On Sunday my parents and I went out for a gut-busting breakfast at Denny’s before I dropped them off at LAX. I guess they had an okay time, but I felt like a poor host. For almost half their visit they were sweating in near three-digit indoor heat. Saturday I managed to completely obliterate my father’s external hard drive when I plugged in my drive’s power cord without checking the voltage (turns out his takes a smaller amount). All in all that didn’t seem like a good batting average for making the parents feel welcome. Hopefully things will turn out better when they come back for thanksgiving. We’ll at least not have any qualms about where/what to eat.

by the way – if you’re keeping score – that is four hard drives I’ve wiped out in under two weeks….

Briefly over the weekend my mother had informed me that her and my father had heard whispering that my Aunt Pat was in the hospital, perhaps somewhere in Florida.
I woke up this morning to an email from my mother stating that aunt Pat had indeed passed away during the night Sunday.

My Aunt Pat (there used to be two, by the way) was almost always the smallest person in the room – but usually the most jovial. Unlike some other family members Aunt Pat and Uncle Ray always managed to make an appearance at the family reunion and catch up with my brother and I. If I remember correctly – aunt Pat and uncle Ray were some of the very last to leave at the last reunion before I headed west in 2004.

As time passes, funerals are only going to become more common as my father was the youngest of eight. The strange thing (although good news for me genetically) is that none of my blood related aunts and uncles have died yet of natural causes – only their spouses. Although unfortunate (and untimely – as she was the same age as my father), aunt Pat’s death propagates this strange phenomena yet again.