There have been quite a few celebrity deaths this week. David Bowie and Alan Rickman are the two big ones, although both the husband and brother of Celine Dion died as well. There were also several others, including a TV star and a country singer and the daughter of Nat King Cole. All over the news and my Facebook and Twitter feeds, this is the ( Read more... )

There was a shooting today in Connecticut ( Read more... )

Early early this morning - around 2:00am, something awful like that, Seanie gets a phone call from someone he knew back in high school. The guy was his friend back then, but in his adulthood he's been something of a liar and a loser, so they are no longer close. According to this guy (we'll call him Dumbass), one of their other childhood friends ( Read more... )

I'm at work, and there's a memorial service scheduled for today. I expect it to be the usual affair: photographs mounted on the wall while more pictures play in a slideshow on the TV, somber people making speeches about how great so-and-so was, and after an hour or two the place empties out ( Read more... )

Thomas Kinkade passed away a couple of days ago. While I'm never happy when another human dies, I am delighted that he's no longer producing his saccharine art. His self-proclaimed title as "The Painter of Light" always rubbed me the wrong way, since anyone with a basic understanding of how light works and reacts to the environment can see that he ( Read more... )

The cemetery isn't really a place to make a statement.
- Mary Elizabeth Baker

I'm not sure who Mary Elizabeth Baker was, or the context for her little remark.  (Google didn't help me sort that out, either.)  But as a student of archaeology, I thought it was an interesting comment because the cemetery is often the best place for us to learn about the ( Read more... )

We drove out to Uncle Donald's farm to look around. I took some photos:


( Read more... )

I forgot the earplugs ( Read more... )

I'm on a plane somewhere over the United States, on a sudden and unexpected trip to Florida. My grandfather's brother, the last man of that generation, passed away late last week, and I'm accompanying Dad to the funeral ( Read more... )