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My brother Mike died on July 4th, 2003. I haven't seen his wife, Chon Hwa1, or daughter, Amanda, since going to Maryland for the funeral, and contact has been sporadic. Chon Hwa is a nationally respected medical researcher at NIH, and Amanda is attending medical school at John's Hopkins. They don't have a lot of spare time for visiting.
They came for a visit last weekend, and we spent three evenings with them. It was good to see them, share our memories. Amanda needed to reconnect with her father's side of the family, and between Aunt Lois, brother Chris and me I think we accomplished that very well. I have a rather large collection of photographs from the Weeping Water era, and we spent a fair amount of time going over them, making connections. I also got to cook for them - I cooked French, rather than any sort of oriental cuisine, I'm not stupid - and got rave reviews.
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Having re-opened the Seamlyne site for ordering, I made a shirt last night, first one in several years. Nice to know I haven't forgotten how and that, even with domestic machines instead of commercial, it doesn't take substantially longer.
Not so nice is the discovery that WalMart has, by and large, shut down their fabric department. I know, I know, Wal-fucking-Mart, I get it, but they carried the best broadcloth I've ever used, soft and supple, at the best price on the market. Now you can only buy it in pre-packaged two yard pieces, half again as much in price. Expensive and wasteful, since a tall poet shirt requires five uninterrupted yards of fabric.
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Many plans for this weekend, along with a few personal goals that I have no reasonable hope of achieving. I never did touch the garden fence last weekend, working instead on mastering the CD. I know the mistakes I made and didn't repeat them, so I'm confident we'll be good to go this time around. So confident, in fact, that I went ahead and ordered ten copies - I expect they'll be in Wednesday or Thursday.
1 She's Chinese, if you're wondering.
They came for a visit last weekend, and we spent three evenings with them. It was good to see them, share our memories. Amanda needed to reconnect with her father's side of the family, and between Aunt Lois, brother Chris and me I think we accomplished that very well. I have a rather large collection of photographs from the Weeping Water era, and we spent a fair amount of time going over them, making connections. I also got to cook for them - I cooked French, rather than any sort of oriental cuisine, I'm not stupid - and got rave reviews.
------------------------
Having re-opened the Seamlyne site for ordering, I made a shirt last night, first one in several years. Nice to know I haven't forgotten how and that, even with domestic machines instead of commercial, it doesn't take substantially longer.
Not so nice is the discovery that WalMart has, by and large, shut down their fabric department. I know, I know, Wal-fucking-Mart, I get it, but they carried the best broadcloth I've ever used, soft and supple, at the best price on the market. Now you can only buy it in pre-packaged two yard pieces, half again as much in price. Expensive and wasteful, since a tall poet shirt requires five uninterrupted yards of fabric.
------------------------
Many plans for this weekend, along with a few personal goals that I have no reasonable hope of achieving. I never did touch the garden fence last weekend, working instead on mastering the CD. I know the mistakes I made and didn't repeat them, so I'm confident we'll be good to go this time around. So confident, in fact, that I went ahead and ordered ten copies - I expect they'll be in Wednesday or Thursday.
1 She's Chinese, if you're wondering.