SteveCook.net

Last year, during one of my trips taking my grandfather to one of his appointments, the topic of music came up. (I know – I ended a sentence with a preposition, sue me…). He always appreciated classical music, while I like it, but only in spurts, depending on my general auditory-mood. I mostly just like Mozart, Chopin, and a few others, while his favorite was Chopin.

He mentioned that he clearly remembered the first album he ever bought, when he was 10 or 12 (This must have been mid-1930′s then I suppose). It was a performance of Poet and Peasant. His brother let him play it on his record player. He remembered playing it over and over, but having been so long since he listened to it, he couldn’t remember much of the score.

Later that evening I found a copy on iTunes and made him a CD that included Poet and Peasant, as well as several of his favorite Chopin pieces.  I listened to it several times and really enjoyed it – I even put it on my phone and nano for when I worked out.

So, a couple days later, on my next trip over, I suprised him with the CD and said it had Poet and Peasant on it. I put it in his CD player and pressed play. We both sat and listened to it.  I was quite proud of myself for bringing him this reminder of his early days, as well as enjoying it myself. After a few minutes he said “AH! I remember this song clearly now!  But, I don’t remember why I liked it so much…”

He enjoyed the Chopin more than the Poet and Peasant.  There’s a very nice version of P&P on YouTube here.

I have never been a big fan of golfing… In fact, I was 20 the first time I went golfing with my dad at the old Rio Rancho Country Club. I had fun, but I wasn’t very good. Since then I’ve played a couple times a year at most.

On the other hand, my father, grandfather, and son LOVE to play golf. Jonah even started playing in the junior PGA this summer. My grandfather, being from Scotland, started playing as a kid too. I never played much because it’s so time consuming, and I’m one of those crazy people that truly enjoys his work.

My grandfather played golf twice a week for the past couple decades and because I wanted to spend some time with him I mentioned that if he ever needed a fourth, to let me know. So a few times this past spring and summer we were able to play a round. In fact, one time I was able to bring Jonah to play too.

I’m really glad we got to play.

Our “Kody Bear” died on the 23rd.

He hadn’t been eating much for a couple days, then on the 23rd, he puked up blood in the middle of the night, and then puked again (just water/bile) in the morning.  He looked very bloated (he’d been getting larger over the past month or so, but we just thought he was getting chubby from not running around) so we took him to the vet.

They did some x-rays, and it turned out he had a large tumor on his spleen (apparently it’s a common aggressive thing for shepard breeds – and he was part shepard). He had so much fluid build up, the vet said it was hard to see many of his organs, but that it had likely spread (they couldn’t be 100% sure without invasive surgery).  It was also likely that even if they did sugery, he wouldn’t ever fully recover and he’d have no quality of life (and be in a lot of pain).

We asked if we could bring him home to die, but the vet said it would get very “bad” – he would be in more and more pain, and he’d be vommiting more and more until his body gave out. He wasn’t in much (apparent) pain, but he was visibly uncomfortable (couldn’t find a way to lay down). We took the vet’s suggestion to put him to sleep.  We took Jonah in to say goodbye, and Janet’s mom came in too. After Jonah left with his Grandma, we petted him for about 20 minutes until he was just about to fall asleep. The vet gave him the injection and he went peacefully to sleep.

My grandmother told Jonah on Christmas eve that Kody and Great-Grandpa wanted to play, and Kody would keep him company.

I’d like to start out the “Grandpa Stories” with a little history of both of my grandparents. My grandfather was born in Scotland and grew up in Rosewell Scotland (just South of Edinburgh). His father was Thomas Murray, and was the manager for the company that ran the local mine (and basically the whole town).  On an interesting contemporary note, the Roslin chapel in the Da Vinci Codes book is very close to where he lived.

He went to school at George Watson’s College and was vice-captain of the rugby team (picture coming soon – Uncle Alan is going to bring it over so I can scan it in).  He actually got injured a lot playing rugby, and I think that’s where some of his knee issues came from – although most probably came from the plane crash (more on that in a later post). After completing school, at the age of 19, he decided to join the Royal Navy and become a pilot.

For training, he was to choose between Australia, Canada, or the U.S. My grandmother always used to tell him it was the luckiest decision he ever made (and she said yesterday that she was the luckiest from that decision . So, he came to Grosse Ile for training in the Grumman TBF Avenger Torpedo Bomber. While training there, he was invited to a local dance (like the USO, but not) for service men. My grandmother was there and noticed him. After him not making any moves toward her, she approached him and asked if he’d like to dance.  His response was completely predictable (if you knew him). He said:

“I don’t dance, and I don’t like girls.”  (with heavy Scottish accent).

But, they did talk for a long time, and were able to exchange contact information, and they had a date shortly thereafter. They went on a few more dates (always double-dating, since that would have been improper for any “alone time”).

