Here it is November 25, and it's our anniversary - what would be our 37th.  Well it is our 37th, but half the team is missing.  I think this day is going to difficult every year, from now on.

This picture was taken on one of our many trips to see Mike & Elisa in Scotland. We took the train down to Montrose to go agate hunting. This picture was taken was along the train tracks as we were coming back, we came upon this stone entryway, all by itself. 

I knew about the Solar Eclipse wayyyy before I moved here to Texas but it was when we were making the actual plans to actually move that I looked it up and found the house would be in the path of totality. For fun I sent invites to an Eclipse party, on April 9, 2024, to about a dozen friends and family. Only my sister made plans to come and she made arrangements for us to visit the Johnson Space Center and get a private tour from a former student of her WHO happens to also be a Flight Director!!! Note - The Johnson Space Center is not the Space Center Houston which is open to the public. The Johnson Space Center is where the day to day operations are for all manned missions; planning, training, and on going.

During the tour we saw mission control for the ISS and was able to walk around the control floor area where the various stations were explained; what all the plaques and stickers were and their significances; how the giant monitors are used; how the personnel shifts work for continuous interaction with the ISS crew also happens. Then we went into the Artimus control room. Along the way we also were given stickers and patches for the current ISS expedition number 71 plus a sticker, designed by the Flight Director, for that Mission Command shift.  Next we walked above the training floor which has all the current ISS modules along with space suits, Soyus capsule, future modules and Artemis capsules.

Afterwards we went to the outdoor exhibit of the various recovered capsules and Saturn V rocket stages. THAT SUCKER IS HUGE!!

When we go home we spent the days wandering around the area and evenings watching: a PBS NOVA episode on the Eclipse and what various projects hope to find out; and space movies - The Martian, Mission to Mars, and A Million Miles Away. 

Monday was the Eclipse so we went to the library which had some activities and the New Braunfels Astronomy club with their telescopes (with solar filters) so we could watch the sun and eclipse. We made our own viewing party T-Shirts and waited for it to start. Well we saw the start but the clouds moved in and never saw totality - which was a BUMMA :-(( though I thought talking to everyone who was there was enjoyable.

​Tuesday my sister went home and I cleaned up the house.

Note: the pictures are NOT in any order.

First - My nose is healing well but with sudden weather changes in temperature and pressure my face still hurts. The doctor says that I have to give my nose time and eventually it will be less but probably not fully go away.

​I have started to work on Erich's workshop. The workshop building is at the back of the property; I can get to it easily by going out the back door of my studio and then walk across the yard. The space is almost 1000 square feet and it filled with STUFF, cobwebs, dead bugs, and dust. It has 2 main areas with one larger where there are cabinets and a work surface along one wall; all the cabinets are empty. Then the other space has shelves and a work surface and there is a side storage area with shelves.   

I started in the small area - opening boxes that were on the floor or the shelves. It's open, think WTF, put stuff on the floor and sort -  does it go in the garbage, what do I want to keep, does it go to Goodwill or Habitat for Humanity (H4H). If it is going to be donated, then I log it in my spreadsheet. At the end of the day the garbage get's bagged and put in the bin for pickup on Wednesday. Donations go into boxes and put in the car and taken to the drop off places either that afternoon or the next morning.  When I am truly done for the day I go take a hot shower and relax before making dinner provided I don't fall asleep in the chair

Rinse and Repeat  - Note the pictures below are in no particular order.

When I finished the small room I started on the larger room. I put a message out to my knitting friends that I had a gas powered generator and some small solar panels that could be had for free. Judy's husband Frank wanted it and so they came over with their truck to get and assist me in delivering Erich old kitchen table and chairs to Maddy; she and her husband just moved into the first house and needed some furniture. I put the coffee table in my car and delivered it. It was over lunch that I asked Frank to come back and help me and what every he wanted, provided I didn't, he could have. He's like a kid in a candy store being told he can have what ever they want.

I am about halfway done. All the tool boxes from the large room have been emptied; I first sorted all the hand tools by type, then went through each pile and decided what I wanted and then assembled another pile for a metal friend's daughter who has NO tools (and she's an engineer no less) and shipped them off in one of the plastic tool boxes. The remainder will go to H4H. 

