The Big Four Oh

Yesterday I turned 40. Oh Em Gee. Forty is one of “those” ages that make you think a bit more about getting older. I still feel fairly young, but turning 40 makes you think a little bit more.

It was kind of a weird day. I woke up and felt kind of “meh” about things. I went off to work and nobody really mentioned it. Now I don’t really go looking for this type of attention, but a couple of my friends at work are very much on top of this type of thing. They make sure people know about it, will go get treats, etc. Only one of them mentioned it, and she didn’t mention the “40″ part. We had a surprise company meeting and I went there and stood in the back of the room. One of the aforementioned persons had a spot up in the front and got me to sit up there. I nervously went up there and kept looking at her sideways just waiting for her to say something. The meeting ended and thankfully nothing was said and I went back to work for the day. Today (the next day) rolls around and they both came up and said they totally messed up. I thought it was actually pretty funny since they are normally so on top of it, but it was all good. We went to lunch with some other friends and it was a good time.

The rest of the day was kind of strange. I wasn’t sure how to feel. I have been very sad lately and this was kind of tough. I ended up going to the cemetery for a few minutes on the way home. I sat down on the ground and talked and cried a bit. It was tough not to have Jon here for my birthday (or any day, but…) but in some ways I felt better afterwards.

That night my wife and I didn’t have anything planned so when my mom called to wish me happy birthday and then asked if we wanted to go out for dinner we said “Yes.”  The four of us went to Champps (a sports bar type place) and took about an hour and a half to eat. It was a good time and we had some good talks. Everything was happy, which is rare. It was a really good time and it cheered me up.

When we got home my wife gave me my gifts which was the DVDs for “The Guild” and “Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog”. I love these and it made me smile. We watched an episode of Supernatural and that was pretty much the night.

All in all it was a good, if slightly confusing, day. There were no new creaks or anything, although I think I’m going to have to get some reading glasses soon (ug). It was friends and family that made the day(s) and I thank them for it.

Father’s Day

There were no #1 Dad mugs given.

There were no pictures.

There were no happy hugs and “Happy Father’s day” comments.

There was no “I love you Dad”.

The scale I use to judge “the worst day ever” has dramatically changed since April 11th, but suffice it to say that today was up there. The whole day has been tough. I can’t stop thinking about Jon. We tried to keep some semblance of normalcy, but it was tough.

We went to lunch like we normally do on Sunday, except that my brother and my dad weren’t there because they’re in Costa Rica, which had the strange side effect that I couldn’t even say “Happy Father’s Day” to my dad, and that was nice. Audrey was cute as could be and helped keep my mind off of things (she gave me an extra hug without having to ask, it felt really good). When we got back home my wife kept busy all day doing all sorts of little chores (including things that are normally “mine”). I sat on the deck and had a cigar but instead of relaxing I actually did some work because it kept my mind off things. It didn’t work all the time though, I had to stop and hold back the tears. Imagine looking at Java code and suddenly you get overwhelmed and no matter what you do it takes over. My wife invited my mom over for dinner and I grilled up some steaks and we chatted for a bit. She gave me a card with a nice note in it, and as hard as it was to read, it was nice.

Instead of  talking with our son, we ended up talking about something a parent should never have to do: we talked about our son’s grave site and marker that we picked out the day before. My wife and I finally decided that we should get that done, if not for us, for others to have a place to “see” Jon. We also bought plots for the two of us so that we can all be together. Jon will be buried between the two of us and we’ll all be together. Soon Hillside Cemetery, Section P, Area 142, Plots 1B, 2B, and 3B will have similar grave markers marking the Chris and Michelle Halverson family.

Unfortunately, one of them will already be completely filled out.

My wife and I ended up watching a favorite light hearted movie (“The Princess Bride”) and then I went out to watch TV. I would just sit there. I held Jon’s urn. I cried. During the day things hit me in Target, Cub grocery store, a number of times in the car, on the deck, on the couch, watching the movie and basically everywhere.

