I tracked down my uncle David’s obituary in the Fort Wayne paper. Not much there. He’s also listed on the Kendallville News-Sun page but the bastards require a subscription to read obits. Any Hoosiers with a login around?

Stop the presses! Last night at yoga, the instructor Hillary actually told me that she thought I should stop losing weight. She said she thought I was skinny enough. HOW INSANE IS THAT? I mean, no, I’m not gonna listen to her; I’m still a good ten kilos above my healthy BMI range. But it just floored me. Never in my entire life has anyone told me that I shouldn’t get any skinnier. It was an absolute first.

There’s nothing that takes your mind off bad shit as well as two hours of learning something new and difficult. I had my trainee session as the Weight Watcher recorder tonight and I think I did pretty well. It’s all a bit bewildering. (I’ve never done any accounting before, and most of the stuff at the shop is computerized.) What makes it harder is that we’re changing leaders at the same time, so next Tuesday it’ll be the rookie team of Kris and Chris trying to figure stuff out together. In terms of my personal progress, I climbed back on the wagon this week with a 1.4 kilo loss! I am now officially at my lowest weight in recent memory, equal to my lowest weight ever on Atkins. So that’s pretty good, huh?

My mom called me at work today. I’m starting to develop a complex about phone calls from my family. They only call international when someone has died. Mom told me that my uncle David was killed in an accident yesterday. I took the news pretty calmly. She was upset so I tried to cheer her up, and we talked for a while about the quilt shop she’s opening. Afterwards Albert asked whether I was close to David or not, and I actually stopped to think: “Well, I haven’t seen him in years, and I don’t think Rodd ever met him… but we used to be really close when we were kids.” And suddenly that set me off.

David was my dad’s half-brother and we were practically the same age. He and my grandparents lived on a farm and my sister and brother and I would always beg to stay the night. David had the coolest tree house that ever existed outside of the movies. (It was in the back of the horse paddock.) I remember him introducing me to “The Legend of Zelda” and me just being blown-away that a video game could actually remember your position. Once we stayed up all night crafting a Christmas wreath out of a coathanger and sliced green garbage bags. Another time we hauled a bunch of his old toys out on the front lawn and tried to flag down passing cars to stop at our “garage sale,” which we were convinced was going to make us rich. We tried to make bread from raw grain out in his shed. We’d catch lightning bugs in his backyard. Once we went for a “hike” while the grown-ups were away and we all had to jump a creek. Antny was little and fell in (of course), so we had to rush him back to the house and clean him up before they discovered us. I don’t think they ever knew about it.

We sorta grew apart once we got older, and I hadn’t seen him since I moved away five years ago. I can’t believe he’s gone just like that though, and I’ll never get to introduce him to my husband. It sucks being away from your family at times like this.

Update: I just got an e-mail from my dad. It sounds like my grandparents are going out of their minds with grief. I’m more upset than I thought I’d be. This is the first one of my relatives of my age that I’ve lost. It’s hard. And I just found this…

Are you a digital citizen? What a goofy name for a quiz. I got 8 out of 10 correct, and the only ones I missed were the ones that I couldn’t be expected to know anyway (i.e. the percent of broadband users in the UK and which BBC show airs online before broadcast).

Wow, the Snook’s thesis is available on the new Google Scholar! As he says in his best Cartman voice: “I’m a scientist. I’m so kewl.”

I can’t decide what’s funnier: the fact that Dulux actually have a red paint colour called “Redrum,” or that an oblivious Kathleen wanted to use it on their apartment walls! (Sidenote: Andrew’s anecdote reminded me of when Milhouse picked up Bart’s telepathic message “kcip pu trab” in The Simpsons, which in turn led me to this nifty page detailing all the Stanley Kubrick references on the show.)

What Book Are You? Oh good grief; I’m Catch-22. I remember that being one of the hardest books I had to read in college. (Hard in the sense that it took me about five tries to finally get into it, and I still pretty much hated it at the time.) My description: Incredibly witty and funny, you have a taste for irony in all that you see. It seems that life has put you in perpetually untenable situations, and your sense of humor is all that gets you through them. These experiences have also made you an ardent pacifist, though you present your message with tongue sewn into cheek. You could coin a phrase that replaces the word “paradox” for millions of people. Well, I guess that’s flattering in a way, so I’ll accept it. (Link courtesy of Kevin, who is strangely always going on about rabbits…)