Two of the bicycles have been given away and the third, my blue touring bicycle with 21 years that I bought in Santa Barbara in 1981, I took to the local bike shop to get it cleaned and maintained -  chain cleaned, new brake pads, new tires and tubes, and a new handle bar set and brake levers. 

Yes there were many WTF moments - the old Navy WWII surplus tubes; more propane; more ammo; more EVERYTHING.

With focused attention I think I will be done with clearing the workshop by the end of April. And then I can work on the re-org of my studio.

Yahrzeit refers to the anniversary, according to the Hebrew calendar, of the day of death of a loved one. Alternative spellings include yortsayt, and yartzeit. On the anniversary of a death, it is the custom to light a candle to commemorate the departure of a loved one.

How does one observe this day?
"Despite the Germanic origin of the word yahrzeit, the designation of a special day and special observances to commemorate the anniversary of the death of parents was already discussed in the Talmud. This religious commemoration is recorded not as a fiat, but as a description of an instinctive sentiment of sadness, an annual rehearsing of tragedy, which impels one to avoid eating meat and drinking wine—symbols of festivity and joy, the very stuff of life."

Erich passed on January 12, 2023 so the observance would be on January 18th of this year to match up with the Jewish calendar but I am also observing it today; actually I lit the candle last night.  And if you don't know any candle can be used provided it burns for 24 hours.

So what am I doing today - I will be reflecting on our time together and moving forward with my new life.

Last year at this time I decided to make a temperature blanket for the year Erich (aka the Shop Elf) we were married. I was building a spreadsheet to hold the historical high and low temperature info and selecting my yarn colors and the manufacturer for each temperature band. 

Then Erich passed away and everything in my life came to a grinding stop. 

Several months later I decided that I was still going to do a temperature blanket but it would be for my first year without Erich - January 12, 2023 through January 11, 2024. I considered adding, somehow, the amount of rain on each day but each idea could not be integrated easily and then I saw a temperature blanket that used the amount of daylight and darkness such that the high temperatures were daylight and the low temperatures were the darkness.   I used the Weather Underground to locate a personal weather station near the house so I could get the temperature data. I used Time and Date to get the sunrise & sunset data and built out the rest of the spreadsheet to calculate the number of stitches based upon minutes of each.  I even added some conditional formatting so the recorded temperature would show the color of the yarn for that temperature band.

For the yarn I chose an acrylic from Lion Brand because the blanket will be on the couch and will probably get washed a lot plus the yarn is not very expensive!  Being the geek I am, I also set up a page in the spreadsheet to calculate the amount of yards yarn I would need based upon a test gauge swatch for the number of stitches and then calculated the total yardage using the number of stitches over the course of the year for each temperature band...   

Once December started I went and ordered one to 2 skeins of each yarn and cast on the first rows of black on New Year's Eve.  New Year's Day I started with January 12th.   It takes about 2-3 hours to knit each day while watching TV; today I am working on finishing January 14th and maybe all of January 15th. 

​Yes, it will probably take me all of 2024 and some of 2025 to finish it but it will keep my hands busy in the evenings

Despite finishing the Big Snuggly Sweater over Thanksgiving week, things since mid-November have/had been a real downer for me. 

• First there was Erich's Birthday.
• Then there was what would have been our 35th anniversary's
• Add to that Thanksgiving which we usually just have a nice meal and spend the day together watching movies.
• And to round out the month was my birthday.

I didn't want to see or talk to anyone and I backed out of all events and get togethers for the duration.

As December started I felt the same way.
There's still the loom room and my studio to clean and reorganize PLUS there is Erich's workshop to tackle. Of course there is also the standard stuff to do around the house - cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, and getting out of bed because a certain cat wants to be fed.

Then last week, I got an email from the Lawyer that things are moving forward, finally, with Erich's estate and was as if a 1,000 weight had been lifted off my brain. Suddenly

Thirty-Six years ago we eloped having only met each other two month earlier.
It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
​
In September of 1987 I was invited to a bicycle ride get together by my friend Gylver; he lived in Laguna Hills, California and I was living in Temecula, California.  Other friends of "ours" from Santa Barbara would be there as well as some other friends that Gylver knew.  

