After Life

I have given up on the ability of those in the after life to come back and visit us mere mortals.

Dad died February 8th, 2010.  I thought for  sure he would find a way to come back and, if nothing else, give me a thumbs up.  Nothing, nada.  Yet I KNOW he would have if he could have.
So it must be that death really is final (yes, I know how dumb that sounds).  And now, I appreciate every living thing so much more, because there is no second chance, no ‘reaching out”, no “message” we get to send.
I know some people swear they see loved ones that have passed, but right now, I think it is their imagination.  I did see dad in some dreams, but it was nothing that was compelling – it was just a dream.
I will know if that moment ever comes, and I will let you know if it does.
But for right now, I think we do our work here on earth, and return home to much greater things, such that we never even look back, knowing we will greet our loved ones as their time comes.  And, I think we never look back because by the time we make it to the other side, we realize how insignificant most of the earthly life is, so what is the point of coming back?  To say what?  Everyone already knows what you would want to say to them, so what is the point of trying to overcome what must be an enormous amount of energy to try and deliver some obscure message?
So I say, go in peace, dad.  I know you would come back if you could, and I am good with that.
post note, added July 23, 2012:  dad has returned once to me, twice to his beloved Louise.  And once to my cousin, whom seems to attract the souls from the other side.  Her “channel” is more open than the rest of ours, and people who have crossed over seek her out to get their message into our world.

I Love to Learn

I can’t get enough of learning. I love to learn, but there is so little time.

I just found Khan academy.  He is written up in the Sept issue of Fortune – he makes homemade tutorials for us to learn a variety of subjects by.  And then I also just learned of iTunes University – which is okay, but not stellar.  But combining these with Ted.com, and the world just got incredibly more interesting.
This is fabulous!  Check this out. From Ted.com
Okay, now for a  downer.  (I apologize in advance, but it still qualifies as learning ….)

Pension Reform, 1st Black President

New find . . . .  http://reason.tv/video/show/jack-dean   an interview with the founder of pensiontsunami.com,  an aggregate news “publisher” for pension-related news.

Also, in yesterday’s WSJ (Aug, 27, 2010), we were told by the CA Accounting Board that 80 cents of every tax dollar goes to support CA employee compensation and benefits.  Something’s gotta give.  This is just one of the reasons why big government is a bad idea.  They can’t just “mind the store” . . . .  they steal from it, because no one cares enough to watch.  So if we are wondering where our sense of entitlement comes from, look no further than the system we have allowed to grow.  Like a weed, but deadly like a cancer.
Peter Berkowitz has a good column in the WSJ, too. I like the line that “Big government tends to crowd out self-government—producing sluggish, selfish and small-minded citizens, depriving individuals of opportunities to manage their private lives and discouraging them from cooperating with fellow citizens to govern their neighborhoods, towns, cities and states.”
Ain’t that the truth!
So back to the statement “no one cares enough to watch”.  While it appears that way, it is not true. A lot of people – both good and bad – care.  The bad ones care because they can benefit from public neglect, worming their self-interests into policy, so they try to propagate it (they do this by telling us partial truths about what they are doing).  The good ones care but are naively too busy working to pay 80 cents on their tax dollar for their neighbor’s retirement.
But now the evidence of the neglect is apparent, and its weight is crushing all of us.
There is one more thing I’d like to go on record with.  This has to do with the 1st black President, the 1st black actor, and actress to win the Academy Award’s Oscar for best actor/actress.
We know who the 1st black president of the US is, so let’s keep moving….
The first black actor to win the Oscar for best performance was Sidney Poitier.  His 1963 acceptance speech was dignified, simple – and as always, he was unassuming.  The first black female to win was Halle Barry.  Her 2002 acceptance speech was marked with uncontrolled emotion for “the faceless women of color who now have a chance because this door has been opened”, thanking the Academy for choosing her “to be this vessel”.
Halle Berry was a bit over the top, for me, but the point I wish to make is this:  I wish that in Obama that what we got was a Sidney Poitier, not a Halle Berry, for our first black President.   I would have liked to have seen General Colin Powell, or Thomas Sowell (see his archives here).  Or think about Nelson Mandela, and how he led.
How in the world did we manage to strike out with a guy like Obama?  This is one of the saddest aspects of our first black president – there were so many good to great choices, and we got a junior senator who doesn’t know better to withhold judgement until all the facts are in, to stay home and work than to continue to campaign, who doesn’t know that perceptions are people’s reality – stop flaunting vacations, wife’s vacations, etc, in such tough economic times.
I could go on but I don’t want to bore you.

