Back in Business

1. Foreword
• The holidays are now behind my family and I. We went to Balltown on Christmas Eve. I started this blog post yesterday and was going to post up to #5, but it has turned out, instead, to be a much longer post. I suppose I could split up each day into its own post if I wanted to artificially inflate the number of posts for the month. 
2. Christmas Eve (Tuesday)
   
   • Santa was very good to me. I got the Bourne trilogy on DVD, which I started watching with Jonathan & Tyler. Karen also gave me a pair of running pants and Iowa hooded sweatshirt as well as the wireless keyboard I'm typing on right now. It's a tradition to get a Christmas tree ornament and mine was a miniature KISS lunch box that I plan to use for storing loose change instead of actually putting it on the tree.
• For Karen, I bought a $50 iTunes gift card and a keyboard that lights up for her iPad. I was very nervous and fearful that a gift card would be considered "not putting thought into her present" but it worked out fine. I was happy.
• The kids were given gifts, but went to bed disappointed because they thought they were getting iPods for Christmas. We gave them other presents on Christmas Eve.
3. Christmas Day (Wednesday)
• We all got up and went to 8 AM Mass at Balltown. Church was not crowded. 
•  During the Sigwarth gift exchange, I ended up with a transparent scarf, a pearl necklace, and a bottle of lotion. I started joking that the scarf was a shirt for Karen and that I would give her a pearl necklace, and that the lotion was aphrodisiac lotion. It was funny.
• At night, Louie had a cold / cough so he went to bed. That left Mark, Susie, Jean, Karen, and I to play Shanghai rummy and then horse deal, a card game where you bet. I don't really like horse deal and kind of whined about playing it. At the end of the game, though, I made $1.30, which was ironic because I didn't want to play it in the first place. Jean called me a "hog" because I won that much. That same night, Mark and I watched some episodes of "Duck Dynasty" before calling it a night.
4. 12/26/2013 (Thursday)
• The Great Political Discussion took place between Louie and I. 
• For reasons I don't fully comprehend, Louie and I got into a long 30+ minute discussion about politics and the state of the Republican Party. As someone that enjoys stimulating conversation, I really enjoyed the point-counterpoint nature of our conversation. I liked how I was able to formulate an argument/point and get Louie to either agree or concede that what I was saying made sense to him. You see, Louie is about as Conservative as they come. He is still under the belief that Elvis started the downfall of modern culture. He talked about how it used to be that you worked at the same employer and when you retired, they took care of you because you had been loyal to them. I pointed out that that era is over. Technology is taking away jobs and people don't stay at the same place for their entire careers. 
• When I said that, I was thinking about how the employer I worked for a dozen years serves companies that are providing, among other services, landline telephone service to their customers. One of the three reasons I left that employer is because I felt that the market was shrinking and I didn't see a way for that market to exist in a decade or even less than a decade.  
• After the Great Political Debate, we played cards. 
• After playing cards, we went to see Lou's sister, Alice, at Stonehill nursing home and sing Christmas carols. 
• On our way out of Stonehill, there was a door open to a resident's room and what I saw made me realize I am human. A woman was in a bed and she looked like she was not breathing well. She looked like she was in pain, as she slept. I felt really sad for her. 
• Jonathan noticed I paused as I went by her room and commented that he felt bad for her. 
• It made me realize that someday, I will be old and someday I may look like that. I don't necessarily like nursing homes in the first place, but to then see someone like that, who *looks* like they don't have a high quality of life just makes me not like nursing homes even less. I hate the idea of all my life being confined to a room the size of the den I'm sitting in and not really doing anything except waiting to die. I don't want to 'go out' like that. I don't want to push myself in a wheelchair or not be able to take care of my self when I have to poop or pee. I don't want to walk around with a walker that has tennis balls on the bottom so that the walker slides across the linoleum.I don't want Megan or Alex or anyone, for that matter, to come visit me and to talk about 'the good ol' days' when I wasn't in a nursing home. I'd rather just be in a car accident or have a massive heart attack or something quick so that I don't sit there, trapped in my own body, waiting to die.
• After Stonehill, we went to Happy Joe's in Dubuque for supper. The pizza was good, but we were seated next to the video games and the window where you can stand and watch pizzas be made. There was a large group of kids, ages 2 - 4 (my guess) and they were LOUD! They were having a good time, but it was clear that the parents of these kids were not being parents.
