Prelude to a Wedding

I didn't expect to spend the day before I got married burying my grandmother. Fact is I was petrified that I'd see anyone from my family for about a year surrounding my wedding date. You see only one of my sisters, Christina, was the only person invited to my wedding. That means my mother, aunts, uncles, cousins and everyone else associated with that side of my family. Without creating a giant tangent let me sum up this way, I don't get along with my mother and this has created a giant rift between myself and my family on that side.

So here I was going to my favorite grandparent's funeral and seeing a ton of family that I was afraid would be out to kill me because if there is one thing that planning a wedding has taught me it is family politics. My father was coming with me to the funeral but Rita wasn't. I was afraid of having her exposed to any animosity that I was going to get. My dad didn't need to go and frankly I wouldn't have been surprised if he was more scared than I was. It was his ex-wife's mother after all.

So the two of us entered the funeral home prepared for the worst, but that wasn't what we got. In fact only my mother and younger sister, Marielle, didn't say anything to my father or me. Everyone else was not only nice to my father and I, but also wished me nothing but the best and offered to get together after my honeymoon. As for my dad, they were very nice to him as well. My cousin, Julie, even told my dad that, "Everyone knows the hard work and good job you did with Christina and Jeremy. I don't know why my aunt (my mother) is so messed up." My dad was blown away. I think he never expected to get a appreciation from any of my mother's family for the very hard work he has done to take me and Christina.

So I buried my grandmother, I called her Nana. I barely cried at the ceremony or burial. I was numb the entire morning. I had cried my tears the day I heard about it. I had been a complete disaster and it had carried over with me for days afterward, but when it came time, I was out of emotion. You see Nana was my favorite grandparent. I used to spend every Summer with her and Pop-Pop, my grandfather. It was time I had to still be a child and to figure out life in my way so that I would turn into the adult I am today. She spent time and energy on not just trying to help me come to terms with what happened between myself and my mother as well as my childhood.

There is more that I want to say but this is tough on me and I will broach it again later. Next time the wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.

Return of the Geek

Well here it is 2am (Philly time) and I've just settled in behind my computer. Ah Linux, how I missed you.

So I'm experiencing my first real jet lag. You see my body still thinks that it is 9:12 PM Hawaiian time. This is not going to be a recap of the honeymoon since I am pretty much bouncing off the walls and can't form a cohesive thought. I will bring you wedding and honeymoon stories in bite sized pieces over the next umpty-squat days (FYI: the "umpty-squat" is exactly 2/3 of a "damned-if-I-know".)

I will give all you spam bots an update on an earlier post, though. My grandmother Lila is home and recovering from surgery, and my cousins Susan and Randi are doing better with what they are going through. Sadly my other grandmother,
Flo, had died by the time I had written the last entry. I didn't know it at the time and nobody called to tell me until much later that night. The thing that really sucked was I called about Lila and found out she was ok and was relieved, only to check my answering machine less than 5 minutes later to find out that Flo had died. I wanted to post something on that at the time but I still don't know exactly what to say. I think I will post on that tomorrow with the first wedding/honeymoon installment. (She was buried the day before my wedding, how much does that suck? Oh ok, I'll tell you how much that sucked tomorrow.)

In the meantime I'm off to hug my wife.

A Call for Help

My grandmother has just been rushed into emergency surgery. She had collapsed on her way to the airport for the wedding. This is tearing me apart. I have said since the onset that I understand if people can't make it because they are ill, I just want them to get better. Really that is all I want. So in that vein please send a thought, prayer, mojo, or karma to the following people so that they get better soon.

Lila, my grandmother undergoing surgery.
Florence, my other grandmother who is recovering from a heart attack and cannot attend my wedding.
My cousin Susan and her recovery.
Lastly my cousin Randi and that everything she is going through.

They are all such great people and have helped me through so much of the crap that I've gone through in my life. Send a little thought to them so that maybe it will help them get a little better.

Thank you.

Just a Couple Things

Ok first off I made it so you don't have to sign in to leave comments, don't abuse it or it goes bye-bye ok (that's a warning for all you spam bots out there).

So today is my second to last Friday as a single man and how do I spend it? I went to a Linux User Group meeting. Yeah, I'm a geek and proud. You see my friend Justin was presenting Freevo and I wanted to see it and hang with him for a bit. You can do really cool stuff with that if you are a fellow Linux geek. If you are interested you can check out Justin's step-by-step setup.

Next up, my Pepsi addiction as of late. Its not for the taste, cause frankly I've always thought that Pepsi was the inferior product to Coke. No it is the iTunes download contest. I just started this week and I've already won 5 free songs and a buy one get one free. That's a 100% win ratio! So you may ask me why I am buying $1.29 bottles of soda for a $0.99 song? Well I figure if I'm going to get a soda I might as well try to win something from it. I've used these songs to try out albums I'm interested in. Love my iPod, but I'll blog that later.

Lastly I stumbled on something really bizarre on MTV2 just now while flipping through channels. It is called Video Mods and features popular video game characters singing modern rock all rendered by NVIDIA. I tell you that you haven't lived until you've seen Leisure Suit Larry and his girls singing to the Black Eye Peas "Shut Up". Ok, that may have been blatant Bullshit.

Quickie #2: Man Sex

Duc, how many times must I tell you that I'm not interested in your advances.

"Not that there is anything wrong with that."

Rita is the Coolest Girl in Existence

Duc saw my Bachelor Party entry and was flabergasted. He said, "Also why the fuck would you write about the stripper portion of your bachelor party on your blog? Rita must be the coolest girl in existence (second to my Amy of course) or you are the most foolish man ever."

Well you see señor Duc, Rita is the coolest girl in existence. She knew there would be strippers and I told her everything that happened. She didn't press me to tell her either. I told her willingly! Since she didn't kill me I dub her "The Coolest Girl in Existence".

Love you honey.

(Oh stop gagging already!)

Radio One Redux

Ok I can't drop this Radio One asshat maneuver I mentioned in yesterday's entry. So here is another blog on it. Check out this link to the courierpostonline.com. In this article Radio One blames the cancellation of Y100 on THE FANS! This is great spin! They must have kindergarteners as PR people.

"You killed our rock station!"
"No we didn't! It's all your fault!" (Then they proceed to eat the paste.)

Apparently they are blaming the fans because they didn't fill out surveys administered by a ratings entity. That is an interesting point, but do you know what is even more interesting? This is the second time they killed a rock station in favor of Hip-Hop! Hmmm, sounds like a Modus Operandi to me. Find a rock station and replace it with cRAP!

That being said I once again direct you to www.y100rocks.com. Please consider signing the petition and check out their message boards for info on an upcoming protest in the LOVE Park in Philly!

Lastly here is a treat to all you patient spam bots. I present to you the email address for all the Radio One asshats. If you are a real person, please think about writing to them and tell them what huge asshats they are. (Emails obtained from y100rocks.com.)

Alfred Liggins, CEO - aliggins@radio-one.com or acl@radio-one.com
Mary Catherine Sneed, COO - mcsneed@radio-one.com

Next time I will present to you companies that advertise on The Beat you may want to write to >:)

Fuck you hard Radio One! Fuck you hard!