We Have our 1st National Sales Tax

A shout out to my friends Robert Bloomquist and Tommy Stevens for bringing this to my attention:

Under the new health care bill – did you  know that all real estate transactions are subject to a 3.8% Sales Tax? You can thank Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid & Barack Obama and your local Democratic Congressman for this one.If you sell a $500,000 house, this will be a $19,000.00 tax by itself, NOT including any other costs of sale that generally range approximately 8% of the sales price ($40,000. on a $500,000. sale) !!!

Here in CA, it’s not hard to have a house in the $500,000 range. So now, if you use realtors, you pay their 6%, and an additional 3.8%. You lose almost 10% of your home value.  Wow, that’s a fairly big loss.

Well, I think I have decided to vote against nutMeg Whitman.  She seems a little on the crazy side with her English/Spanish mixed messages.  If she was against prop 187, as she claims in her ads, I’d love to ask her if she voted against it….Isn’t that how you demonstrate your moral outrage?  (Oh wait, she hasn’t voted FOR 20 YEARS!!)  Talk is cheap.  Ignorance is cheaper.  Brown is looking better and better, although I loathe the idea of a democrat (especially him) at the helm, the idea of nutMeg is worse.

 

I don’t think I have mentioned I attended a fundraiser for her back in the early days.  Paul Rodriquez was there about the water problems for CA farmers.   She took questions, and the first guy asked her what she thought of “Keynesian policies given the economy.”  She looked a little awkward, then said “You have to help me out here.”  SHE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND THE QUESTION.  This is a woman who graduated Princeton, and got her MBA AT HARVARD!!!!  I was stunned. She only took one more question, then they wrapped it up.   I sought the guy out who asked the question, and asked him what he thought of her answer (she had hemmed and hawed through it).  He was as flabbergasted as I was.  We were both there to because we WANTED to support her, but she couldn’t demonstrate basic economic knowledge.  Unreal.  Almost Surreal.

 

and yes, I am still doing P90X, albeit not regularly.  Too much going on at the office.

P90X & Girly Fashion

Wow.  Am I tired.  But, tired as I am, I can’t fall asleep.  Took Ambien, now waiting.   Rambling on…

So I thought I’d journal about P90X, my latest endeavor to stave off the rising hips of middle age.

I am just completing my first week of it.  Well, really, it’s technically the second week, but I’m not counting the first week because I was so wimpy about it, and I had some traveling to do in between the workouts.

So I started it up again this week, and surprisingly, I find myself at the 7th day of the three week cycle.  It’s my “rest” day.
Now, I have been doing this in my garage, which is a whole other story – but short story is it is great.  Which means I haven’t been going to the gym, so maybe I’ll do that tomorrow on my “rest” day.  I only have 10-15-20 pound free weights at home, and no bench, so until I build that up (which I plan to take care of this weekend), I might as well go and push metal at my local gym.

So, P90X.  It’s pretty good.  You feel kind of dorky doing it (which is the great thing about doing it alone in your home).  Especially the yoga crap and kendo pseudo martial arts stuff.  But at the end of the day, you feel muscles you had forgotten about, and that my friend, is a good thing.

So I think I will stick with it.  It may not help me in my battle of the rising hips, but it certainly can’t hurt it.

Oh, and that reminds me.  I have to make a bathing suit appearance in the very near future with my grandsons, ages 13 and 9.  My bikinis don’t seem appropriate ( for them at this age), so I bought some wake board shorts. How much fun is that!  Comfy shorts to play in the pool with the boys.  I got to thinking, the guys have had it right all along, and us chicks have been dealt the bad deck of cards – we are stuck shoving our bodies into skinny clothes, high heels, and strappybikinis, while the guys wear loose clothing, boxer swimsuits, and comfy shoes.  How did we (girls) get ourselves into this mess?

Admittedly, fashion is some kind of ego fun.  But will we ever be truly equal as long as we are willing to sacrifice comfort and commons sense in the name of fashion?  That inability to come to our senses is what, I think sets up apart.

Look at newscasters. The pros are dressed conservatively, and most females are dressed as thought they want to date  your husband.  Kind of weird.  Why show some much chest plate?  Or bare arms?  cover up girlfriend – you’re on TV.  It’s not your living room, it’s ours.  Be respectful.

