ProfessorTomoe

She would have found it heartwarming for someone else's funeral, but not her own. Too much fuss over her, she'd think. I think. I think she'd prefer one of the funerals where everyone sent flowers, just like they did for her sister-in-law. I have it on good word that my father spent $15,000.00 on the entire funeral/burial. She wouldn't have liked one person taking over like that. (Of course, that could be me speaking, but I'm going by her reaction at her sister-in-law's funeral, which I did attend.) But, once you put something in the hands of my father, he's going to take it and squeeze it until it fits the shape of his palms. He couldn't do that with his father's funeral, but there was no one to stop him with his mother's funeral. I'm sure the flowers @The Old Hack and I sent probably irked him a tad bit. Displays of individuality, they were. I don't care. She was my grandmother, and I wasn't going to play by his rules if I couldn't attend. She needed to know I was there in spirit, at least. I'm sorry, I went on too long with this. Probably too deep, too. EDIT: If you look at the pink cross, you'll see what a commoner's $171 will buy you. Lord knows how much of that $15,000 my father spent went toward flowers.

I do appreciate it, very much. Especially today. I've uploaded a couple of pictures. The first one shows the pink cross I purchased. It's sort of dwarfed by the spray on the casket. The second photo is more ambiguous. I think it shows @The Old Hack's spray of white flowers at the bottom left of the gravesite. I believe they got confused and thought that the second arrangement was a gravesite arrangement and not a funeral arrangement. That would be just like my family—something always gets messed up somewhere. Regardless of where they put it, I still thank you for sending it. More than you'll ever know.

New blog post—a tribute to my late grandmother. I hope I didn't over- or under-do it. https://dleejackson.lbjackson.com/2017/09/in-memoriam-mildred-jackson/

Do they have something like a little coffee table area where you can set up?

They've grown to like Mrs. Prof, Great Deliverer of Food. Me, they could give a fart in the wind about. The long-haired orange tabby is a real mystery (the one who sneezed). He hisses at everyone at least once, usually, and then turns into Normal Cat. They're just now getting friendly. All of them are friends. They're all in the TNR club. No hormones to get in the way of just being a cat.

The video is on my YouTube channel here: It's not very long, and please forgive the messes, both inside and out.

Okay, I've got a way you can directly donate in her memory if you want to. Follow these instructions: Go to https://www.shrinershospitalsforchildren.org/Locations/houston Click on "Donate→" on the top line. Under "Gift Information," select or enter an amount. If you use a script blocker, it'll take you to another domain. Don't panic. Just be judicious about what you clear in your script blocker. Under "*Gift Designation," click on the button next to "Direct my gift to:", pull down the list, and select "SHC — Houston". Under "Honor/Memorial Gift:", click on the box that says "I would like to make my gift in honor of or in memorial of someone special." That will bring up a "Tribute Information" section. There, select "In Memory of" for "Honor Gift Type", "Mrs." under "Honoree Title," and type "Mildred Jackson" in the box for "Honoree Name". I would suggest setting the "Tribute Gift Notification Information" section setting to "No acknowledgment necessary." I don't know the addresses of any of my family, so let's just leave it that way. Fill out the rest as you would any online purchase. I was able to use PayPal to make my donation, so security is not so much a problem here.

I might as well post this here, too: I say either way—if you can send her a little violet plant (she loved them) or any other plant, please send one. It has to be there before 1:30 p.m. CDT on September 6th, 2017. (tomorrow) If you want to whip out a check, feel free. If you want to do it electronically, send it to me and I will post a copy of the check or envelope or do something to prove that I've forwarded the funds. My PayPal e-mail is ljfnord@yahoo.com. If anyone has a better idea on how to do a memorial fund, let me know and I'll do that.

Tomorrow I'm going to try and put sort of a hybrid video up on YouTube. It starts out inside our house, then moves outside to show some of the ferals. All of it is shot with a phone camera, horizontal. It's not trail cam stuff, but with the ferals, it is nature-oriented. Mrs. Prof shot it with her phone. I'm going to have to make sure I've got VideoStudio Ultimate 10 installed and configured properly before I post it, because I'm going to have to cross-fade two video clips to make it make sense. Cross your fingers and wish me luck (and health)! EDIT: don't get your hopes up too high. It won't be a long video.

I just changed my PayPal password out of an abundance of caution. Some recording claiming to be PayPal called and asked for my "PIN number" from my account. It awakened me from the sleep of hydrocodone, so I tried a couple. Both failed. Then I caught my wits and hung up. I checked my account—no activity. After thinking about it for a minute or two, I changed my password to an extremely strong one, got on Equifax, and put a 90-day fraud alert on my account. After the incident with the funeral flowers, I'm taking no more chances.

