My Grandma died yesterday. She had Alzheimer’s and has been going down hill for years. On Tuesday she had a stroke and was basically brain dead. We visited her on Wednesday to say our goodbyes. While we were there, a priest stopped buy. He read some mumbo jumbo out of the Bible, said a prayer, and starting singing while touching my Grandma’s head. I found it creepy and cultlike, but it seemed to make everybody else feel better, so I guess it was good.

People live and die. It’s very sad when we lose friends and loved ones, but that’s part of life — it ends eventually for us all. Maybe some people need to believe in a fairytale to make them feel better, but I don’t. There is no heaven or hell just like there is no Santa Claus, sorry to spoil it for you. When you die you are dead, gone, only a memory, and that memory won’t be around all that long either. That is the reason I try and enjoy every day, and live them to the fullest. Our days are numbered and I don’t want to take any of them for granted.

Goodbye Grandma. You will be missed by all, but I know where you are really at. You are in my memories, and will be there until I am just a memory like you.

So this weekend I thought we were going to be able to finally get rid of our houseguests and three extra dogs. Now, they will probably be here until July. When my Wife’s Aunt was finally able to get to her house, her loser, homeless, drug addicted ex was squatting there. See tried to get him out, but since he is on the mortgage, she can’t really do anything. He insists he wants the house now. She has been wanting out of the house for a while now. Her credit is already shot, so she is going to let him have the house and all the bills that he won’t be able to pay. It’s only a matter of time before the bank comes after the house.

So this weekend we are helping moving all her stuff to storage until she can get into her apartment on July 1st. It’s going to be a long month and a half, but at least she will finally be out of an area that floods every year.

I don’t think I have blogged about our house guests yet, mostly because I don’t like to bitch and moan over things that are pretty petty in the long run. It’s been about five weeks now that my Wife’s Aunt and Cousin and three dogs have been staying with us. The road to their house has been under water that long. Their house is pretty safe. The overland flooding just gets wider and wider, but never really gets deep enough to reach their house, they just can’t get to it because the road is washed out. The water is finally starting to go down now, and as soon as they get the road fixed, they should be able to head back home. It’s been a little inconvenient for us, mostly because of the dogs, but what do you do? You have to help out for family when something like this happens.

Having the guests really brings out the OCD in me. Everything has it’s place, and when it’s not it it’s proper place it drives me crazy. After five weeks I am starting to get use to the mess. I hate stuff laying all over the place, but I am also not going to clean up after adults. For the most part it’s not that bad, I am just a little OCD about clutter.

They do a few other things that drive me crazy. They don’t shut lights off when the leave the room. Every light in the house is left on all the time. They also leave the TV on all the time. I like the house to be peaceful and quiet, but they leave the TV on all day, and all night. This first thing I do in the mornings is shut the TV off because it doesn’t need to be on when everybody is sleeping. Then there is the toilet seat always being left up. Well, they leave the seat down, but the lid up. When you are done with the fridge you shut the door, so when you are don’t with the toilet, you should shut the lid. The toilet paper being put on wrong bugs me too, but not as bad as these other things.

The worst is the weekends that I have had to work. During the week everybody goes to bed at a decent time, but weekends everybody stays up late, keeping me up. I bet I got two hours of sleep Saturday night. The last time I looked at the clock it was 2:00 AM and I hadn’t slept yet, and I had to get up at 4:30. I can’t fall asleep when there is a bunch of noise around. Once I am asleep, the noise doesn’t wake me though, so that’s good, it’s just been hard to get to sleep on weekends.

Thankfully this will probably be their last week here, and buy the weekend I should be able to get our house back is order. I didn’t realize how OCD I am about things, and how much they bug me.

So last night was one of those nights that we will all remember forever. I was in bed reading when an alert popped up from one of my news apps informing me of the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed. I then switched from reading Wil Wheaton’s The Day After and other stories, to the Al Jazeera app—because most American news organizations suck—on my iPad. I then opened of Twitter to see what everybody had to say. It was a pretty memorable hour of news without ever turning the TV on.

Then in the morning I head he was buried at sea already, so I checked out on Wikipedia what Islamic law would have thought of that, and it seemed they did the right thing. Islam prefers burial on land, but in cases where the body might be dug up and mutilated, burial at sea is fine. They also did it within 24 hours which is also what Islam prefers. Why do I care? I think everybody should be treated with respect after their death. I don’t care how evil he was, he is still a human being and deserves to be treated how his religion would treat him.

All the people happy and cheering gave me a funny feeling. How can someone cheer for the death of a human being? Sure, he was an evil evil man, and deserved everything he got, but he was still a human being. He was still someone’s son, and someone’s father. I was glad they caught him and finally put a closure to at least part of the war, but I wasn’t cheering for his death at all.

Then I heard they were debating about releasing the photos of the dead body. I don’t know how I feel about this. Releasing photos of the dead body doesn’t sound very respectful. Sure we actually saw the hanging of Saddam Hussein, but that wasn’t us. That’s kind of what they do in the Middle East. I really don’t care either way if they release the photos or not. Some people might say it will quiet the people that will doubt the actual death of Osama, but I don’t think it would help. There will still be conspiracy nuts that won’t believe the the death even with actual pictures. Showing facts to people who ignore facts doesn’t really do anything.

Lets just hope this can be the beginning of the end of these stupid wars, and we can start bringing our troops back, that would be a huge help at getting our debit under control.

So according to the calendar it’s the first of May. I usually like to post the great Jonathan Coulton song about the first of May, but I’m not really feeling it since the ground is now covered in snow. It feels more like the first of April. If you want to hear the great JoCo song you will have to check out last years post.

Today’s Woot! shirt is another one I just had to buy.

(shirt.woot.com)

I had the day off yesterday, so I thought I would put together my new desk. I am pretty happy with it. I don’t have everything setup like I want yet, but got a good start. It’s finally a desk big enough for all my computers, and it’s really high quality too. I bought it here. $557 is a pretty good price for the quality and size of it. I also got the matching file cabinet for $227. Free shipping and no tax makes the deal even sweeter.

Now I guess it’s time to sell my two desks that this one replaced on Craigslist.

All dry here, but it’s crazy in our house with all the refugee family members that can’t get to their house. Here is what interstate 29 looked like yesterday.