5. 12/27/2013 (Friday)
• We left Balltown for North Liberty later than I wanted to, but it worked out fine. After getting the truck unloaded, I was strong-armed into playing Pictionary when Megan's boyfriend, Logan, came over. It was really kind of awkward because it's not a lot you can do with a fifth person. Eventually, I grew tired of being "all time timekeeper" and "all time guesser" and went and sat on the couch. My intention to have Karen model the shirt I won in the Sigwarth gift exchange flew out the window when I got really tired and fell asleep on the couch. I guess I was anti-social, but driving home took a lot more out of me than I realized.
6. 12/28/2013 (Saturday)
• We watched Aron, John and Sarah's 2 year-old son. He is a cutie. He will sit and watch Star Wars and be mesmerized by what he sees on the screen. I think it is flipping awesome.
• After we watched Aron, we went to Fred and Julie's for conversation. Mark and Mary Kurth were there too. We were there for about 3 hours.
• When we got back and settled, it was nearly 11 PM. I rented Elysium from South Slope. I liked it to the extent that I understood what it was trying to say about taking care of Mother Earth and about being good citizens to each other. The plot is that all the rich people leave Earth and live on a space station that orbits it. On Elysium, there is no cancer or illness, but on Earth, it's really bad. The director of District 9 directed this movie and there were a lot of similarities in the way it was filmed. I am kind of glad the DVR, for some reason, doesn't allow you to pause because I think it skipped over a scene where there was probably graphic surgery. I know movies are fake but this surgery that they were going to do? It looked like it was going to be VERY real. I ended up staying awake, watching it, until 1 AM.
7. 12/29/2013 (Sunday)
• I was wide awake at 7:15 AM and came down to the den to continue the reconversion.
• The agenda for today includes a trip to Cedar Rapids. 
• We are going to 11 AM Mass at Saint Thomas More. 
• I have not played drums during Mass for over 2 months and have no reason to believe the trend will end today.
• I'm not entirely sure what the timetable for today is, at the moment, as far as who we are going to see first. It doesn't really matter to me, I guess. It's the time of excursion on a Sunday I know I have to do, but it's not all that joyous or exciting to do. Both items on the agenda (seeing Dad, seeing Mom) have to do with the end of their time on Earth.
• When we see Dad, he wants to go over where he keeps all his financial information so that, when he dies, I know where every thing is located. Personally, I want Karen to hear all that he tells me, just so I have her to rely upon to make sure I understand all that is said to me. 
• When we see Mom, it's basically visiting a shell of the woman that raised me. When Megan and I went up to see her a couple of weeks ago, I liked that when she saw me, she smiled. Other than that, I don't like visiting her and it's not because I don't want to visit Mom, as a person, but she is not my mother, if that makes sense. My mom had a Master's degree and taught kids to read for 40+ years. The woman I visit at the facility where she lives now is not that woman. The woman I visit can't construct a sentence, can't say my name, and has a left hand that is crumpled. I find it very ironic that she can't use her left hand because all her life, she was left handed. The room she sleeps in has no inkling of her personality - it doesn't have pictures or anything. It simply has a bed that is provided by the facility.
•  When we get back from Cedar Rapids, I am not entirely sure what we are going to do. I would like to continue with the reconversion. I have one of the Elkader PCs running Windows Media Player because my other primary laptop's CD player doesn't seem to want to work today. 
• I am considering trying to get a second PC (one of 4 towers that are currently idle in the den) running so that I can be ripping 2 CDs at the same time, but I don't think I have a second functioning PC. 
• The larger issue is I don't have the room, physically, in the den to set that up so that I could have multiple keyboards functioning at the same time. At work, I had bid on a metal desk with a return, but the way it has turned out, I am glad I didn't bring it home. While it would have been so nice to have it so that I would have the physical workspace area to have multiple PCs ripping CDs at the same time, we need the space in the den for the occasional air mattress. 
• According to the schedule I made for the reconversion, I should be complete with Spindles #3 & #4 by December 31, 2013 but, and this doesn't make a lot of sense to me, starting Spindle #5 today and finishing it by January 5th, 2014.  Only being able to rip a single CD at a time is slowing me down. That schedule also didn't take into account that I was in Balltown. I had thought about taking the laptop to Balltown to work on the conversion, but as things played out, I really didn't have any time to work on it. 
• We do have a Toshiba laptop and I'd get that going, but I'm not really wanting to do anything with that laptop at the present moment. I need to make sure I have all the files I need off of it and then I am going to get it reset to the factory default settings. There is a lot of junk that needs to be blown away. Essentially, the problem is that junk and crap was downloaded to it because I didn't make the kids non-admin users. I gave everyone admin rights and that has resulted in a junky laptop.
8. Epilogue
• As 2013 winds down, I realize that I have a lot on my plate and I don't see that ending anytime soon. I look forward to the days, weeks, and months ahead. I don't consider this my final post of the year - I'm simply summarizing the post.