This is more of an embarrassment than a brush with fame. Back when I was the Music and Sound Director for 3D Realms, I got invited to participate on a panel about the importance of music in video games at the very first South by Southwest Interactive conference (not the regular SxSW) in Austin. I've still got the special bag that the creators of South Park designed for the occasion. Anyway, I learned that Thomas Dolby was going to be presenting about his work in interactive music the next day, so I made arrangements to stay an extra day (had to pay my own way, and we were poor at the time) and give him some Apogee/3D Realms games where I'd done the soundtracks. I mean, he'd heard my stuff before—I was a member of an internet fan mailing list, and we'd put together a couple of birthday tapes/CDs of covers of his works as gifts for him. I didn't expect him to recognize me, though. Except that he did. When I got to the head of the line, he stood, reached across the table, grinned from ear to ear, and cheerily said, "Well, hello, Lee!" My cool evaporated in a nanosecond and I turned into a gibbering fanboy. I handed him the games as a present from the mailing list, stuttered some words out, tried to find out if he would be in town overnight (blew that—he was leaving as soon as the meet & greet was over), and stuttered my way through a thank you and a good-bye. I have hardly any recollection of what he said. I beat myself up over that for months. That's one of those, "If I could do one thing over" items everyone has a list of. Oh, as for the rest of the conference? When I made my part of the presentation about the importance of music in video games, I used Quake level one as my example. I loaded it normally first, with the Quake CD in the drive for Trent Reznor's soundtrack for level one. Then, I restarted the game, except that I had a CD from Manhattan Transfer in the drive, playing an a Capella bebop song called the "Duke of Dubuque" with the same level. Got a big ovation and made an impact on the audience.

I'll take it. Thanks. 9:42 a.m. CDT 20170904. It's been a few days since I tried my protein coffee. I gave it another shot this morning. I think that's the last shot I'll be giving it. It's given me an upset stomach. I hadn't eaten anything, but that usually doesn't make a difference with coffee, protein or not. And, stubborn-assed me, I'm not going to give it the courtesy of a Zofran or a Phenergan. It can sit down there and grumble all it wants—I'm not giving in. All you're getting is a simethicone gel-cap, jerk. Can you tell my mood is less than optimal? I don't know why. Could be the proximity to my grandmother's funeral. Could also be the footnote that my sister added to the funeral announcement that I saw after sending flowers (and after making pleas here) about, "In lieu of flowers, send donations to ...." Well, by God, she's my grandmother, and if I can't be at her funeral, then there's going to be some sort of physical presence from me (and @The Old Hack and anyone else who sent something—thank you!) there for her service! But I digress. Mrs. Prof has been trying to treat my depression with varying forms of chocolate. A shake, pudding, and most recently, brownies from Pizza Hut. I'm going to let her have the last brownie, just for her being nice. Gotta say it's perked me up a little bit, as long as I don't invoke a Zofran emergency. Earlier, I would have just brooded about the above two paragraph topics. With some theobromine in my system, I'm able to properly vent in the right directions. I think I'm going to go and get a regular cup of coffee now and see how my stomach handles it. EDIT: Regular coffee helped tremendously. Going back to toss the protein mix in the trash.

DVR of the IndyCar GrandPrix at Watkins Glen. Lap 22 of 60. Spencer Pigot is leading.

A couple more pictures. First, Loudmouth reclining: Second, Loudmouth's "output" for the PeeDar in the bathtub. I'm going to try and make this hidden content: We've since put a litter box in the bathtub. It's helped with the pooping problem, but not with the peeing in the bathtub. Sigh.

When the time comes, and I hope it never does, I only hope that I can repay you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Up front, let me make it very clear that I was able to send flowers using a different credit card. @The Old Hack, if I misled you, please feel free to cancel the incredibly beautiful arrangement you sent if you wish, since I'm certain it cost a substantial euro—more than I could have ever asked for. The plea was that I felt like I wasn't able to send enough to her, and I hoped people would send affordable things like potted plants or simple bouquets. Again, @The Old Hack, if you want to send what you sent out of your own volition, with the knowledge given above, I thank you a million times over. Here is a picture of what I did have sent: (My own religious views are different from hers, but I respect her enough to send what she would have wanted.) I would still like to see small items from other forum members, if you can afford them and if you have the time. She would have appreciated them, and they would confuse my family (a righteous step of its own).

... I have no words. Thank you.

Speaking of barfing often, Loudmouth just pulled a 4-barfer. It hurts my back to clean those up. Mrs. Prof is going to start a process of elimination. She's been adding L-Lysine to Loudmouth's food. That stops tonight.

Meanwhile, Loudmouth just took another visit into the living room and played "rub the human's legs" again. I tried to get him to make a repeat of his jump onto the sofa, but he wasn't up for it at first. He left the room, but returned a short while later for a reprise. This time I *was* able to get him up on the sofa. He walked around a bit, marked my medicine shoebox with his face, and did a bit of nuzzling when I petted him. He didn't stay long, but every trip up he makes is worth it. You know, he pees and poops in the wrong spots. He barfs often. And, he's FeLV+. However, if you could somehow separate all of that from him, he would be the perfect cat. He doesn't bite, he doesn't scratch, and he's friendly beyond belief.

Mrs. Prof put the trail camera out earlier this week at a suspected cat/wildlife spot. It didn't fire off a single picture. We're not sure why. It's possible that nothing came within trigger range, but that would be rare. She's going to check out the batteries and do a diagnostic on it (to the degree that she can).

Mrs. Prof Cloroxed the living sin out of the bathtub this morning and then rinsed it out before putting a litterbox over the drain (the spot where Loudmouth's been leaving his gifts). I hope she put some litterbox attractant in there with it. The weird part is that he's only been using the bathtub late at night/early in the morning, like between 1am and 4am. He's using a regular litterbox the rest of the time. I think. Wish us luck.