I know it’s “normal” but it still sucked. It was basically a terrible day. There were some good points, my mom and wife did a great job helping, but it was still terrible.  I miss Jon so much and at times I just don’t know what to do.

All I know is that I just try to go through one day at a time. It sounds cliche, but it’s true. Some days are so tough, other days I can handle things just fine. I don’t know what the day will be like, so I just try to deal with things as they happen.

Photo Scanning Project: Update 1

Contrary to what you kids nowadays know, pictures weren’t always available immediately and already in a digital format. I have about 10 what we call “albums” that have actual printed photos in them. These were taken on “film”, which you had to buy separately from getting prints made. You also didn’t have immediate feedback, you had to take the film in (after you took the full roll, so it could be months later) to be processed.

It’s quite a bit different now where you get instant gratification. Heck, my cell phone (Google/HTC Nexus One) can take HD 720p video and is a 5 megapixel camera.

So I’ve got a couple thousand pictures to scan. You’d think by now automatic feeder scanners would be cheaper, but they are still very expensive. I’m using a flatbed wireless scanner (HP C4780) which is working out pretty well. The software is traditional HP, in other words, you have to install a couple hundred megs of software to make it work, but it does work well. The scanning software allows me to easily scan 3 photos at a time and it will store them where I want.

I’m using Picasa as my photo management software because I’ve been using it for a while now. The only thing that made it difficult was wanting to make use of it on my network, that is, I want to store my photos on my network and work from there. Unfortunately, Picasa stores some data in your “user” directory which makes it decidedly non-network friendly. Thankfully somebody has written a launcher that will make it work (see PicasaStarter).

So far I’ve scanned about 750 pictures. I’ve also started to go through and clean up my existing photo library. Picasa has a great face recognition feature which makes things really nice in terms of finding people. I’ve also been going through and geo-tagging photos which is another nice feature of Picasa.

I do like Picasa, but if anybody has any other suggestions, I’d be interested in at least looking at it.

I’m still only about a quarter of the way through, and these are just my photos. I’ve already told my mom that I’d scan her photos too. She takes a lot of pictures and has a lot of albums. Those albums would generally be of me and my brother growing up so I have some personal interest in those and while it will take a while to get done, I really want to do it.

Scanning in these pictures has been an interesting experience. Almost every one has Jon in it. It’s been tough at times. Many times I’ll stop and just look at one and remember the time it was taken. The upside is that I am remembering those times, and they were all happy times. While I wish I wasn’t doing this as a way to remember him and that I had him back, it is nice to remember the good times.

Here’s some advice that I’ve learned through doing this: Take a lot of pictures. In this day and age of digital photos, there’s no excuse not to. This not only applies to parents taking pictures of their kids, but also to adults when you’re with your parents.

You just never know when you’ll never get the chance to take another picture of your loved ones. You don’t want to regret not having more pictures.

As seen on “Deadliest Catch”

I’ve watched “Deadliest Catch” since it first started. It was one of the shows that Jon and I used to “watch” together (ie. we either literally watched it together, or we did separately but talked about it later). I’m a sucker for some of these shows like “Ice Road Truckers”, “Black Gold”, and a couple others.

Tonight one of the crusty old captains of the ship said something that rings so true to me, especially now. He has captained this boat for a long time and now he has his two sons working on it (and has for the past couple of years). Tonight he got talking about how sometimes his kids don’t work as hard as a “regular” member of the crew may work. But then he turned to the camera and said:

“Would I get more productivity out of somebody else other than my kids? Yeah…yeah. But then again, you know, I get to spend time with my kids and there’s not enough money in the world that can buy that.”

That’s so true. Looking back, with the 20/20 hindsight, I wish I would have spent more time with Jon, even just doing stupid stuff. It’s one of those things that you don’t always think about until it’s too late. We did spend a lot of time together, all things considered, after all, what 19 year old wants to spend all that much time with his old man? To a point, yes, but then again, he’s dealing with his own growing up and other issues, he needed his own time.

