Daily Update

Weight: 230

Currently Reading (fiction): The Book of the Dead, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child.

Currently Reading (non-fiction): Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller

Just Finished: Sons and Lovers, DH Lawrence. I finally finished this book last week. It was a very good novel, but took me nearly a month to read it, which is a REALLY long time for me to spend on a book. I am convinced, after reading it, that Lawrence had an unnatural obsession with his mother and had a classic Oedipus Complex.

Currently Listening To: Nothing.

Rush Lyric of the Day: Suddenly you were gone from all the lives you’d left your mark upon.

Funeral Update: The funeral was yesterday at noon, and yesterday was very stressful from start to finish. It rained off an on throughout the day, including all morning as we were trying to get out of the house and then get into the church. The service itself was really nice and was exactly what Ray would have wanted. Even Lance (Mt. Carmel’s pastor) did a good job and said a lot of nice and comforting things. A lot of familiar faces were there, including Floyd and Vickie, Merv Snider, Rene Davis, Marty and Sandy, and a number of the Mt. Carmel regulars (many of whom I didn’t really care to have to see again).

Ray was buried next to Bobbi in their plot together in the Glendale Cemetery, which is almost walking distance from Tri-County mall, which must have suited Bobbi really well. Ray had said to Melanie not a week earlier that he needed to get out to the cemetery to put a rose on Bobbi’s grave. I don’t know if he ever made it or not, but there are roses there now. A lot of them.

We had just seen Ray on July 4th and although he was still recovering from his pneumonia of the previous weekend, he was otherwise fine. He did seem sort of down, however, and was talking with gloom and doom. I chalked that up to the fact that he had had the pneumonia scare with coughing up blood, etc, and maybe that’s all it was, but it just seems really odd now, considering what happened. He had even asked me to pray for him, which I didn’t do, and have suffered some guilt over that.

As I did for Bobbi after she died, I wrote a poem about Ray and I will post it on The Writing Desk later today or tomorrow. Melanie and I are going to Cincinnati on Saturday for just a few hours so that I can take some pictures of Ray’s final garden in his backyard. I am going to get a nice picture of his rose bushes and then put it together with a picture of Ray and Bobbi, and frame them together with the two poems I’ve written, then give it to Joan as a gift.

Well, I’m about to cry, so that’s enough of that.

Food Update: Didn’t exactly eat healthy this week; McDonald’s for breakfast yesterday, fried chicken for lunch, no dinner. Tuesday was Great Steak for lunch and pizza for dinner. Monday was McDonald’s for dinner, no lunch. So you get the picture. Decaf English Breakfast tea so far today.

Suit Update: Melanie didn’t approve of the shirt and pants I brought to wear to the funeral, so we went to the mall on Tuesday and I bought the first suit I have owned since I was a little boy. It was on sale, so I got the coat and pants for about $230.00. It’s a nice suit, black with light white pin stripes, and now I’ll have a suit for the rare occasion when I need to wear one. I really, really hate wearing a coat and tie.

Today in History, July 13:

40 – Birth of Gnaeus Julius Agricolus, governor of Britain who would be the first Roman to land in Ireland, where he defeated a group of people there previously unknown to the Romans. Thus starting the long and arduous torment of the Irish by the British imperialists (spoken in the voice of Frank McCourt).

1174 – William the Lion, King of Scotland, is captured, and later ransomed, by forces loyal to Henry II. William the Lion was the grandfather of Alexander III, who would die in the late 1200’s without a direct male heir, thus opening the door for Edward I of England to claim the Scottish throne, leading to the Scottish rebellion led by William Wallace.

1837 – Queen Victoria moves into Buckingham Palace, the first British monarch to live there.

1923 – The Hollywood Sign is officially dedicated on the hills above Hollywood. It originally said “Hollywoodland,” but the last four letters were dropped during renovations in 1949.

1985 – Live Aid takes place in several concerts around the world.

1864 – Birth of entrepreneur John Jacob Astor IV, who would later die on the Titanic.

1942 – Birth of Harrison Ford.

1954 – Death of Frida Kahlo.