The plan was to ride down the coast for a while, stop and have lunch then ride back and afterwards have a dinner of home made chili.   

Not as many people showed up as expected but one was a good looking man named Erich Kern.  

We spent most of the ride talking to each other; and we talked all through dinner. Before I went home Erich asked for my phone number.   To be honest I don't remember much of the ride except for talking to Erich.

Several nights later Erich called to talk and ask me on a date; we ended up talking on the phone for six hours!
Yes, we took bathroom breaks.

Erich suggested we move in together in, in October but having just started grad school I said no; I needed time and space to do my course work. 

At the end of October he proposed.  I said yes cause when you know, you KNOW.

After much thought and reflection about what my sister went through with our parents when she got married I knew I did not want a formal wedding and so Erich I decided to elope over Thanksgiving weekend as I also had a small break in my course work. 

We found a Rabbi to marry us and we made reservations in Santa Barbara at a B&B for the weekend. We would take our bicycles and spend the weekend doing some rides and on Thanksgiving day I would work on a paper I had due the next week. 

Gylver was the Best Man and my friend Kathleen was the Best Woman; we met at the Synagogue and were married and then went out for a nice dinner and afterwards Erich and I drove up the coast. 

The rest, you could say is history.  

This picture was taken many years later in the 2000's.

I am feeling rather normal these days and so I am going to try to resume a normal life and not mope around the house and do only what's necessary. 

Last week I vacuumed the carpets which I admit hasn't been done in 6+ months. I also vacuumed and washed the main floor tiles.  The next big task on the list is (was) to clean/organize the walk in closet in the bedroom. I am leaving that for next year as I have maxed out the amount of donation dollars I can claim on my taxes. I am moving on to the Family room now which has bookshelves, my knitting and sewing stuff but I am not going to spend 2-3 solid days on it. Over the next week I am going to only do about an hour and then relax and work on my knitting.

To also return to normal, I am going to speak to the nutritionist I worked with in 2021/2022 to get into shape before I did my walk in Scotland.  Let's just say all the gains I made have rolled back and then some. We are talking next week and I will attempt to get some early morning walking in despite the massive heat wave and drought we are having at the moment. This will also help me when I am at the gorge as I am quite tired after a work session and can't keep up with the guys.

I am also going to do a very short term web project for a friend and get paid!

To close, here's a photo of Cowboy Boots

It's now been six months and life slowly creeps forward. 
I still miss Erich, tremendously. I want to find him reading in the living room; bringing me a cuppa coffee when I am working on the computer; asking me to go with him grocery shopping; watching our favorite shows together and discussing them. 

But, no, he's not here.  So...

• I continue to clean, organize, purge and make various repairs around the house. I am almost done with the rooms that are lived in then I will tackle the loom room, my studio, and the sun porch which is a mess of spider webs, leaves and misc. dirt that has blown in when I keep the outside door open.
• Cowboy Boots is now MY best buddy - sleeping with me at night, waking me at sunrise to feed her, snuggling on my lap while "we" watch TV. 
• I continue to slowly reading the letters Erich sent to his mom while he was in the Navy - it is a way to learn about him when he as younger that somehow he didn't share or I didn't ask about. I find things that have influenced and shaped him into the man I married.
• I continue volunteer at the Canyon Lake Gorge 1 day a week and I expect to keep this on my schedule for quite a while as it get's me out of the house and I am making new friends.
• I go to a gathering of fellow knitters 1 or 2 days a week, one is here in Canyon Lake and the other is down in New Braufels and again, I am getting out of the house and interacting with other people and make new friends.
• I go to lunch, dinner, concerts or other events with Gylver & Joan. I have known them for over 40 years and who moved here, also from California, are very supportive and always up for something. 
• And I am again working on my software project which I can do to avoid everything else.

So I kinda have a routine and a normal life but there are so many things I am still not doing (again/yes) but are planning. I see a road trip or two in my future; finishing a weaving project that has been on the loom since before the pandemic; finishing the Great Wedding Quilt for my niece; making metal stuff; hiking some Texas trails....

