As you can see from the attached picture, I just created Facebook Groups for three social or­ga­ni­za­tions that I'm involved in: Freely Speaking Toast­mas­ters, Wild Geese Players of Seattle, and BiNet Seattle.

I set up a LinkedIn group for FSTM too.

I talked to my mother this afternoon. She's still in Dublin, helping Michelle out with Harry. My father went back to Cape Town in mid-January to enjoy the golf and the South African summer. My parents spend several months a year there.

They have a small cottage in Hout Bay, in a res­i­den­tial complex. The buildings are terraced together. The other night, the cottage two doors down caught fire and the woman inside died. My father slept through the whole commotion forty feet from his bedroom, and knew nothing about it until the next day.

We knew he was a sound sleep­er—and a heavy snorer—but this tops everything.

What a month!

It opened well, when my nephew Harry was born. Frank died a day later. A cold dragged me down for over a week.

Last week's Obama in­au­gu­ra­tion cheered me up. He's off to a strong start. My story about attending the Bush Sr. in­au­gu­ra­tion omitted noting that 20 years ago this month, I emigrated from Ireland. More on that in some future posts.

Then there were the layoffs. Emma lost her contract job last week, primarily from having missed a lot of work due to ill health. And on Monday, some other friends were laid off, as were tens of thousands all around the country.

And my gout has flared up, though …continue.

I made my Christmas Cake back in November, but am only now getting around to putting on the icing. I've kept it moist with several ap­pli­ca­tions of whiskey.

Last year, I made marzipan from scratch. Never again! It was a huge amount of work to blanch the almonds and the stiff mixture of sugar and almonds caused the food processor to seize up more than once.

I didn't use up all the marzipan that I made that time. I put the remainder into a sealed container, placed it in the fridge, and forgot all about it. When I took it out of the fridge yesterday, it was still good. Oh, the top half-inch …continue.

I seldom get bad colds, but I caught one on the plane back from Ireland, and it's left me drained of energy for the last ten days. Jet lag and Frank's death surely con­tributed too. Feh!

Maybe I'll be up to cycling into work tomorrow. Between the snow, being in Ireland for two weeks, and this cold, it's been almost a month since I last rode in.

I've appointed myself as Frank's electronic executor. He had an active online life, spending over 20 years in Usenet newsgroups and selling hundreds of pieces of vintage costume jewelry on eBay.

We had a dry run for this in October, after he'd been in hospital for a month. The need to deal with his eBay customers had grown pressing. Lyndol is not tech­ni­cal­ly savvy and was unable to handle it. I had to work out how to get into his eBay, PayPal, and email accounts. For­tu­nate­ly, I was able to phone Frank in the hospital and ask him. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, he had forgotten many of the passwords and I had to …continue.

On Wednesday, I ac­com­pa­nied Lyn to the People's Memorial Funeral Co­op­er­a­tive on Capitol Hill to make the arrange­ment for Frank's cremation.

Years ago, I read Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death Revisited and it left me with an even lower opinion of the funeral industry than I already had.

I had never made any funeral arrange­ments before. It turned out to be both painless and in­ex­pen­sive. The funeral director sat down with us and gathered in­for­ma­tion for the death cer­tifi­cate that the doctor was unable to provide, such as parents' names and other personal details. Initially, we put down “Software Doc­u­menter” as Frank's oc­cu­pa­tion—his final job had been a ten-year stint at …continue.

My nephew's name is Harold Mark Bowles, to be known as Harry. I assume the Mark is after my brother. No idea about the Harold/Harry.

I said before that my mother was very excited at becoming a grand­moth­er. Here's the proof: take a look at the huge smile on her face.

On Christmas Day, she was trying to decide what her new title was to be. She was really pleased at becoming a granny, but not at all eager to be known as “Granny”. She tried out “Nan Et” (Et for Ethna), which we promptly turned into “Nanette”. “Gran Et” was even worse: with a strong Dublin accent it …continue.

I wrote three weeks ago, that Frank's time was limited. He died yesterday at 3am of liver failure. He had been un­con­scious since Saturday, and he had been moved to a hospital bed in his living room on Thursday.

I was at a coffee shop near work yesterday morning when Emma called me to relay the news from Lyndol. We hurried over there and spent the rest of the day with him, helping out as various friends came over.

Lyn is doing as well as can be expected. He's sad, oc­ca­sion­al­ly weepy, and sometimes a little manic. I think he's relieved that Frank's ordeal is over. After 32 years together, it's …continue.

David B just emailed me a handful of cam­er­a­phone photos of his wife and son. I like this one the best.

[Edit: This one is actually from my brother David, not my brother-in-law David. I'm telling you, one of them's got to go: it's just too confusing.]