Everything sort of went foof on Wednesday, which is why there haven’t been any updates for a while. Grandma died, and they scheduled the funeral for Friday, so I had to try to fix everything possible, then buy a plane ticket about 24 hours in advance of departure. This was semi-expensive. At least work was understanding about the whole thing, and I was allowed to take time off. Stephanie also said she’d take care of Moira at short notice, which was nice.

Thursday was mostly spent traveling. I thought my flight was going to be delayed by 45 minutes due to “mechanical problems with the plane”, but they fixed whatever was wrong in 20 minutes and I was only about 5 minutes late. Met the family, drove to the hotel, and then there was a “visitation service” Thursday night for people who couldn’t attend the funeral for whatever reason. Saw a bunch of relatives that I hadn’t seen in a while.

Friday, we all went to Nancy’s house for lunch before heading to the funeral. They’d cooked really good brisket and ham. The funeral service was OK, though some people said that the minister didn’t do a very good job. A few people had forgotten to turn their cell phones off, so right in the middle of the service, we heard a chorus of annoyingly chirpy and cheerful ringtones for at least 20 seconds. I don’t know how they managed to forget that, or how they managed not to slink out the door in embarrassment. Ah well. (Maybe funeral homes need something like movie theatres have, little animated shorts that say “Turn your @#$%ing cell phone off, you nitwit!” before the ceremony starts. . . .)

Most of us went back to Nancy’s house for a bit after the ceremony was over. Steve and Keith left, because they had to coach a high school football game that night. We all watched a video of Ben (my first cousin once removed) skydiving. And then we got dinner and sacked out.

Saturday, I flew back home. It was really a pretty boring flight, though they moved my luggage from carousel 6 to carousel 4 and forgot to update the monitors for about 10 minutes. Oops. Well, I got home to a very annoyed Moira, but everything was OK there. I also found that Stephanie had done several loads of laundry at my place while I was gone, which I hadn’t expected and was very nice.

Sunday, I went grocery shopping and made dinner. That was about it. The temperature’s finally dropped to almost winter-like levels. I’ve been getting a lot more use out of my jacket lately.