Beowabbit

My mother silverlibre has been in town visiting for a bit over a week, and it’s been wonderful! Lots of wonderful home-cooked meals (mostly due to her, although we all collaborated on the Thanksgiving dinner, and plumtreeblossom’s Thanksgiving turkey was wonderful, and lots of wonderful things to do and see and talk about. I don’t have time to do it justice, but here are a few of the highlights:

Seeing zendzian in Mister Roberts at the Concord Players. (We didn’t much like the play itself — meaning the script —, but the acting was great, and the sets were truly impressive, and I’d love to see some more of their productions.)

Thanksgiving dinner was epic. plumtreeblossom and silverlibre and I had a fabulous time preparing food, and then we had a couple guests over and ate it. Thanks to our guests (who brought some yummy pickle and roasted sweet potatoes and pie for the feast).

We had a lovely time out playing board games with friends on Friday. Need to do more than that. A highlight of that was seeing tamoroso; much to my surprise, it turned out that he and my mother had never met, and he’s really good people.

Today, we went to the Museum of Science, and had a blast. The Mammoths and Mastodons exhibit they have up at the moment is definitely worth seeing; we learned a lot. And we saw a nifty film about caving for extremophiles in the Omni theater. Before it they showed an interesting little propaganda film about how wonderful New England is, which was a bit strange but kind of fun — regional chauvinism for the win.

After that, we went to the Union Oyster House, which plumtreeblossom had been to before but I (and silverlibre) hadn’t. The food was very good; definitely worth the price. Made me want to eat more fish.

We still have time with surrealestate and DD and Tadpole to look forward to, and dinner with cathijosephine (who’s been on a road trip to New Orleans for the last couple weeks, but fortunately will be overlapping with silverlibre for a couple days).

Life is feeling pretty good lately.

plumtreeblossom and I are home after a really wonderful trip! The drive down was slow in places (in part because of one bad accident we passed), and we ended up arriving many hours after we’d hoped to, but we made it OK. We had a really wonderful time with bcat1 and S. and the twins. And they had a rite of passage while we were there — we gave them their vuvuzelas!

They are such adorable, sweet, smart children, and we had a great time with them. Also with S. and bcat1. We got lots of time with lots of various combinations and it was great. Oh, and I got to meet a cousin of mine who was also there visiting, who is a very nifty and interesting person.

The drive back home was quicker and easier and very relaxed. I love travelling with plumtreeblossom; she’s a delightful travelling companion and we always have a lovely time together.

OK, very nearly ready to fall down go boom. I am not caught up on social media and may well not catch up, so let me know if there’s anything important I’ve missed.

I don’t think she’s reading LJ these days, but for the record, happy birthday to my fabulous sister bcat1!

My wonderful stepfather Don, beloved partner of my mother Ruth for several decades, and man I was proud to call father by choice rather than accident, died suddenly this morning of a sudden massive heart attack. He was active, busy, happy, and enjoying life and love to the end. We should all be so lucky.

Donald H. Johnson, 1943-2012.

I will probably post more here when/if I have time (perhaps filtered), but I wanted to get something here as soon as I could. I’m shaken but doing well and so glad and proud for the life he lived. My mother and sister seem to be doing OK so far (although I don’t think it’s really hit any of us yet). I’m so glad he lived to see his grandchildren, my sister’s twins.

Here’s a brief article by the public radio station where he worked for (as the article says) 20 years. It includes audio of a story of his, which was a nice touch; he started working there when I was still living at home, and it was always good to hear his rich warm familiar voice on the radio.

plumtreeblossom and I will almost certainly be going out to the funeral and to see my mother. I’ve long wanted to show her where I grew up. This is not how I wanted to do it.

Happy mother's day to silverlibre, my and bcat1's fabulous and amazing mother, and to bcat1, the fabulous and amazing mother of my adorable niece and nephew.

I just wished my awsome and fabulous stepfather ka9sqb happy birthday on the phone, but I wanted to do it here, too. Happy birthday!

(On the train, a few hours late for my date with my wuzzle.)

Yay, the plumbing's back! Turns out the gas company didn't break the sewer pipe when they replaced the gas line; the road crew broke it when they put in the lovely new granite curb. (That makes me feel slightly less guilty about all of the trouble for my neighbour — it'd have happened whether I needed my gas line fixed or not.)

Hot showers are a joy!

While I was waiting for the all-clear, I called and had a lovely long chat with my parents, silverlibre and ka9sqb. Remind me to post about oak pipes and prairie fires when I have a chance.

I’ve been running around all day (with my honeywuzzle), so this is kind of late, but a very big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to spacechicken, who makes my sister bcat1 very happy and is the loving father of my little niece and nephew. And also a rock star and all-around nice guy. Hope your birthday was awesome!

Well, her flights were delayed, and it was around midnight last night before she got her luggage and we could go to the car (a rented Zipcar, since I took my car into the shop Monday and there were Unexpected Complications), but I have my honeywuzzle back. I am so glad she’s home.

And when we got to her place and unpacked, we opened all the wonderful gifts my family sent, including great cold-weather lotion for plumtreeblossom and a fascinating-looking book on the history of the information age for me from silverlibre and ka9sqb, and some very useful cold-weather supplies for the car, and wonderful warm fleece blankets for each of us and a card with adorable photos of the babies from bcat1 and spacechicken. And did I mention the treats? Evidently my family thinks we’re too skinny! There ware all sorts of cookies and fudge and bread and excellent chocolate and just amazing delightful decadence.

Sorry I’m so overdue for this. I’m so busy these days I’m not even keeping up with my very most favoritest webcomics. :-) (Sorry, Randy and Jeph!)

Had a fabulous visit from my parents (my mother silverlibre and stepfather ka9sqb), much of it spent with plumtreeblossom. Highlights were a yummy Thanksgiving dinner which vanguardcdk joined us for, lots of Brazilian barbecue, a little tour of my building at work, and a trip to the Museum of Science, which my parents really enjoyed.

(Aside: plumtreeblossom and I have Museum of Science memberships that let us bring guests for free. I’m just saying.)

Also made it to woodwardiocom and buxom_bey’s house for tree-trimming and socializing, which was lovely. Unfortunately, I missed a couple other gatherings I really wanted to make it to, due to Too Much Stuff in Too Few Hours.

I am in the middle of a huge cleaning and decrufting in my office, which as long as I’ve lived in this house has been the room I hid all my junk in when I couldn’t think of anyplace else to put it. A certain amount of progress is being made.

( Cut in case you don’t want to read about medical stuff. )

Work has been busy, fun, and full of adventure.

Sorry to be doing this in bullet-points, but at least I’ve finally gotten around to posting!