Pickin' and Grinnin' (my apologies to Buck Owens and Roy Clark)

Random thoughts for a Thursday...
Today I went to work by day (hospital) and by night (a lacrosse match for TV). In the game between one of the best high school teams in the area and the worst, well... it was absolutely brutal. Final score: St Francis-15 Bedford-0 A real nail biter... It bit alright.
Anyway, I'm really praying for my friend and co-worker Carolyn. Those of you who follow my writings here, know that she recently lost her husband Doug. She is also the aunt of Haley (and now Tristan) whom I've also written about here as well. She has been a worry wart about those two and on top of that, her sister, who is being treated for cancer, was rushed to the hospital on Tuesday and place on a vent. They found a blood clot in her lungs. Carolyn broke down at work, when told that her sister was put on a breathing machine. All those memories of Doug on life support came flooding back and she just lost it. "I can't go through this again" I didn't know what to do so I just held her in my arms while she sobbed. Times like this are when I want to tug on God's ear and say "hey there, could you please take it easy on this family?" I know in my heart that He has a plan and a reason for everything He does. I have to go on my faith in Him that there is a purpose to all of this. In my smallness and humanity, I just hate seeing people agonize like this. It just whizzes sometimes...
Okay, strange things I've noticed about my family... my nephew (the marine) who leaves on monday has an aversion to bugs. If I take a dead bug and toss it at him, he'll freak. I hope no terrorist reads this info because if my Marine ever gets into combat, he'll be trained to kill others, but could be disarmed and brought to his knees by the appearance of a dead mosquito.
Dyl, the 10 year-old rock star wanna be, with the deadly right hand, has developed a strong taste in music. I was expecting some hip-hop or stuff he learns in school... nope, not our Dyl... His preferred music of choice: classic rock-n-roll. I saw him the other day and he was messin' around on his guitar and when he saw me, he said "hey, check this out" and proceeded to play the all too familiar opening riff of 'Smoke on the Water' from Deep Purple. He also learned '25 or 6 to 4' from Chicago... I sat there in utter amazement.
And finally, one of the former hockey players from the Cherokee, well actually his dad, called me and asked me to go up to his house and set up his brand new computer system. Hey, why not, I thought. Went up there (near Detroit) and we had a great time. I wouldn't take payment but since he was going to throw away the 'old' computer, I told him I would take that instead. When I got the computer home, I cleared all of the old stuff he had on there off of the system, and put some other software in it, and it works just fine. It was too 'slow' for him. It wouldn't load up some stuff he wanted so he said the heck with it and bought a new rig. I discovered that the reason it didn't load up quickly was because the system only had 256 of memory loaded in. So I am blessed because I got a nice Dell home system out of the deal. Very nice... Hope you all are doing okay. Actually, better than okay. I really do appreaciate the notes and emails of concern and of encouragement... you guys (and gals) are the greatest...