me Me ME and something much more important

the bid we put in on the house was accepted *GULP*. so now the sweating begins as we try and sell ours QUICKLY. we need the equity in this fine bungalow of love before we "move on up" to our four-bedroom, suburban dream.

it is funny how your priorities change once you have children. character as a requirement was not completely ignored for this house search, but it was a lower priority. we wanted a newer house—less character, if any, with less problems.

soon I'll be able to walk up and down the stairs without wife or daughter hearing me do it. we'll have a dishwasher and an attached garage. woodwork? sigh, nothing worth mentioning. stainglass? if we hang it ourselves, perhaps. but life is full of trade offs and, as our priorties and needs have shifted, we'll be trading up.

flew in and out of Chicago in one day today. pretty non-eventful, our site check went well. the hotel we're holding the event in will work quite nicely. as I returned to my car at the airport, I checked my cell phone voice mail. a coworker had called me twice, asking me to return their call. she left NO explanation why she needed to speak with me. this bugs me. I found out why she did this when I returned her call.

a good friend of mine, a coworker, found out his brother died over the weekend. he wanted me to call him on his cell phone. he had left town, returning home to help make arrangements.

turns out his brother had been drinking a lot. the way my friend described his drinking habit, it sounded exactly like mine. "he would drink, sometime too much, but he could also go without it. he would just get bad every once and awhile. he was thinking about going into AA."

in fact, he argued with his girlfriend about it the night he died. after getting into a fight with her about his drinking, he went out and drank. wound up hitting a fire hydrant and a car. he left the scene and made it home. he died that evening at home. it is currently unknown if it was due to injuries sustained in the accident, or if something else happened.

my thoughts are with my friend right now. if there's one thing I've learned about death it is that everyone handles it differently. but, no matter how they handle it, it's never easy.