Friday with a twist

The Sahara Dust is still blowing across the Atlantic shading the skies with an amber glow that at time appears surreal and other times spooky. 

As some of you may have heard/read life has been challenging lately for me in the health news of friends and family.  My Uncle passed away and his memorial ceremony will be August 11th.  I won't have time to fly back for it due to time and finances but I did get to catch up with my cousin last weekend so we had some fun moments.  When my plane landed in Monday I had a voicemail from my lead asking me to call her at work, home or on her cell as soon as I could.  She added the kicker, 'Its not about you'.  I took that to mean someone was fired or quit over filling my job for a mere three working days (it has happened before).  Instead I was informed that our department Director died.

He was only 54 years old.  Granted he'd been looking gray lately but that wasn't unusual given the stress level of the job.  He and I have been working on all the new acquisitions around the country and getting along better than we had.  He was finally getting to appreciate my work ethic and how I was organized.  He'd seek me out in my cube farm and ask questions.  That wasn't his usual manner but historically he'd call my supervisor and pass on whatever he wanted to say.  He also was the only one that knew what was coming up.  I still haven't a clue.  His funeral is today.  We are all pretty much expected to go and it's a political move since our CFO will be giving one of the eulogies. 

While I was gone one of my friends who lives here had a heart attack and was operated on and had a triple by-pass.  He used to be a football player I knew from college.  He is alive but there is concern about his general well being.  He just finished winning a lawsuit from a local chain store that accosted him and accused him of stealing meat.  They roughed him up and half stripped him in public to discover he had a large tumor.  That he is also African American added into the profiling and the verbal and physical abuse.  I think he may have 'celebrated' his financial win a little too much and pushed his heart into overdrive. 

My cousin's husband who 'beat' leukemia twelve years ago now has something in his lymph nodes which doesn't look good.  Found that out at the luau last weekend.  She said he's undergoing more tests but they aren't overly hopeful.

So all this is why I haven't been posting much.  One good thing was a got a nice shot of clouds from the plane without any power lines (another complaint from a different cousin)