It’s one of those “woulda, coulda, shoulda” things. Would have it changed anything in the end? No. Would it make me feel better now? Yes. I do know that I did spend a good amount of time with him, and near the end, as much as he’d let me, but looking back it’s easy to find times I could have done better. I’ve come to accept this, and know that I did OK. It’s still hard to think that if I had done XXXX differently, things would have been different, despite knowing that deep down that’s not true.

Alexander’s Baptism

Last Sunday was a very happy day for our greater family: my new nephew Alexander was baptized. The ceremony went well and we went out for a great brunch buffet with my parents and my sister-in-law’s family afterwards. I now have the great honor of being a godparent to both of my brother’s children and I am very proud to be that for them.

I have to say that it was still tough for me. The ceremony was fairly quick, but at the same time, I was holding back tears while I stood up in front of the church with my brother and sister-in-law and her sister. I scrunched up the program that I was holding. I didn’t want to feel that way, I was (and am) so happy for my brother. Thankfully I got a bit distracted while I was up there because my brother asked me to take a couple camera phone pictures and then the pastor handed me the baptism candle to hold up.

Part of Jon was with us though. I almost always carry around a Zippo lighter of his. Honestly, I don’t know if he really used it, but it was his and it’s easy to bring along. In my mind, he used it and it meant something to him. I reached into my pocket while up at the altar and touched that and knew he was with us.

Little Alexander was born the night before our son’s funeral. My wife and I made it down to the hospital that night, and we were so happy for my brother and sister-in-law, and we wanted to show them that we were happy for them. That night I held that innocent newborn little boy and it was everything I could do to not totally break down. It was so hard. Here was my brother celebrating one of the most joyous life experiences they can have, and 18 hours later we were going to have a funeral for our boy. I could only hold him for a minute, but I’m glad I did. It was such a good thing and it gave me a happy feeling, even for a minute. I honestly feel that the good that was in our son was passed onto this little boy (and Jon did have a lot of good, we’ll discuss that in the future).

To make matters even more “interesting”, his funeral was on my niece’s birthday. Unfortunately for the rest of her life when we celebrate her birthday, we will, even if we don’t talk about it then, be thinking, “this was the day of Jon’s funeral”. Thankfully she just turned two, so hopefully it won’t detract from her celebrations in the future.

Jon was born almost three months premature. We didn’t have a formal baptism for him, we had the hospital chaplain baptism him because we honestly didn’t think he’d survive (he weighed 3 lbs. 1/2 oz). I never got to have this experience with my own son. I know in the grand scheme of things, it probably isn’t that big of a deal, but it’s just one of those things that hits you when you cannot have any further experiences with your boy.

As tough as it was to stand up there and celebrate this event, it was a great thing and I’m very happy for my brother and his family. Despite almost breaking down and crying while standing in front of the whole church, it did make me think of happier times of Jon.

Congratulations Nick and Jeanine, you have a beautiful boy.

Watching Movies

As we like to do, my wife and I decided to watch a couple of movies over the last couple of nights. We have a large library available in addition to Netflix so we have a lot of movies available. On Monday night I had a really tough time which caused us to turn things off. I was already having a tough couple of days then we watched “An American Werewolf in London” and there’s a bunch of talk to the main character about how he needs to commit suicide to end the werewolf chain. I was OK until a character said that he should use a gun because it’s reliable. We got through that OK, then started watching another movie.

We then started to watch “Extraordinary Measures”. I thought this would be a nice “feel good” type of movie. We lasted about 15 minutes before we turned it off. I couldn’t keep watching this story about a family losing their child. Yes, it’s a totally different situation, but I still could not watch it. I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore and we stopped.

Tuesday night we watched “Falling Down”, which, at least in a side story, involved Robert Duvall’s character losing a child.

After that we watched “Blood Work” which repeatedly showed a killer shooting a victim in the head. I had to turn away every time. I held it together, but it was tough.

