Shattered Glass

Tired tonight. Long day. Got up early to drive to mom’s house. Made a bunch of calls on the way - some work, some not.  Worked all afternoon but it was time well spent. Looks like we may have a landed a new customer in New Zealand as a result of what I and colleague did today. Go team. Spent some quality time with mom after that. I know that she appreciates me being here. I’m glad for that. Hopefully these feelings will last the weekend. Happy Mother’s Day.  Had a couple heart-squeeze moments this afternoon,  my breath catching in my throat. It was just the realization sweeping over me for the millionth time that Damian is gone. These were brought on by the memories from the last time I was here popping into my head. I’m surprised by the amount of detail that I’m able to recall. It was nearly five months ago, but a lot of it feels like it just happened yesterday. I wonder if my brain is holding onto these memories more tightly since they were created so close to when Dami...

I’m in Denver. Just landed an hour ago. Waiting for one of my fraternity brothers to arrive. John is coming from Chicago. He’s on the ground but still on the plane so only a few more minutes to wait. After John gets his bag, we will call Mike, also a fraternity brother. Mike is outside the airport in his truck. He lives in Boulder. As best I can tell Mike is a ski bum with a job. I don’t how many days Mike skis every year but it’s a lot. At least it used to be. I haven’t spoken to him for nearly two decades. The two conversations we’ve had in since Damian died have not been about skiing. We have a lot of catching up to do.  It will be interesting (?) to see how the guys treat me this weekend. They know about Damian. Many of them reached out in the days following his death. I would not have heard from them otherwise. That’s as much on me as it is on any of them. Our lives just went separate directions and we lost touch. It’s too bad it took something as terrible as Damian dying ...

Have you heard of Wordle? No, that's not a typo. Wordle is an online word game. It's not an app. You don't download it; you just open the  Wordle web page which is now tied to the New York Times and the game awaits.  The rules are simple: each day you have 6 tries to identify the word of the day (WOTD). Once you solve it or fail to solve it, you have to wait until the next day to play again. The WOTD is always 5 letters (e.g., "AUDIO", "CAULK", "RESIN", etc.). There are no clues as to what the WOTD is; you just have to use the process of elimination to figure it out. The objective of the first couple of tries is to identify letters that that the words contain. Sure, you might get super, crazy lucky and guess it on your first try but that is so unlikely people will probably accuse you of cheating. (Don't be that guy or gal.) Even hitting it on the second attempt is pretty rare. With each try, Wordle does the following with the letters in wo...

Dawn and I met with our grief counselor (Andrea) again today after a 2-week break. The break wasn't planned, just the universe reminding everyone who is in charge. (Answer: no one.) Fortunately, we held our collective shit together while Andrea was sidelined. There were some touch and go moments for sure, but we did ok all things considered. I'm certain the outcome would have been entirely different had this happened a few weeks ago...But it didn't. And we're ok.  In the second half of today's session Andrea dropped a bomb on us: apparently there are some people who, for reasons I don't fully understand, believe that Damian did not commit suicide but was the unwitting victim of a TikTok challenge. Something called the "blackout" or "hanging" challenge, the objective of which is to choke or hang yourself until you pass out. WTF?! The Internet is a breeding ground for some truly dumb shit. I know I shouldn't be surprised. I work in IT after...