I’m going to skip ahead because the dating and marriage is a whole other story.  To sum up, they got married just before my grandfather was shipped back to the UK. It was a long time before my grandmother could return to grandpa’s arms in Scotland. When she finally arrived, it had been many months (about a year I think) since they’d seen each other.  By then, my grandfather was stationed at an air base and was boarding with a local farmer.

The morning after their reunion, they stayed in their bedroom until late in the morning (at this point in the story my grandmother blushes quite a bit). They came out to the kitchen/dining room together and sat at the table for lunch, while the Farmer was already seated. The farmer looked at his watch and looked up at them.  My grandmother, trying to make the best of it said “Just think, we didn’t have to eat any of the breakfast, so we didn’t cut into the rations!”

To which the farmer replied, in his thick accent: “Aye lass! But think of the wearrr and tearrr on the sheets!”

As some of you may have noticed, I haven’t been online as much in the past few months. This was due to a combination of selling one of the companies that required me to be online all the time and helping my grandparents.

In August of this year, my grandfather started having difficulty driving, so I would spend 3-5 days a week shuttling them around town to various appointments (doctors, eye doctors, shopping, blood tests, x-rays, dermatologists, etc…) Since I don’t have an official “full-time” job, it was easy for me to do, and I really didn’t mind – in fact it was great because I got to spend a lot of time with both of them.

During August and September I received several scary phone calls, usually in the morning. My grandfather had fallen several times, and due to his knees, he couldn’t get back up himself.  I would hurry over as fast as possible to help him up – usually he wasn’t hurt, just couldn’t get back up.  (I’m convinced that I drove over with the help of angels – I once drove by several police cars at triple digit speeds in the silver Ferrari, and they didn’t respond at all.) Unfortunately, the frequency of the falls started to increase until early/mid October, when he fell and was just too tired. The first several times, he was okay, and we would take him to the doctor’s and have him checked. Earlier that week the doctor said that if he fell, he might want to consider going to the hospital. He of course said that probably wasn’t necessary.  I was at the gym when they paged me over the loudspeaker on Sunday morning – Janet called and said the Grandpa fell again. I flew over again and found him tangled in bed sheets laying at the side of the bed. He couldn’t catch his breath, and I got him seated on the bed.

Grandma and I knew this time was different because when I suggested we call an ambulance to take him to the hospital, he said that would be fine. They sent over a fire truck, and then an ambulance to take him to the Albuquerque Heart Hospital (which is amazing, BTW). It was the last time he was home.

Over the last two months he went to several hospitals and continued to decline. It turned out that he was becoming allergic to some of his medication (most importantly the dieuretics). That was causing a spiral that the doctors couldn’t stop.  Earlier this week they said it wouldn’t be long because anything they did to fix one thing would adversely affect other things. So family started flying in (both uncles and my brother). We were able to all see him yesterday morning and afternoon. He was lucid, and talkative, but also was very tired.

He passed away this morning around 1:30 am.

I’ve been spending 2 (and sometimes 3) nights a week at Grandma’s house to keep her company and help her with things she has trouble with.  My mom would spend the other nights.  We’ll continue to do that every night at least for the next few months.

Over the next couple days I want to post about the great and interesting stories he and grandma told me over the past four or five months. I’ve learned a lot about them in the past months, and it’s made today much harder, but I’m glad I was able to spend those days driving him around.

Anyway, about the title of this post… After going to so many doctors with grandpa, I was able to get quite good at answering the basic personal and medical questions. The most common was always “What’s your birthday?”  After a few weeks, we’d say in unison (with a slight giggle) “two three two three” – February 3rd, 1923.

I’ve been to Japan a few times, and I return with interesting stories consisting of a silly mix of exploration and confusion. Jonah, after hearing these stories, really wanted to go to Japan someday (and I think his love of Ramen noodles and Samurai stuff helped too). Well, Janet suggested that I take Jonah to Tokyo for spring break, and so we went! Janet and Sterling stayed home (neither of us was masochistic or sadistic enough to take an 18 month old on a 13 hour flight).

We spent a week in Tokyo, with side trips to Yokohama and Kyoto.  We took the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) from Tokyo to Kyoto, and then back again. We also went to the Yokohama Science Center where Jonah played with nearly every exhibit there – until they closed the place down and kicked us out.

Part of Janet’s requirement for letting Jonah go to Japan was that he had to keep a travel journal and write at least one page a day. He kept to his word and wrote some interesting entries into his journal.  It’s interesting to read his perspective of the same events that I saw.  For example, we used to have Krispy Kreme’s here in Albuquerque, but they closed down a couple years ago. They were one of his favorite foods. Just our luck, the hotel we stayed at (Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku – I Highly recommmend BTW) had a Krispy Kreme less than a block away.  He wrote in his journal about the last day and trip home: “It was the best vacation of my life, and I got Krispy Kremes”.  Nothing like priorities!