The season finale of CSI: Miami repeatedly showed a woman being shot in the head.

It’s “interesting” how many movies have similar themes. Nothing like that has ever bothered me before. I’ve never had anything against violence in movies and I still don’t. I’m not calling for anything to be changed or am not against violent movies. None of this would have bothered me  two months ago. Now, depending on the day, I cannot even make it 15 minutes into a movie without breaking down and there are definite situations that cause me to at least turn away.

It’s just another of those weird things that you never think about, yet now changes your life and how you look at things.

My aching foot

Much to my chagrin, my wife’s cat (*ahem*) woke me up at about 5:30AM on Saturday. This is more or less normal, but still sucks on the weekend. As I started to roll out of bet to get the pissy cat some food I noticed the sharp pain in my left foot.

Crap, my plantar fasciitis is acting up again.

I hobbled out of bed, fed the cats and went back to the bedroom. I grabbed one of the splints I have and put it on. Too little too late, but it can’t hurt. The thing that’s stupid is that my lovely wife asked me last week if I had worn them lately and I acknowledged I hadn’t but I would then. Of course I didn’t. It’s probably been two months since I last wore them and that’s about the limit I can go now. If I wear them once a week every couple of weeks at bed then I don’t have problems.

Of course, I’ve had a few other things on my mind and my go to bed routine often has me “watching” TV for a couple of hours after my wife goes to bed. By that I mean I go out to the living room, flip on the TV, maybe pull up the laptop for some browsing and such, and watch some TV. And by “watch” I mean eventually lay down on the couch and fall asleep until about 2AM. Then I groggily head into the bedroom and fall asleep until the alarm goes off at 5:45. I am not always thinking clearly at 2AM and don’t always remember to wear the splints.

Plus it’s uncomfortable to wear them. Not so much the wearing, but it’s harder to sleep. It’s hard to roll over and get comfortable, especially if I wear both. These things are like big snow boots, but stiff to keep your foot flexed.

Oh, did I mention the cats?

Our cats sleep on the bed with us and there’s usually one curled between my legs or against me or something. This makes getting comfortable even more difficult. They’re so cute though, I feel bad moving them, so I do all sorts of contortions just so they stay comfortable.

Anyway, today has been spent hobbling around the house. I’ll be making sure to wear the splints tonight and hope that it clears up soon. It usually does if I take care of it and, at least for me, is preventable if I remember to wear them.

The past week has been OK. I’ve been taking care of some of the business side of things (more on that later), which is actually a tough thing to do. This side of things is starting to wind down, but there are a couple of big things left. You wouldn’t think there’d be much to do with a 21 year old who had no assets, but there’s more than you think. Today (Saturday) has been a little tough, and I always have problems on Sundays, so I’m already not looking forward to tomorrow. We’re getting through things though, it’s one day at a time though and every day is a challenge. Some days are better than others and you never quite know when things are going to hit.

Biggest Loser 2010: I won!

For the last few years a few of us at work have run a “Biggest Loser” contest to try to get us to lose some weight. It’s like an office pool, you pay in and the winner (based on percentage of body weight lost) gets most of the money. The same guy has won it the last couple of years, which caused this year’s participation to drop to just four people. This year we decided to make it more interesting by increasing the buyin to $200 and increasing the length of the contest to 5 months in hopes that it will actually cause people to change. You can earn some of that back based on the amount of weight you lose (3% you get $50 back, 6% is $100, 10% is $150, $50 always go to the winner).

I got off to a good start, and halfway through I had lost 25 pounds and was in the lead (we had monthly weigh ins). The previous winner was close though, and one of the other people had actually gained weight. However, over the last month I had bigger things on my mind and while I didn’t go crazy I didn’t worry about the diet. I had already started to plateau so I thought I lost, however the other guy had to go out of town for two weeks for some training. Thankfully he thought he thought that I was in the 12-15% range and basically gave up.