Hmm I think that this is it. Ambien friend is kicking in.  I am fading.  Plz excuse any typos you found. I still want the junior senator O out of the senior office “P”.  If that is not clear enough, I want Obama out, and his socialistic ways reversed.  There, that local town (Belle sp?) where City manager gets $800,000/year, and council members get $100,000/year for their part-time efforts.  Problem is, if City Manager resigns, HE GETS HIS PENSION!!!!  It truly is a MAD MAD WORLD.  We need pension reform, and we need a youth who knows how to kick butt in the intellectual world.

Taking A Breather

Every now and then, we just need a rest from life. A day off.

I took one today, by accident, but now I realize how good it was for me.  I stayed home to await a delivery that required a signature.  I worked from home, but did some other things too.  It was the “other things” that helped remind me that we all need a break, especially when we are pouring ourselves into something.
So anyway, I thought I’d take a moment and update my blog.  Here are some tidbits about P90X,  Lady Gaga, and an interesting social experiment.
I started the  P90X exercise series about a week ago. My good friend Howard told me about it.  Wow, I didn’t realize how hard this non-gym stuff is!  I can bench 135 pounds at the gym, but can barely do a pull up.  I can see I have some work to do.  It’s so depressing in the beginning.  I even took photos for the b4 and after.  Thankfully, I have been through this before, and know that the outcome will be successful, as long as the commitment stays intact.  That’s the cool thing about diet and exercise – it’s a sure deal (unlike most things in life).  However, this time I am 13 years older, and don’t quite have the same drive.  One day at a time.
Father’s Day was yesterday.  When I was buying flowers for dad’s spot, there was a woman there buying flowers for her 14 year old daughter who died last August.  This was their first Father’s Day without her.  We shared stories – she told me her mom had died a slow death from complications dad had – and that he was lucky that he went quickly, even though it was hard to see him go. We talked about the H1N1 flu shot – she said when she got hers, it just took her out for 3 weeks.  I swear, there  is a problem with that vaccine, and we will learn about it over time.  There are too many people who say they had problems with it, and as we know, it was the tipping point in dad’s health.  He was healthy up until he got that darn shot.
Now for some general observations:  I saw in the news that Lady Gaga wore fishnets, and a long (open) shirt to some baseball game.   So basically she looked like she was at home in her bathroom.
These people who want to be celebrities really “get” me….. it’s one thing to wear outrageous (albeit entertaining) costumes when you are performing, but it’s completely another thing to do it when you are living “life”.   And prior to this “showing”, she was at some game where she flipped off the photographers.
But really, she’s begging for attention, isn’t she?  Can you shout “LOOK AT ME” any louder?  And let’s face it, she may be entertaining on stage, but she (and others like her) don’t “get it” that we (the public) are not all that interested in seeing their  “act” at the grocery store, at the ball game, or anywhere else.    Leave the performing to the stages.  If we want to see  your act, we’ll go see it.  But stop taking everyday life events and turning them into your photo-ops at our expense.  (BTW, the people behind her did not seem too thrilled to be sitting there.  Made me start thinking about how unpleasant it would be to attend an event, only to find that you are  stuck behind someone who believes their own press clippings so much that they have to take their “character” to the ball game).
They need to learn “It’s not about them”.
Did you see the story on the world class violinist who played in a subway station?  It was about a  violinist  who played in a subway station on a rare violin – as part of a study on behaviors.  No one stopped to listen.  It was a social experiment.  But people were busy, going to work…
While it’s sad but understandable that we rush a lot, people seeking celebrity status should take note – we like our lives, and don’t necessarily welcome  them in to it when they insert  themselves via non-performing venues (like sporting events, malls, etc)  If you are a celebrity, and we like you enough, we will find you without you having to be “in character”.  And believe me, once that happens, you may be getting more than you bargained for.  There is a reason it is sometimes  called “selling your soul to the devil”.

Unions

Since I could not say this any better myself, I will just re-publish this here.  Mort Zuckerman’s “The Crippling Price of Public Employee Unions”, posted May 14, 2010 in US News & World Report.

Go to article

The American public feels it is drowning in red ink. It is dismayed and even outraged at the burgeoning national deficits, unbalanced state and local budgets, and accounting that often masks the extent of indebtedness. There is a mounting sense that taxpayers are being taken for an expensive ride by public sector unions. The extraordinary benefits the unions have secured for their members are going to be harder and harder to pay.

Click here to find out more!

