So there has been a couple deaths in my life this past week. One was my Wife’s cousin, and the other one was a co-worker. Both died too young because of cancer. Because of the cancer, both planned what they wanted for a funeral.

My Wife’s cousin had every little detail planned. She wanted to have one final beer with everybody, so that’s what she got. There was a keg in the front of the church and they passed around cups and pitchers, and we all drank together, even the pastor had a sip. It was different, but was pretty cool.

My co-worker didn’t want anything. He was single, didn’t have much of a family, and wasn’t religious. He didn’t want any kind of ceremony, so that’s what he got.

It was nice to see both of these families following the wishes of their deceased family member. I’ve heard stories of families not doing what their deceased family members wanted because nobody would ever really know. In the grand scheme of things, it probably really doesn’t matter, but I think it’s a nice tribute to do what your deceased family member wanted.

I’ve been thinking about what I want after I die ever since reading Mary Roach’s great book Stiff. I’ve came to the conclusion that I don’t really care. In a perfect world I would like to just be dumped in the woods so my body can be eaten by critters and the molecules that make up my body would return to the universe where they came from. I’m sure there are laws against that though. I guess I prefer cremation over embalming just for the simple fact that I would take up less space, but I don’t really have a preference. I’m going to leave it to my family to decide that. I’m not religious, so I really don’t care about a funeral. The way I see it, the funeral is for the family, and they can do whatever they want. As of right now, the only wish I really have is that I don’t want any religious symbols or words on my headstone, since that’s going to be around a lot longer than I ever was.

So this past weekend we attended a funeral for one of my Wife’s family members that was murdered. I really enjoy the pastor from that small northern Minnesota town. I’ve never attended any of his church services, but really enjoy his funerals and weddings. If I lived in that small town, I would probably go to his church even being an Atheist. Last Saturday, at that funeral, I started to understand Christians a little bit. I was raised Christian. We went to church every Sunday. I went through all the motions and got confirmed, and hated every minute if it. Never once had I ever felt the way I felt this past Saturday. Maybe it was because the pastor wasn’t talking much religion. He was just down to earth, very uplifting, and positive.

Religion gets a bad rap because of all of the sexual scandals, their anti-gay stance, and a lot of other hatred they spread. I know that’s a small minority of the religious people, but I tend to hold it against all religious people, and I know that’s not right. It doesn’t help though when bunches of my Facebook friends, that I know are good people, spread the hatefulness of religion. I think they are just entrenched in that community, and don’t see it as hateful. For some reason, that I don’t understand, they think their religion is under attack and spreading their believes is a way to defend them, and they don’t see the hate in it. I don’t hate anybody. I only hate the haters. Life is too short to hate.

Churches do do a lot of good in communities. They could do even more if they didn’t have all the overhead of the church stuff. I now understand why people like going to church. It can be uplifting and bring some joy to your life, if that’s your thing. It’s not mine. Never has been, and never will be.

I miss Thanksgiving. Since I started my job 14 years ago, I’ve never really had a Thanksgiving. The way my work schedule works I either work Thanksgiving, or I work the Friday and the weekend after, so it’s never convenient to travel to see family. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to get some leftovers, but that’s about it. This year I’m working on Thanksgiving. The Wife is actually cooking a dinner for us, her brother, and a couple of her cousin. It will be really small, but at least I get it fresh before I head off to work.

I miss the old days of going to Grandma’s. Watching the Parade. I don’t think I’ve seen the Thanksgiving Parade in at least 15 years. Then, like everybody else, we would eat way to much, and watch football the rest of the day with my cousins.

Now my Grandma is no longer with us, and my cousins are all grown up and have families of their own, and there is no more John Madden. John Madden was actually a big part of my childhood Thanksgivings. It’s really been 15 years or so since I’ve had what I consider a “normal” Thanksgiving. Those Thanksgiving’s of my childhood are long gone. It’s time to make some new traditions and memories, but I think Thanksgiving will always bring back the memories of my childhood.

It seems like it’s been forever since I have last blogged, but I guess it’s only been a week since I showed off my tacos. I hate when people apologize about their lack of blogging, so I’m not going to do that. Sometimes life just gets in the way, and life always comes first.

It’s really been crazy around here lately. We’ve been busy replacing our TVs and everything else that was stolen. We have had half our house painted and are working on getting the other half painted. We have also begun getting our yard ready for a garden next spring, along with having family over the past two weekends. It’s safe to say I’ve been declaring RSS bankruptcy a lot these past few weeks.

Hello internet. It’s been a while. It’s been a crazy week.

On Saturday our house was broken into. Our two TVs, XBox 360 with 27 games, and two iPods were stolen. I still can’t believe it happened. Hopefully today we will hear from our insurance company and can go TV shopping. Since it happened in the daytime, the cops, and us, agree that it was probably someone that’s been in our house and knew where things were. We suspect my Wife’s Uncle, who has been in and out of jail on various drug charges, but we have no proof. The police took prints, so hopefully they can catch the person, but chances are pretty slim. The chances of us getting our stuff back is even slimmer. We never wrote down the serial numbers. The cop said that’s about the only way to get our stuff back. Then it would only be if they tried to pawn our stuff. Pawn shops would run the serial number, and it would come up stolen. I now have the serial numbers of all our electronics in Evernote, another great use of that service. I don’t care so much about our stuff. It’s only stuff and all easily replaceable. It would be nice to see the guy get caught though. I’m so glad that’s all they took. They left all the computers, and my iPad. Those would have been worse because of the data they contain. I had find my iPhone set up on the iPod Touch that they took, but haven’t been able to find it yet. As soon as someone gets online with it, I should find out, and my iPod should then lock them out. I still changed a bunch of passwords though just in case.

So our house is in shambles, and tomorrow we are having a painter paint a few of our rooms that have high ceilings. I was originally going to paint them myself, but they estimated it at $425. For that price they can do it. I’m sure they can do a better job, and have it done faster. Well worth the money if you ask me. I hate painting.

I don’t know why people like Monday through Friday jobs so much. I worked my rare Monday through Friday this week and it sucked. I would take my nights and weekends over Monday through Friday any day. My normal shifts are 12 hours, and usually only two or three days in a row at most. Working five days in a row is a killer. Sure they were only eight hour days, but still five days in a row sucks, and now I only have a two day weekend. Normally my weekends off are always three day weekends.

I feel like I had no time for podcast listening, RSS reading, or Twitter all week. Thankfully I’m back to my normal schedule next week.

In other news, I logged into Digg for the first time in years, and dugg my last article. It was fun while it lasted, but like everything, it has an ending.