Dad has impeccable timing

Monday afternoon an email arrived from our new project manager. Normally I won't bother reading emails from HR, Office Managers, or Project Managers unless someone says, "Hey, did you see what so-and-so's email said", but for some odd reason I went ahead and read it. The new guy is British, so I thought maybe there'd be something funny in there like the word cheerio or govna.

Much to my dismay there was no clever usage of breakfast cereals or references to political office. It was a meeting notice, and worse yet a meeting notice that was recurring every single day from 2:30-3. It was to be one of those, "What did you do today?" meetings which my people tend to hate.

I got up to march over to Sean's office and ask, "What the hell?" when my computer sounded a tone to inform me that I had received an instant message. It was from Sean and read:
"What the hell?"
I jumped up and made the 5 foot trek to his office.
"I know!"
"Did you notice that you have to list 5 things, including what your best moment was today, and what your worst moment was today?"
"I'm pretty sure my worst moment was when that email arrived. Do you think that's acceptable?"
"You should say, 'Rachel hugged me last night'"
"She did hug me last night, and it was awesome... are you spying on me? I don't think I can say that in the meeting anyhow. I don't want Laing to cry because he's jealous that I touched a real female."

After a good 45 minutes of bitching about how we didn't have 15 minutes to waste every day on some silly meeting we finally gave up and went back to myspacingwork.

That day just happened to be my parent's wedding anniversary. I'm sure someone told me how many years, but I've since forgotten. I'm going to venture a guess at 36 years though. My assumption is that my dad hadn't planned anything great and was, last minute, scrambling for an idea.

About an hour before the meeting I was looking for a way to get out of it when I got a call from my mom.

"Well... your father's had a heart attack."
"Where are you?"
"T-Bird"
"I'll be right there"

I was gone before anyone even noticed and going slightly above the recommended speed on my way up I-17. I eventually found my family in the waiting room of the ICU. By that time he was completely stable and still insisting that it was just "that spicy chicken sandwich" that he'd had for lunch, and not a heart attack.

Two separate doctors went over the situation with us. Everyone in the family nodded in agreement as though they had any idea as to what was going on. I for one was lost, but really didn't know what questions to ask so I just listened. One thing I understood was, "Quadruple Bypass, tomorrow". By this time we got to see my dad, who was laying on some sort of x-ray type table.

He was in good spirits and joking around about how he had done it just to get out of the anniversary. The doctor casually asked if he had any questions. I'd assume he expected the normal, "Is it going to hurt?" or something small like that. What the doctor didn't count on is my dad's endless quest for knowledge that even a heart attack can't slow.

I've joked with him by calling him Cliff Claven due to his savant like memorization of every show that has every played on either the history channel or discovery channel. Soon they were bringing heart models and discussing the exact names of which arteries were to be bypassed. After a lengthy amount of research/discussion, my dad finally agreed to the surgery.

Later in the evening he asked me how my day was. I told him about the meeting and he told me I should have gone.
"Nah, I was looking for an excuse to get out of it anyhow"

Today he was moved from the ICU to a normal bed and appears to be recovering well. The doctor described the operation as "text book".

A Shout Out

I wrote this entry a while back after receiving numerous complaints. "What about the time we did x. How come you didn't write about that?" Just as I was about to post it though, somebody else complained(And eventually went on to write her own blog entry for me I might add). I can't make it appear as though I'm bowing to the complaints, so I never posted it. I could go back and fix this up, but instead you get a half finished entry.


This blog is much like a door peephole in to my life. While things close to the front are over magnified(And oftentimes fish eyed), most other things are obscured and hazy. One of the more interesting things about keeping a blog has been all of the things that don't get published. Unpublished stories come in two formats; Some stories are written but never published(for various reasons), and some stories are just never written.

Of the latter, the majority remain so due to the fact that there is no story. It's not that there wasn't an event of some nature that was interesting, normally associated with a person equally interesting. It's that there's no story to it. For example, I may never write of the night that I went with Maya to see a sewage waterfall and then ate Chinese food. I'll probably never talk about Rebecca and her friend staying the night last week, or the recent trip to see Grindhouse with Kendall and her mantourage, or even watching Pan's Labyrinth with Laura.

When I say that there is no story, what I mean is that there was no drama, conflict, or embarrassment for me, which are the cornerstones of any post I make. For some odd reason, a "fun, normal night" just isn't blogable night.


So, with that said, for everyone who is sad that they haven't "made the blog", keep faith alive. I'm bound to do something with you around and then you'll be utterly disappointed in how an insignificant event is immortalized in an equally insignificant blog entry.