I note that it's been a while since I posted anything. When I started this blog, I was hoping to have approximately weekly posts, then I sort of settled for approximately monthly posts, which I justified to myself by trying to write longer, "essay" sort of posts rather than "Gee the weather is great today" type posts. But on the assumption that a few people check in here from time to time, I figured I ought to put something up to remind everyone that this blog is still a going concern.
It has been pretty hectic lately. Most significantly, my father-in-law, Paulis Anstrats, died on May 21. He had been pretty sick for several months and we all knew it was coming, just not exactly when. He was a neat guy, and I will miss him. He came over from Latvia after WWII and went from being a penniless refugee to a college professor---he taught German, world literature, and western civilization at DePaul for almost 30 years, but he retired in 1990 so I never knew Dr. Anstrats the professor, but he did love literature and words, and tended to illustrate his conversation with references to books. He was a smart, clever guy, and his coversations tended to be entertaining. He and my wife, his only child, were very close. He appreciated good beer and a nice Gewurztraminer or Riesling.
He died right before the Memorial Day holiday weekend, which pushed off the funeral activities for a few days, so we had more time than usual to fret over everything. This was my first experience preparing for a wake and funeral (when my sister died, her husband and his family handled just about everything, I think---in any event, I wasn't involved). There are certain elements of the funeral process that are a total racket, but actually, to a large extent, I think it is money well spent to pay a funeral director to deal with a lot of the details. But if I see this coming regarding myself or anyone else close to me, I will seek out a deal on a casket well before it's actually needed. In general I think the funeral people who handled my father-in-law's arrangements did a great job and I would not hesitate to work with them again, but I think my mother-in-law got taken to the cleaners with the casket.
Then, on the heels of all that activity, we had two friends come to visit over the weekend. I have a lot of great friends here in town, and I'm very grateful for that, but I've also had a lot of very good friends who have moved away. So it just so happened that two of them, to whom I had issued vague standing invitations to visit, came to town at the same time, and rather than have to tell one of them that we couldn't put them up, we had them both come over. I was a little concerned but they got along fine. So from Thursday night to Sunday morning we were pretty much on the go a lot, including a group outing to the Roller Derby Saturday night, which was a good call because both bouts were fantastic---in the first bout, we saw the no-longer-hapless Manic Attackers come back from a 45 point deficit to beat the defending-champ Hell's Belles, and in the second bout, the heretofore-winless Fury ("our" team by virtue of our friend Kelly (aka Mel Content) being a member) took control early on and managed to hold on and eke out a victory in the last bout of the season, which besided being a great bout (a real nail-biter) was great to see, and I'm glad we were there.
Then a few hours after our guests left, our book club met. This month's book was Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, which unfortunately I didn't get to read because, you know, I was sort of busy. But it prompted a pretty active discussion.
Meanwhile, another one of my friends has a kid who has taken up Magic: The Gathering, a game I once was a minor master of. So I'm hoping I can go visit them some time soon. And the Xylenes are working towards another performance---we found a single weekend in July when everyone seems to be available, so I sure hope we can get a gig set up then.
Not a dull moment around my house. I'm hoping for some, but I'm not sure when that can happen.
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