Today was the final weigh in and I lost 8% of my body weight (about 20 pounds) and the next guy was 7% so I barely won. Due to the way the payouts work I’m walking away with $450.

Now I just need to figure out something “fun” to get with it. I’m kind of thinking of an iPod Touch (despite the fact that my current old school iPod is still working). Could use the rest for a night at the ‘ol card club and be “that guy” and wear some sunglasses and iPod at the 2/4 tables.

I’m not done yet, i want to lose another 20 pounds, but now I’m going to add some exercise into things and not got so hardcore on the diet. I can do it, but right now it’s hard to think about dieting too much, but I know I’ll get back on track and it’ll start to come off again.

A Relaxing Afternoon with T-Mobile

I just got back from the T-Mobile store to convert my wife’s prepaid cell to post paid on my account. I’m not sure we’re going to save all that much, if any, in the end but it will be easier to manage and it will give her a smart phone.

That in itself is a total cluster. First they say that they may not be able to let her keep her number. This is a prepaid T-Mobile number going to a post paid T-Mobile account. The guy (who was super helpful and patient and understanding) said that it always works going the other way, but not always this way. This makes no sense to me whatsoever, but we’re trying it anyway.

I switched a no contract family plan because I already had phones (I have the Google Nexus One and I am giving her my old G1). Then they said that I wouldn’t be able to convert back to a contract type plan if I changed my mind because the numbers wouldn’t port back that way. Again, this makes no sense. I still did it because usually if you pay full price for the phones you are coming out ahead by around month 18 anyway, so it’s not really a big deal long term.

So now she’s got 2 phones for 48-72 hours because they gave her a temporary number on the G1 while waiting for the old number to port. Wow, that’s convenient.

I attempted to do this over the phone and got to step 1a before I realized that it was going to be a total cluster and I told the CSR that I’d just go into a store to do it. Thankfully I did because it still took an hour to do it and was a bit confusing.

Oh, and in the process they removed the Internet from my phone. Awesome. The whole point of the Google phones is to have Internet, it’s basically worthless without it. The guy said, “Oh yeah, that happens sometimes during a plan conversion” but he got it put back before I left. Thankfully he knew it may happen and had me check before I left.

The whole process was just awesome Seriously, this shouldn’t be this hard. I’m still just crossing my fingers that the number ports correctly since that’s not a done deal yet.

The weather here has finally been good and I’ve been able to get out on my deck which I really enjoy. We grilled up some steaks last night and watched a movie. Nothing too exciting, just trying to get back to “normal”, whatever that is now.

One Month

A month ago today we lost our son. Today was very difficult, I figured it would be because it started to hit my on Monday. I worked from home because I didn’t think I’d be able to make it through the day without breaking down.

I was right.

Things have been going forward, but it’s been really tough. Today my wife took care of some of the business side of things dealing with an insurance company and as usual she did a bang up job and it looks like things won’t be an issue (*whew* because it would have been really expensive otherwise). This side of things really sucks. Things need to get done, but it’s hard to think about them.

On Mother’s Day we hosted lunch. My parents, my brother’s family and Jon’s girlfriend came over. Everything went well. The food turned out good (I grilled some steaks and everybody went home with leftovers) and the talk was good. Little Audrey explored our backyard and loved sniffing the flowers. I’m glad Emily came over, it was really good to see her and she’ll always be family. I’m glad we decided to stay in this year, it was much more comfortable. Family is so important now, I know I wouldn’t be able to able to get through as well as I am without them, although they’d say I’m not dealing with it yet, which is probably true.

It was still a very tough day for everybody though. I know it was for my wife and I can only imagine how my mom dealt with it (considering she just lost her mom less than two weeks ago). The day started out “normal” for us, then we started cleaning up. It was then that I went to my wife, and while holding back tears, told her: “Happy Mother’s Day.” We just held each other and cried a bit. It was tough, but we love each other and got through it together.

I’m already dreading Father’s Day…