Amy! Bubble wrap, stat! I mean, hooray for the clear scans, but yikes!

Also

I can't believe Thanksgiving is next week.

Right? I have been seeing it coming but have not been believing it even as it approached and I still don't really, I guess. Not that I have to do anything but show up at my parents house and possibly pick up some groceries if Mom is out of anything,, but still, not ready.

I have a Zoom conference for the AMA all day, for the next 3 hours or so.

It’s super boring and I am so glad the accepted standard is for the attendees to have the video and sound off unless we’re specifically asking a question or participating in discussion.

Although we’re currently discussing AI and ChatGPT as “authors” of medical articles, and it’s pretty interesting.

wow, I have been to some dull zooms, but I believe that takes the prize, Tep. At least they don't need to see you paying attention and stuff. Could be useful to have "someone" pull all the data without judgment, less so if it makes people think "craniorectal inversion" is a real diagnosis or something like that.

Oh no, Amy! We knew leaving the house was dangerous, or in this case, coming home. Good to hear it wasn't worse.

It is raining a lot here, like flash flood warnings and such. King Tides. It doesn't look to stop until maybe tomorrow afternoon, maybe. Taking the dog out tonight and tomorrow will be a project. We have to take him to the park because I am not going to try and walk in this stuff. So go to the park, run to gate with the umbrella, let him do his thing, run back to the car. He won't need to be on a leash because he will want to go to the park, and he will want to go back in the car. Thankfully I park in the garage. This is dependent on my dog park being accessible. If not then I have to go to a further park which is less likely to flood. This stuff is supposed to happen in the summer!

I have a Zoom conference for the AMA all day, for the next 3 hours or so.

I spent way too long trying to figure out whose Ask Me Anything you meant and why it was taking that long!

Oh no, Amy! Speedy recovery.

Matt and msbelle, I'm sorry. msbelle, I hope for best outcomes for your friend.

Amy! Oh, my goodness. Yeah, bubble wrap seems to be in order. (On Election Day, I fell walking out of my polling place - but only scraped my left palm and bruised that hip -- Matt wants me to start taking something to help with balance -- like Tai Chi, not, like, a balance pill, though I'd take it if it existed -- anyway, he's not wrong. I fall more than seems right; I just mostly bounce so far.)

Shir and Nilly -- always so close in my heart and mind.

Saturday is my niece's wedding in Philadelphia. Should be fun.

We're not doing jack for Thanksgiving this year on purpose. Four days off in a row with no travel is what I'm thankful for, and I'm sure Wegmans or Whole Foods or somewhere can prep me up a meal to bring home. I should probably get that ordered. I'm lucky in that I see my family a lot, so... it's all good.

Guess who won corporate suite tickets to Depeche Mode? The weird things I get via work are sometimes pretty awesome.

Guess who won corporate suite tickets to Depeche Mode?

Right on!

JZ's cousin, Nicole, visited us the last four days, coming in from Sacramento. Just as I knew I needed to bring my niece, Crystal, out to visit after my sister's death, I knew that Nicole needed San Francisco time.

Jacqueline and I had reached out to Nicole as a young weirdo nerd and offered her safe space in Freak city, trying to be a little beacon for her as she swam upstream eternally. Just a little life preserver, a buoy we could offer to her.

I knew she would take so much sustenance from just being in San Francisco and she did.

This afternoon I drove her to the Amtrak station in Emeryville to catch the Capitol Corridor train back to Sacto. I hadn't been in the East Bay for a bit.

I drove around after I dropped Nicole at the station. And I felt such waves of sadness washing over me.

Because so much of the first ten years of my marriage with Jacqueline was tied up in the East Bay.

I drove by her old apartment on Shattuck where we originally met at the Buffy S5 Finale party. The baseball fields in Albany where we'd spent so much time with Emmett's Little League. The exit to her father's house in Oakland, where we'd spent so many holidays, and where she'd taken Matilda for years.

The venue we looked at in downtown Berkeley for our reception before choosing something else. Most recently the Mike Birbiglia show we saw in Berkeley which was our official First Live Performance After The Pandemic.

None of that part of our lives had anything to do with her cancer or death. It was mostly ten years past, from when Emmett graduated from HS (2014).

I just felt these waves of loss and loss and loss washing over me. A descending sadness.

A lot of your life will happen in 20 years, and this was a ten year chunk I hadn't been back to since she'd died.

I missed her and I'm missing her.

When I miss her, I think "She's not here." But I don't think she's anywhere else. But she's definitely not here.