics? I thought so.

Observations from the Window 6.26

It was a strange feeling not having the VQs hovering about over the weekend. It was pride weekend but that wasn't the reason, it's a strange feeling any weekend but a feeling I'm just going to have to get used to. With the girls, not to mention Mitch, spending so much time in Boston I may need to start some sort of VQ junior apprentice program. Something to think about, maybe get my own TV deal. "You're asleep!"

All of a sudden that whirlwind of change I loath is swirling around all of us and I do mean all of us. I touched on Chloe's job and Ash's business a bit ago now the change is swirling around the kids too,
again in a good way.

The sis changed her major, for the third time, to graphic design and has been keeping up with her photography. She is even a step ahead of me as she started a very professional looking Facebook page just for her photos. Meanwhile the page I briefly toyed with languishes without even one photo. Her page drew the eye of a major greeting card company that offered to buy some of her photos. She hasn't decided one way or the other but there is a chance she will because the sis may have once been my mini-me but she isn't nearly as anti-establishment as her older sister. Or as anti-authority, or anti-social for that matter. Who is this girl?

Meanwhile the kid finds himself in charge of a new field team after not even a year at his new job. The environmental company he works for found itself swamped with expected but sudden work which necessitated the new team. Each team contains a wetlands expert and the company only employees three, Sean being the third. Seems he will be spending the summer tooling around the Susquehanna wilderness in his jeep, new team in tow.

Chance et la richesse to both.

And than there is me, but that's for another time.

Observations 6.2

see on: picasa or flickr

They say you can never go home again but really that's just total bunk. You can always go home again its just that you never know what you are going to find when you get there. Sometimes you might be better off if you don't go.

When I was growing up I was a total hockey rat. For a few years I lived and breathed hockey all year round. Field hockey, ice hockey, deck hockey, it didn't matter. My second home was a small rink close enough to home that I could ride my bike with hockey sticks strapped to my back. I haven't been there in some time so while I was at my dad's last weekend I thought I would stop by and see what was new. Sadly I found it closed years ago because of the combination of out of control insurance costs and competition from new high-tech rinks that have opened in the area.

I guess this is what memories are for because I have nothing but good ones of this place. Even the bad memories are good. This was the first place I played organized hockey outside of school. A place I played hockey with my brother, coached my sister, and skated with my parents. It's also the scene of a gem of our family lore. When I was 14 there were only girls' leagues and boys' leagues, nothing mixed. To be honest the girls' league was a bit lame because at the time deck hockey was just too uncool for an area than dominated by soccer. One weekend I decided I was going to play with the boys to which they laughed until one snickered and said something along the lines of lets see what she can do, she wont last a game. What i did was break his nose with a check into the boards. I wasn't allowed anywhere near the rink for weeks after that. To this day my dad can't tell that story without breaking into a laugh.

I was just such a sweet girl back than, than again I still am.

Observations from the Road 5.28

Memorial Day weekend brings the unofficial start of summer along with a very large side of sports. That is if you consider auto racing a sport, something that is the subject of endless debate in my family. Summer doesn't officially start for a few weeks but at times it has felt like summer for months. As always I'll leave the science to my brother but damnit whatever happened to spring?

The weekend also became one of a few reasons to make a semi-planned trip home. I semi because I had planned on a day or two at my dad's but i hadn't planned on the whole weekend. Sometimes plans change. Life has a way of throwing unexpected events in the road, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and if you are lucky some of each all at the same time. It is what it is.

But all that is for another time, possibly.

I was driving through rural Pennsylvania on a Saturday morning and I was struck with a thought. Is there any other local in this country with so many damn yard sales? I know it's a holiday weekend all but still they are everywhere. Even my sis was having one when I left. She seems to have joined 'Light The Night' and is going to donate any money she makes to cancer research. My mini me all grown up.

But back to my sports update. I may be almost six feet tall but I was never the biggest basketball fan. I get into it when one of my teams is doing good but other than that it falls to one of the lower rungs of my sports ladder. That being said what an awesome season the Sixers had and I can't think of one bad thing to say about it. A good young team that got everything it could out of itself. You can't ask for anything more than that. They took the Boston Celtics to the last minutes of a game 7 before inexperience took its toll and the Celtics said it ends now. What an awesome season and an awesome future that team has. Unreal that those two teams have played eight game 7s in their history.

A once promising year of Stanley Cup playoffs begins its final chapter this week with the Los Angeles Kings playing the New Jersey Devils for the title. Not exactly a ratings bonanza for NBC but a good series for fans the series features wide open hockey against the supposedly illegal neutral zone trap. The Kings roster includes both former Flyer Jeff Carter and former Flyers' captain Mike Richards so I'll be drinking for them. Both were traded after last years dismal playoff performance in moves that added some of the six rookies that were on the Flyers' playoff roster this year. Whoever wins it wont be the hated New York Rangers and this is a good thing.

As the Phillies begin to age, and possibly look to rebuild, the Flyers and Sixers seem to have some exciting years ahead. Now I have to get back to the French Open.

