Domestic Geek

I got the text message a couple of hours ago that I could check in for tomorrow's flight back to Rapid City. I needed to take T out for his final walk of the evening, so I just now did the check in. Flights between Denver and Rapid City are ridiculously expensive anyway. I'm not going to disclose how much I blew on this particular weekend, but it is money I'd much rather have spent on something cool, but I digress. As I was checking in, I clicked to see how many available seats were still on my flight and there is only a couple. I went to the United page to see how much these last seats were. See below (I'm taking the 7:50pm flight). Yes, that's right...$1358 for a 45 minute flight for the last First Class ticket! That fare was the $435 when I booked my seats. Interested to see if anyone is actually sitting in that seat when I board tomorrow. Really wish the airport would admit there's a huge problem here, but they won't.



It's been some crazy weather lately. I saw roses blooming over by the tennis court. I'll go try to snap a picture tomorrow before I head back to Rapid City. We decided to take Mr. T for the walk around Bible Park in Denver at our old stomping grounds from the suckpartment days (Quebec/Yale). It was beautiful weather today. Certainly not first week of November weather, but I'm digging it.

Today was my father's Military Funeral Honors Ceremony and burial at Fort Logan. I've been pretty strong though everything up to this point. I knew he didn't have much time left when I last saw him on my birthday in September. I've been expecting it for quite a while and was even a little glad when I got the call that he had passed as it meant he was no longer suffering. Sitting at the ceremony, though, I lost it when they started playing taps. As the next of kin, I also was presented with his flag. That was tough. I really am in awe of the service people who can perform that ceremony with dignity when those in attendance are grieving.

I'll probably go out tomorrow and visit the actual grave. He was to be buried by 4pm, but traffic in Denver sucks so bad and I was so exhausted, I couldn't face going back over today.

I didn't want to take many photos and be disrespectful, but I did take this one with the two servicemen taking the urn and flag from the car to the shelter where the ceremony was to be performed.

I was up early to get to work early and get out of town on time, so frankly I'm exhausted. Nothing major happened on the trip from Rapid City to Denver except that the TSA bitches made me throw out my almost empty toothpaste tube. Figured it would be ok since it was almost empty, but they go by oz. marking on tube I guess, not is what is actually in it. Denver didn't make me toss the very same tube last time I flew. Oh, well.

About all I can muster today is Project 365 photos and I'm hitting the hay.

Here's the Chocoholic fabric that arrived Wednesday that I ordered from Polstitches Designs to do Joan Elliott's Angel of Cross Stitch pattern:



Here's a view from the plane as we were pulling away from the gate in Rapid City to fly to Denver Thursday:

I had planned a longer post for tonight, but it's not going to happen.

With Dad passing on the 16th, I've had to miss a lot of work. I have to leave early tomorrow, as well as miss Friday, for the funeral. I'm really hoping this is it for a while. It's bad enough I took a sizeable pay cut, but I haven't even been getting my 40 hours here. That's why I stayed late at work tonight — to get some hours and to not leave as much work for my coworker who is covering.

OK, quick checklist for myself. Trying not to forget anything:

• I checked in for my flight and have boarding pass both printed out and in my phone.


• As soon as I get some dinner, I'll grab a quick shower, then get the few things I need packed up and into the car. Must remember to take out my Sirius radio, my faceplate and my garage door opener. Don't want to leave those in a parking lot all weekend.


• Must remember to put trash barrel out before I leave in the morning.


• I'll head to Rapid City after leaving work early about 2:30. Must remember to stop and get some cash for the bus to Parker/I-225. Tomorrow night I'll be in Aurora again for the weekend. Wish it was under better circumstances.

Project 365 photo tomorrow - I don't have time to post it tonight. Too much to do.

UPDATE: In world news, I watched the end of the World Series game. The Chicago Cubs finally managed to win one in the 10th inning after a rain delay. Bet it's crazy in Chicago tonight. Felt a little bad for the Cleveland Indians, but Chicago has been waiting longer for a championship.

Well, it's November 1st and I'm going to once again attempt to complete NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). It wasn't until I was looking at my blog last night for something that I realized it was ready to happen again. I don't know what happened last year. I just suddenly stopped after 4 days. I went back through my Facebook timeline to see if something triggered it (like the previous year's health issues), but nothing. Oh, well...

A lot has changed in the past year — I'll try to address a lot of that over these posts. There's also a lot of things I had put on hold (some without realizing it) and I'll try to address some of those, as well. All I know is I want to get the old blog back up and resume posting regularly. I miss this outlet. I'm going to update the Expression Engine CMS this month and try to get the commenting system issues fixed. Then I want to get my CSS skills back and dive into some HTML5. My web skills are rusty and it's time to break out the oil.

The biggest and most important change this year was that I finally found a job in South Dakota. It was the ultimate catalyst to get me out of my comfort zone and away from the soul-sucking job I had in Denver. When my boss there quit for the 2nd time, I was killing myself to try and keep the department from sinking. I was working 60-70 hours per week, my office mate was a dumb ass, my new boss totally inexperienced, they weren't looking for anybody new to hire and I just couldn't do it anymore. Funny that they finally hired 2 people to replace me and now I hear my old boss is back. I'm not going to post where I work now or what I'm doing, but I took a huge pay cut and at least I'm back in a field for which I actually went to school. While I'm pretty sure this won't be a long-term gig and I do still have dreams of my own business (which I may one day share), at least it is good for right now. I am going to have to find some additional income, though. I was working at night for my former company while they were getting their newbies trained (managed to keep that up for 2 months), but even that became unbearable.

So, as of August 1st, I became a South Dakotan. It's weird, because I've never lived in any other state. Seeing South Dakota license plates on the old Baja for the first time was a little strange.

The second biggest thing is my father passed away on October 16th. He's been in bad shape for well over 2 years. While I'm sad that he passed, I am glad he is finally out of pain and hopefully in a better place. I will be flying to Denver on Thursday for his service at Fort Logan. After that, I really won't have any ties to Colorado other than Marcus is still living there. I can't wait for the day he can cut ties there, as well.

I'm also going to attempt Project 365 once again to get it knocked off my 101 in 1001 list that I started up again. The photo below is from the Long Draw prescribed burn about 5 miles southwest of Hill City: