Anxiety

So this is turning out to be a very interesting autumn - an interesting year if we count graduating from school, and buying an apartment. These are no small changes.

I'm up for a job that I can't stop thinking about. I've had four, perhaps five interviews, soup to nuts - the first guy, the hiring guy, the owner, some guy in Germany checking my language skills. It is exactly the kid of job that I want. I should know by next week whether I've got it. I'm trying hard not to worry about it, think about it too much. But I do.

I've had other interviews. I've met people at work. My company is splitting in two and there is a great deal of uncertainty. I'm looking for opportunities all over.

I went to Disneyworld, had a family vacation. THAT was awesome. I have a niece and nephew, the perfect ages, 8 and 13 respectively. I spent time with my brother and his wife. We all went swimming and snorkeling together. It was a great holiday.

A friend of mine died, in roughly the same period. SHe was diagnosed about a month before I closed on my home. She passed away just a few weeks after holiday, in the midst of interviews.

So yeah, big year. The wheel keeps turning.

Sadness & Grief

I'm very sad to say that a long time friend of mine passed away after a too-brief fight with cancer. Damon was a friend of mine from college, going back nearly twenty years.

Last spring she was diagnosed with borderline stage III/IV breast cancer. Triple negative, meaning no cancer drugs would work. After chemo failed, surgery was no longer an option, and the past two months saw a very rapid progression of the disease. She passed away Saturday October 22, and I attended a wake Saturday the 29th.

Damon was instrumental in my moving to New York. I lived with her for about 2-3 weeks on Long Island when I moved here, before I took a place of my own and got a job. While we have lived hundreds of miles apart most of the time since, we kept in touch and supported each other through some of the most difficult times of our lives.

Many people came to the wake, demonstrating the breadth of her life: Habitat for Humanity, local friends, Revolutionary War re-enactors, and people like me who just knew her a long time. Long estranged from her family, she was reconciled with them before she passed.

I am very sad to think that someone so distant yet constant is now gone from my life, and I will miss her very much.

Burial Ground

This is interesting. Apparently, Jim Thorpe was all set to be buried in Oklahoma, but while waiting for a memorial to be built, his body was shipped off to a town in Pennsylvania to (I assume) boost their tourism economy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/sports/25thorpe.html