The political backlash has energized the Tea Party activists, put incumbents at risk in both parties, and already elected fiscal conservatives such as Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. Over the next fiscal year, the states are looking at deficits approaching hundreds of billions of dollars. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, estimates that this coming year alone states will face an aggregate shortfall of $180 billion. In some states the budget gap is more than 30 percent. The result is a crowding out of the state role as the supporter of adequate infrastructure, education, and healthcare.

How did we get into such a mess? States have always had to cope with volatility in the size and composition of their populations. Now we have shrinking tax bases caused by recession and extra costs imposed on states to pay for Medicaid in the federal healthcare program. The straw (well, more like an iron beam) that breaks the camel’s back is the unfunded portions of state pension plans, healthcare, and other retirement benefits promised to public sector employees at a time when federal government assistance to states is falling—down by roughly half in the next fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

It is galling for private sector workers to see so many public sector workers thriving because of the power their unions exercise. Take California. Investigative journalist Steve Malanga point out in the City Journal that California’s schoolteachers are the nation’s highest paid; its prison guards can make six-figure salaries; many state workers retire at 55 with pensions that are higher than the base pay they got most of their working lives. All this when California endures an unemployment rate steeper than the nation’s. It will get worse. There’s an exodus of firms that want to escape California’s high taxes, stifling regulations, and recurring budget crises. When Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, says he will not build any more facilities in California, you know the state is in trouble.

The business community and a growing portion of the public now understand the dynamics that discriminate against the private sector. The public sector unions organize voting campaigns for politicians who, on election, repay their benefactors by approving salaries and benefits for the public sector, irrespective of whether they are sustainable. And what is happening with California is happening in slower motion in the rest of the country. It must be one of the reasons the Pew Research Center this year reported that support for labor unions generally has plummeted “amid growing public skepticism about unions’ power and purpose.”

There has been a transformation in the nature of our employment. Labor is no longer dominated by private sector industrial workers who were in large part culturally conservative and economically pro-growth. Over recent decades public sector employment has exploded and public workers have come to dominate the labor movement. These public sector employees have a unique and powerful advantage in contract negotiations. Quite simply it is their capacity to deliver political endorsements and votes for the very people who are theoretically on the other side of the negotiating table. Candidates who want to appear tough on crime will look to cops, sheriffs’ deputies, prison guards, and highway patrol officers for their endorsement.

These unions will naturally back a candidate willing to support better pay and benefits for their members, and this means as much as, or more than, the candidate’s views on law enforcement. The result has been soaring pay and the ability of state police and other safety officers to retire with pensions that place an increasingly unbearable financial burden on the states. In California, such retirees at age 50 often receive pensions at 90 percent of their pay; comparable retirees in most other states get about half their final working salary.

 

 

In New York, public service employees have received gold-plated perks for much of the 20th century, especially generous health insurance benefits. Indeed, where once salaries were lower in the public sector, the salary gaps in the public and private sectors have disappeared in the last two decades, or even reversed for most job categories. A Citizens Budget Commission report in 2005 showed that for most job categories in the greater New York City region, public sector workers received higher hourly wages than private sector workers. And according to a 2009 survey by the same group, this doesn’t even count the money that New York City pays in full premiums for comprehensive health insurance policies for workers and their families. Only 8 percent of workers in private firms enjoy that subsidy. Moreover, in virtually all cases, the city also pays the full healthcare premium costs for retirees and their spouses. And the city pensions are “defined benefit” plans, which are more expensive since they guarantee specific benefits on retirement.

On the other hand, private sector workers in the survey were mostly in “defined contribution” plans, which means that, unlike their cushioned brethren in the public sector, they do not have a pre-determined benefit at retirement. If New York City were to require its current workers to pay contributions toward health insuranceequal to the amounts paid by the employees of local private sector firms, the taxpayer savings would approximate $628 million a year. In New Jersey, Christie says government employee health benefits are 41 percent more expensive than those of the average Fortune 500 company.

What we suffer is a ruinously expensive collaboration between elected officials and unionized state and local workers, purchased with taxpayer money. “Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” No wonder the Service Employees International Union has become the nation’s fastest-growing union: It represents government and healthcare workers. Half of its 700,000 California members are government employees. More and more, it wins not on the picket line but at the negotiating table, where it backs up traditional strong-arming with political power. It spends vast amounts of money on initiatives that keep the government growing—and the gravy flowing. Similarly, for the teachers unions—with the result that California and its various municipalities, especially Los Angeles, face budget shortfalls in the hundred of millions of dollars. California can no longer rely on a strong economy to support this munificence. Its unemployment rate runs about several points higher than the national rate and its high-tech companies are choosing to expand elsewhere. Why stay in a state with such higher taxes and a cumbersome regulatory environment?