One last funny story, one of those small town America things that just makes you smile. Now my hometown is small, only a couple thousand people, but every year it holds a Memorial Day parade. I was driving through town to get a paper and coffee and sitting at the curb in the middle of town were two old fashioned folding lawn chairs. Now this is hours before the parade and there isn't a soul in sight but apparently someone was staking out the prime parade watching spot. Just like the Rose Bowl.

Happy Memorial Day people.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 5.23

Over the last couple years a rogues gallery of characters has passed through my posts here. The ones I'm probably most secretive about yet at the same time most open about are the members of my family. For reasons all my own a want to introduce you to another member of that group. She would be my aunt, my mom's sister, who to her total annoyance I always called Jay. She says I just call her that because I like pancakes so maybe you can figure the name out from there.

Like most female members of our family Jay has had a sometimes intriguing life. Among other schools she attended the Atlanta College of Art but received a degree from none of them. She lived in Los Angeles for years but says she grew bored with it and moved to New York, yes the Village. As my dad describes it she burned out after ten years in this city and moved to Philadelphia where she spent some time working at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Even though she lived in Los Angeles I'm told she didn't have a drivers license until well into her thirties. That alone says a lot about her.

She loves dogs and has always had one, usually a french poodle. Not the fluffy kind of poodle that immediately comes to mind but ones more like the retrievers which they were originally bred to be. Her poodles like to chase you around the yard, pit poodles.

Finally. when my mom became ill, Jay moved back to our ancestral homeland of CentralPa and has been there ever since. She became sort of an eccentric mom to Sean and K and sometimes attempted to be mine. At this she sadly failed completely.

There is a person in everybody's life who they wish they had or could spend more time with. It might be a family member or it might be an old friend. Jay is that person to me.

Now I'm just waiting for the phone to ring.

Observations from the Window 5.19

I don't know if I ever wrote about healthcare before, it's a sometimes touchy subject for me. My basic thought is that in a country supposedly as rich as this one nobody should be denied the best care for economic reasons. If we can afford the ability to kill in a historically unknown scale we should be able to take care of those in need. One shouldn't be forced to settle for lesser care because their insurance tier doesn't cover a treatment or drug. In 2009 a Harvard Medical School study said 45,000 deaths a year are directly related to lack of health insurance or approximately the same number as smoking kills. Think about that.

I bring up healthcare now because a good friend of the family recently became ill. She is far from poor but her story still tells something about healthcare in this country. I'll make it a brief story. Over a month ago she began having pain in her side and started weeks of seeing various doctors, receiving various diagnosis, and getting various treatments. The pain continued to worsen and finally her frustrated OBGYN scheduled her for an mri because our friend is highly allergic to the dye used in a ct scan. On the morning of the test she received a call from the doctor's nurse informing her that the hospital's radiologist had cancelled the test. He didn't know a thing about her or her case but cancelled it because, as health insurance raises its ugly head, there are procedures to follow and a ct scan must be performed before an mri. It didn't seem to matter that the test could worsen the problem.

Now totally exasperated and unable to eat much she went to the hospital's emergency room with a friend. At one point she was asked why she came to emergency with a stomach ache, had I been there this is the point in the story where a nurse gets slapped, but than I wasn't. After a day of tests it was discovered she had a growth in her abdomen and surgery is scheduled for this week. She has been in the hospital since than but the insurance company wont pay for her to remain there till the surgery. She has to go home, deal with life's other problems, and be re-admitted that morning.

A thought came to me yesterday, maybe I had seen it somewhere before, maybe not. If we have to live and die with health insurance companies why not just make them non-profits? Why should medical decisions be made based on the profit line? Why should a few individuals make millions running these companies when so many Americans go without healthcare?

In the end history may judge this rich nation on how it treated its poorest citizens when they needed it most.

Obervations from the Window 4.22

My brother's 24^th  birthday was a few days ago, something I find way hard to believe. What makes it even harder to believe is the fact that if he is now 24 I'll be 30 in just a few months. This can not be true. My brother is closer in age to me than my sis and I spent time with him at Penn State, as well as racing across I81 to get home, so we have always been close.

My sis was, and in ways always will be, my mini-me slash evil twin. My brother has always been my friend, sometimes my only one.

One of my favorite memories of my brother is the time we all made a trip to New York and Sean visited the Museum of Natural History for the first time. Probably a time in his life akin to my first visit to MOMA. I can still see the look on his face when he saw the dinosaurs. You see most people loved dinosaurs as a child but usually the pink friendly variety. Sean loathed Barney, instead he collected dino books and grew to love the raptors of Jurassic Park. He dreamed of being a bone digger from the University of the Rockies and became an environmentalist from Penn State.

I think the three of us always got along so well because of how we were raised but also because we are a lot alike while also being very different. The kid is totally laid back, which all of us can be at times, but I'm much more emotional and arrogant. My sis fills out the triumvirate with her intensity and more stoic arrogance. Like I said, so much alike but different enough to keep it interesting.

I talk to them both almost everyday but I still find myself missing being with them as much as I was.

But anyway, Happy Birthday again Sean and Happy Earth Day.

And, yes, I said thirty.