We have a ton of pictures, but they’re in a protected location on another site. If you would like to access and see the pictures, send me an email, and I’ll send you the URL.

Some helpful hints about traveling to Tokyo:

• Take the train from the airport to the station nearest your hotel (Narita Express). It’s TONS better than the bus or Taxi.
• If you’re going to be going all around Tokyo and Japan via the railroad (I highly recommend), stay at a “hub” station – such as Shinagawa or Tokyo Stations. We spend a lot of time traveling from Shinjuku to those stations. Shinjuku is great, as was our hotel, but if you’re going all over, you’ll be going through those stations a lot.  It wasn’t bad - but it would save 20 minutes each direction if you’re travelling.
• The lines at Tokyo Disney are CRAZY long.  Fast Pass is the only way to go there.  Plus, they don’t have as many “snack” and ”eateries” as the California Disney.  AND, the strange thing is, most items don’t say “Tokyo Disneyland”, they just say “Disneyland” – which makes buying something a little trickier
• Be adventurous – but think ahead. We found a couple neat shrines and parks by just turning down alleys and parks. In Kyoto, we wandered around and found many shrines and temples. Near the end of the day we stopped at the Kyoto Tower to look around. If we had gone to the tower first, we could have mapped out what we wanted to see (you can see pretty much all of Kyoto from the tower).

What a long, strange trip it’s been…

Since 1997 I’ve worked with a group that has, for the most part, been great. For example, Mitch and I in this picture from a company picnic in 2000 at Essential Communications:

 

On the back of the phote, Ed Fikani wrote: “Steve, I gave copies to the group. You make us proud… EdF“. That was a while ago (nearly 7 years!) and I have to note that my finger wasn’t really in my nose.

Now that I won’t be doing any work at GE, I’ll miss the guys a lot. Mitch, Ron, Rick, Ed, Colin, and everyone else!  I’m hoping they’ll still invite me to lunch a few times each week.

Okay, due to popular requests, here’s a few very recent pictures of Sterling.

     

My good friend from college Dave Hershberger was riding through town and stopped by to spend the night. He rode his recumbant bike from Chicago, and was passing through on his way to Socorro (he blogged most of if on blogspot). Janet, Jonah, and I met Dave and his sister and brother-in-law at Flying Star on Central and had a nice dinner. Dave’s brother-in-law is a neurosurgeon so I used my super-cheesy “I was going to be a doctor… but I didn’t have the patients…” which didn’t go over well – about as well as you’d think actually.

He spent the night and then was off to Belen to stop at his parent’s house. I rode with him from my house down to the end of town (about 13-14 miles) and then rode back. I was still getting over my cold, so luckily Dave didn’t go too fast. He made it to Socorro the next day, and was able to officiate over Bob Broilo and Kathy’s wedding in Farmington yesterday.

Dave switched jobs from Evolution Robotics and will be starting as a Software Engineer at Google in the coming weeks. I’m interested in hearing his perspectives on how the company was/is(?) able to convert from a exponentially growing Intraweb start-up to a mega-corp^tm .

 

Janet, Jonah and I spent the weekend (fri-mon) hanging out at Copper Mountain Colorado. We did a bit of mountain biking (you can take the chair lift to the top and bike down), rock climbing, and bungee/trampoline jumping. Jonah had fun, but chickened out halfway up the “medium” rock climbing route. We took Janet’s Cayenne and it drove great.

While we were in Copper, while Janet and Jonah slept, I started putting together a quick website I’d been tossing around for a little while. It’s nearly done, but I’m going to write some better copy before putting the link here .

Just before leaving for Copper, I also picked up a new GPS unit. Earlier last week Colin picked up a Garmin eTrek Vista Cx. I played with it a little, and decided to pick one up too! We used it for our trip up to Colorado and back. It worked very well, and was pretty good at re-routing. The battery life is also outstanding (16+ hours on 2 double AA’s so far). I picked up the bicycle mount, but because my handlebars are carbon fiber, they’re a little thicker (non-round too), so don’t fit the mount. It does fit on my older mountain bike (Specialized Hardrock) - so I guess that’s where I’ll put it on there.

I’m also starting a new diet plan, which places some emphasis on protein/carb/fat ratios and timing (carbs in the morning). I’ll update here with the progress.

Let see…. this week started interesting, with eBay having some sign-in issues. BidNip (the Best Auction Sniper) worked through much of it (using multiple attempts at user sign-in), but it took a while for eBay to get back to 100% (they were ‘randomly’ signing people out for no reason, right during the bid process – very frustrating). It’s working now. Most of the BidNip users were understanding, since even when they tried signing in to eBay it didn’t work for them either . My personal opinion is that eBay’s having some tough scalability issues and software updates are becoming harder and harder to test and verify. eBay takes a lot of grief from sellers, but I think they’ve got a pretty tough job, so I don’t bad-mouth them at all. They’re trying to make improvements, they just need to test a little better!