California is a horrible warning for the nation of how dreams can turn to dust. In most states, politicians face a contracting local economy and shortfalls in tax receipts. Naturally, they look to cut expenses but run into obstruction from politically powerful unions that represent state and local government employees, teachers, and healthcare workers who have themselves caused pension and healthcare insurance costs to soar. It is not an accident that in framing the national stimulus program, Congress directed a stunning percentage of the $787 billion to support public service employees.

The lopsided subsidies for pension and health costs are a large part of the fiscal crises at the state and local levels. The subsequent squeeze on education and infrastructure investment is undermining the very programs that have made it possible for our economy to grow—thousands upon thousands of teachers let go, schools closed, mass transit slashed.

Between New York and California, the projected deficits run about $40 billion—and that doesn’t account for projected billions of dollars in the operating deficits in the states’ mass transit systems or the multibillion-dollar unfunded liability in many of the state pension plans. New York is badly hit because it is being deprived of tax revenues by the government’s indiscriminate attack on the securities industry, which has been so critical to the economy of New York State and to the United States.

 

Click here to find out more!City government was developed to serve its citizens. Today the citizenry is working in large part to serve the government. It is always hard to shrink government spending. It is particularly difficult when public sectorunions have such a unique lever of pressure.

We have to escape this cycle or it will crush us. One way is to take labor negotiations out of the hands of vulnerable legislators and assign them to independent commissions. They would have a better shot at achieving a fair balance between appropriate salary increases and the revenues and services of local municipalities. The electorate won’t swallow any more red ink

Richard Russel’s perfect business

http://ww1.dowtheoryletters.com/dtlol.nsf

The contents from the above link is pasted below. It’s a piece by Richard Russell, and is good advice.

I wish I wrote it, but I did not.   I did pass it along to my son 
*******************************************************************************************
So much for my father’s wisdom (which was obviously tainted by the Great Depression). But Dad was a very wise man. For my own part, I’ve been in a number of businesses — from textile designing to advertising to book publishing to owning a night club to the investment advisory business.

It’s said that every business needs (1) a dreamer, (2) a businessman, and (3) a S.O.B. Well, I don’t know about number 3, but most successful businesses do have a number 3 or all too often they seem to have a combined number 2 and number 3.

Bill Gates is known as “America’s richest man.” Bully for Billy. But do you know what Gates’ biggest coup was? When Gates was dealing with IBM, Big Blue needed an operating system for their computer. Gates didn’t have one, but he knew where to find one. A little outfit in Seattle had one. Gates bought the system for a mere $50,000 and presented it to IBM. That was the beginning of Microsoft’s rise to power. Lesson: It’s not enough to have the product, you have to know and understand your market. Gates didn’t have the product, but he knew the market — and he knew where to acquire the product.

Apple had by far the best product in the Mac. But Apple made a monumental mistake. They refused to license ALL PC manufacturers to use the Mac operating system. If they had, Apple today could be  Microsoft, and Gates would still be trying to come out with something useful (the fact is Microsoft has been a follower and a great marketer, not an innovator). “Find a need and fill it,” runs the old adage. Maybe today they should change that to, “Dream up a need and fill it.” That’s what has happened in the world of computers. And it will happen again and again.

All right, let’s return to that wonderful world of perfection. I spent a lot of time and thought in working up the criteria for what I’ve termed the IDEAL BUSINESS. Now obviously, the ideal business doesn’t exist and probably never will. But if you’re about to start a business or join someone else’s business or if you want to buy a business, the following list may help you. The more of these criteria that you can apply to your new business or new job, the better off you’ll be.

(1) The ideal business sells the world, rather than a single neighborhood or even a single city or state. In other words, it has an unlimited global market (and today this is more important than ever, since world markets have now opened up to an extent unparalleled in my lifetime). By the way, how many times have you seen a retail store that has been doing well for years — then another bigger and better retail store moves nearby, and it’s kaput for the first store.

(2) The ideal business offers a product which enjoys an “inelastic” demand. Inelastic refers to a product that people need or desire — almost regardless of price.

(3) The ideal business sells a product which cannot be easily substituted or copied.This means that the product is an original or at least it’s something that can be copyrighted or patented.

