My grandmother—my mom’s mother—passed away early this morning.

She had been in declining health and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for several years. We visited her and my grandfather over the Christmas holiday in 2005. This woman, of whom I have so many fond childhood memories, was a complete stranger to me, as I was to her. After that visit, I had resigned myself to knowing that I would never see her again. While I knew this day could not be far off, one can never truly prepare for it. Already I can feel the sadness just under the surface, welling up periodically, threatening to overtake me.

I feel worse when I think about my own mother. This will be especially hard her. Not only from of the loss, but because she was scheduled to spend time with her mother this week.

Rest in peace, Grandma. I’m sorry you’ll never get the chance to meet your great grandchild. We’ll miss you terribly.

http://babyg-thebeginnings.blogspot.com/

So Mrs. sirhc is pregnant. Eight weeks today. In seven months, there will be a little sirhc or sirhcette in the house.

We broke the news to our parents today, so it’s finally safe to write about it. The urge to post about it here has been difficult to suppress, but my family does occasionally pay a visit. Today happens to be my mother’s birthday. So, after making sure my dad had the camera ready, we let her unwrap her gift—a tiny bib that reads, “I Love Grandma.” The expression on her face was priceless.

I figure that, by now, my entire family—and countless others I’m sure—have heard the news.

This family gathering was different from those of the past. Gone were the games of poker and nickel-nickel, replaced countless games of bowling. That’s right, one of my cousins brought a Wii to Christmas. For the first time ever, my parents want a video game system (I told them the Wii was cool, but they didn’t believe me). I think Mrs. Sirhc may even allow me to buy one for us.

I had fun today. I really should try to get up here more often to visit my family.

We’re staying at my Grandmother’s house in Snohomish, Washington for Chistmas. It’s been perhaps five years since I’ve visited my family in the Pacific Northwest. This is Mrs. Sirhc’s first trip to meet my family, and she’s been looking forward to it for a few months.

One might expect that Snohomish would have, well, snow over the holidays. One would be wrong. I remember spending Christmas here when I was just a wee lad and we would play in the snow. Those days are long since gone. It no longer snows very much in Seattle or the surrounding areas. It does, however, rain. And rain. And rain. And rain some more.

Living as I do in San Diego, rain is one of those rare events that is worth noting. Here, saying that it’s raining is akin to saying the sky is blue. Well, that is, the sky would be blue if it weren’t raining. My word that the sky is in fact blue will have to suffice.

So, while we may be dreaming of a white Christmas, we’re experiencing a wet Christmas.

This was Mrs. Sirhc’s first experience playing bingo and I made the mistake of starting her out with more cards than she could handle. Even so, she almost won a couple of games. Almost. Story of my short and not so illustrious bingo career.

Oh well. So I’m out fifty bucks. It’s a heck of a lot less than I would have lost to the bones at the Luxor.

Does this mean I’ll be away from the computer? No! Silly reader. I work for Qualcomm. I’m taking an EVDO card with me. Internet withdrawals are terrible. I wouldn’t wish them on anyone. I intend to write more while on vacation than while at home. After all, family vacations leave me with plenty of spare time to fill.

As it turns out, I’m a workaholic when I’m left alone. I would never have expected that when I worked for Global Health Trax, but now that I work for Qualcomm I love spending every waking hour writing code for work. That can’t be healthy. Well, maybe it can. After all, I do love writing code (it does help if that code happens to be Perl).