I drove my grandfather to a specialist yesterday to get a barium enema …er… procedure. It went fine and then we went to Village Inn for brunch. He wasn’t allowed to eat anything for about 36 hours before the appointment, so he was starving. We talked for a little bit about all kinds of things. My great grandfather (his dad) was the manager of a coal mine in Edinburgh, Scotland and also did a few other things. It was a nice breakfast.

Tonight, we’re going to dinner at my mother-in-laws, and Jonah might just see that fat man in red…

Janet and I went to see Walk the Line this past Saturday. I wanted to see it, but I was also a little afraid of seeing it as well. I’m a fan of Johnny Cash, but my father (who passed away in 1993 from colon cancer) was a HUGE Johnny Cash fan. I have many memories of listening to Johnny Cash with my dad – whether it was riding in Old Blue across the country from Michigan to New Mexico, or cruising to a lake or river to go canoeing, fishing, or water skiing. There’s even a few songs that I avoid because they’re tough to listen to – which is why I was afraid to see the movie.

Janet really wanted to see it to, but was a litte perplexed at my hesitancy. I still haven’t really told her, so maybe she’ll read it here (but I doubt it *grin*). Anyway, she bugged me enough, and my mom had Jonah for the evening, so we went to see it. It was a good movie – not great but very well done and worth seeing. For me personally, it was tough, but not unbearable. At many points in the movie I’d think about what my Dad was doing around the same time. The movie had Dates at the bottom, and I’d think about what was going on in my Dad’s life at the same time and how he was probably listening to these songs on the radio or on his reel-to-reel tape deck (which I still have – with Johnny Cash albums on tape). So, the movie was good, but on a whole different level for me, compared to the rest of the world.

This morning I was looking through Outlook and went into one of my rarely used sub-folders and found an email from my Grandpa Cook. He passed away almost a year ago now, and I read through the emails. It’s weird having email from people who are now dead. Just really strange. I’m glad I didn’t delete the emails, but still… it’s a very odd feeling. I guess it’s because I use email a lot, and never really think about it’s possible “permanent” nature.

After classes this weekend, I did a variety of things, including starting the prep for Thanksgiving. We bought the Turkey(s) last week and this weekend I moved them to the fridge. We’re making a 13lbs whole turkey and a 7.5lbs breast (whole bone-in breast). I’m brining both using similar methods (Alton Brown brine for the full bird, and Emeril’s cranberry glazed recipe for the breast). I’ll start the brining on Wed. evening for cooking on thursday morning/afternoon. Should be great!

We still have some shopping to do to get everything ready. Mostly grocery type things such as fruits and herbs for the brine and aromatic “stuffing”. I bought a new roasting pan that fits in the top oven better, and I’ll use the old pan for the breast in the lower oven. I didn’t get an electric knife this year either… I’ll just sharpen the carving knife to a laser-like edge… BOOYAH!

Jonah and I went trick-or-treating last night while Janet stayed home and passed out the candy. Jonah went as a jedi!

It took about an hour and he filled his “pumpkin” pail almost twice (I carried the overflow .

Was doing a lot of running around this weekend. I rushed home Firday after work to go to the UNM/CU football game. One of Jonah’s friends plays in YAFL, and they were going to have a game during halftime. We all had a lot of fun. We ate out after that (I ate good! I swear!) and didn’t get home until pretty late.

Saturday I worked out and then we went Jonah’s soccer game (6 to zero… and Jonah’s team didn’t have 6). Though, when Jonah was the goalie, he didn’t let any through – despite the other team’s bigger offense and multiple tries. O-well. It was his last game of the year, and baseball is also over, so he gets a break for a little while. Now he wants to play basketball. Sheesh!

Saturday night I worked a little on TeamSites and nearly finished the 308 book final edits. I have to do more research to complete it though… so though I’m done editing 95% of the pages, it’s that last 5% that’s going to take 50% of the time to complete. O-well. I also worked a little on some software for SteveJ. (auto reboot of home router via RPC).

Sunday was just as busy! I went on a two hour ride (just under 40 miles) ~19.9mph average – stupid streets and bridges cause me to slow down on parts, spoiling my average time! Then had to rush and get ready to go to Gus’ for dinner. Having just burned 1400 calories, I was able to pig out on a HUGE t-bone and one and a half baked potatos (and not gain any weight!). I got home and worked a little on the new Database design for CheatCodes/GameRadar/etc.

I also taunted SteveJ with the following picture (excuse the helmet hair please :

(I’m challenging him to lose weight and go on the Iron Horse with me Come on SteveJ!