(4) The ideal business has minimal labor requirements (the fewer personnel, the better). Today’s example of this is the much-talked about “virtual corporation.” The virtual corporation may consist of an office with three executives, where literally all manufacturing and services are farmed out to other companies.

(5) The ideal business enjoys low overhead. It does not need an expensive location; it does not need large amounts of electricity, advertising, legal advice, high-priced employees, large inventory, etc.

(6) The ideal business does not require big cash outlays or major investments in equipment. In other words, it does not tie up your capital (incidentally, one of the major reasons for new-business failure is under-capitalization).

(7) The ideal business enjoys cash billings. In other words, it does not tie up your capital with lengthy or complex credit terms.

(8) The ideal business is relatively free of all kinds of government and industry regulations and strictures (and if you’re now in your own business, you most definitely know what I mean with this one).

(9) The ideal business is portable or easily moveable. This means that you can take your business (and yourself) anywhere you want — Nevada, Florida, Texas, Washington, S. Dakota (none have state income taxes) or hey, maybe even Monte Carlo or Switzerland or the south of France.

(10) Here’s a crucial one that’s often overlooked; the ideal business satisfies your intellectual (and often emotional) needs. There’s nothing like being fascinated with what you’re doing. When that happens, you’re not working, you’re having fun.

(11) The ideal business leaves you with free time. In other words, it doesn’t require your labor and attention 12, 16 or 18 hours a day (my lawyer wife, who leaves the house at 6:30 AM and comes home at 6:30 PM and often later, has been well aware of this one).

(12) Super-important: the ideal business is one in which your income is not limited by your personal output (lawyers and doctors have this problem). No, in the ideal business you can sell 10,000 customers as easily as you sell one (publishing is an example).

That’s it. If you use this list it may help you cut through a lot of nonsense and hypocrisy and wishes and dreams regarding what you are looking for in life and in your work. None of us own or work at the ideal business. But it’s helpful knowing what we’re looking for and dealing with. As a buddy of mine once put it, “I can’t lay an egg and I can’t cook, but I know what a great omelet looks like and tastes like.”

Back in the saddle

“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.”  Marion Mitchell Morrison, 1907- 1979 ) (aka John Wayne)

Well, I am not and was not scared to death, but that quote is a nice tie-in to the fact that I am getting back into the swing of life after dad’s death.
And I have re-discovered Ted.com.  My, how I love that site.   I have decided to track the viewings here.  There are so many that I want to go back and revisit, and some I am sharing at the office, in little mini-meetings, for my engineers.
The fact that they are on my iPod is even better – I can view them walking t the gym, or just listen to them running to the gym.  Waiting in a doctor’s office, etc. And they are almost all invigorating, healthy food for the soul.
I think between these and business, industry, & politics, I won’t have an idle mind!

There is much to say

The funeral has come and gone. He passed February 8th.  In the hospital, in room 8.  I begin to realize after the fact that there are a lot of  8s – his birthday adds up to 8, he was born in the 8th month – did you know “8” in numerology symbolizes the businessman.?  It readsYou are inspiring, result-oriented, powerful, ambitious, visionary, generous, perseverant, forgiving, broad-minded, money-conscious and self-disciplined. You have the potential for enormous success. You are also a good judge of character a natural leader and a survivor.” 


And that was dad.  His obituary was quite long.  I did the Eulogy.  Fortunately, over the past year or so, dad and I had been journaling some memories, and I used those memories as the basis of the Eulogy.  These are posted at my website, janeterry.net.  They are long, but make a good read.
The funeral was beautiful, if I do say so myself.  Beautiful day, overflowing crowd, flowers everywhere.  It was not a boo-hoo funeral, but one of love and inspiration, because that is what he was all about.  With military honors.
We are coming up on Easter now, so it’s been about 6 weeks.  I go to his site at least once a day, usually twice.  I have purchased a plot nearby him – I can’t explain all of this, before this, I just wanted to be cremated.  I thought, “who cares about it after we are gone?”  But now I do care.  I keep dad’s flowers fresh and watered.  (That is one advantage of being buried in the ground – the sprinklers water the flowers!)
I’ve bought a crypt near dad for my husband and I.  Peace of mind comes with that.
I am working on the two (blog) entries I did while dad was still living – I am so glad I managed to get those in, and wished I had done more.  I am adding post scripts from what I know and can recall – before the memories fade for me.
I just finished his memorial DVD.  Maybe that sounds pathetic to some, but it is very comforting to me.