There were two things left on my "Death" To-Do list that I decided to take care of last week and OH BOY did I wander into TWO clusterfucks. The first was getting the name on the DirecTV account changed and the second was getting the autopsy report and the items the police took almost SIX months ago; so sit back and enjoy the saga. The .5 CF is detailed at the very end.

CF#1
On Tuesday I called DirecTV to get the name on "our" account changed to my name because every time I logged into the account to change the profile it said "You are being redirected to AT&T" and when the AT&T website would load I was immediately redirected to DirecTV and then I was in an infinite loop. Way back when, we did have an AT&T account for my mobile phone and so when AT&T bought DirecTV, the accounts where tied together so we only got one bill. Last year I cancelled my AT&T service and moved over to Mint to save beaucoup bucks which I think was the root of the problem as we (I) no longer had an AT&T account despite the fact that the bill for DirecTV still came from them. I called DirecTV and spoke to customer service (person #1) and they transferred me to billing (person #2) who proceeded to tell me about the flag which tied the two systems together and that it was tech support who would have to change that and I was transferred again and was put on hold and then the call was dropped. I called back and recounted the entire process to the person (#3) on the other end and was transferred, again, to AT&T billing and they said since I could not get into the account they (#4) would help me reset my account user name and password (of which I did not have) so once again I explained that I need to only get a DirecTV bill as I no longer had an AT&T account FOR A MOBILE PHONE; so they was transferred back to DirecTV and dropped AGAIN <GRRRRR>. I went to get another cuppa joe and call again though I thought hitting myself on the head with a hammer might be less painful. I tried a different tactic when I called back this time; after getting a customer representative on the phone (person #5 and call #3 and an hour later) I said I was going to explain the issue and what happened and that I needed them to repeat it back to me so I knew they understood the problem which I did and they repeated back and seem to understand. I then said that IF I had to be transferred again, I expected her to stay on the line so she could feel the pain I was going through too and could she do that; the response was "Yes". She asked me to hold while she contacted billing to see it the mystery flag could be removed and 10+ minutes later DirecTV said it was an AT&T issue. She then put me on hold again while she spoke to AT&T billing and another 15 minutes later it turns out they couldn't but it would be their tech group to talk to as this might be an actual into the database change.  So I was put on hold a third time while she spoke to someone else and another 15+ minutes later (45 min so far) my person returns and says Nope, can't be done and that the solution was to create me a new DirecTV account, move all my existing equipment info and my username/password and account details to it and delete the current account. At that point I agreed and it was done with no interruption of service - CF total: 3 calls, 5 people I spoke to, 2 call drops, 3+ times put on hold and TWO HOURS of time!!

CF#2
The other task I did was to call the Detective who was handling the details of Erich's case. I had been told that I could get his effects back after the autopsy was completed. I called in February and Detective F. told me that the autopsy was being done by the Hays County Medical Examiner office because they were contracted to do so by Comal County and that I could take a month or more since it was not a criminal case. I called again in March, April and May - usually in the first week of the month. Since it was the end of May I decided to call again to follow up as I was getting rather annoyed that it was almost SIX months! Well, Detective F. did not answer the phone but Detective B did and he informed me that Detective F. had left. I asked who was handling my case and he looked it up and it had not been assigned to anyone but he would try to assist. I recanted what I had done with my calls and asked when would the autopsy report be completed and could he call Hays and find out. He said that they don't call and that when they know then I will be called. At that point I asked for the Hays County Medical Examiner office telephone number so I could call them directly. Which I did. The person on the phone said that 1) the report had been completed on April 28th (WTF!! since I spoke to Detective F after that) and that 2) the reports are NOT sent to the Sheriffs office but to the Judge for my area to have an inquest sign off, 3) the Hays County computer system does not talk to Comal County, it is email to the Judge's office and 4) she gave me the Judge District office to call; which I did. Upon calling the District office, I spoke to Shirley who said yes, she had it and could come by and get a free copy and no, they don't send it to the Sherriff's office they call for it and no, the computer systems don't talk to each other such that a Sheriff would be automatically notified it had be entered and completed. I asked Shirley if should be so kind as to email it to Detective B. so everything could be closed and I could put this all to rest (yes that is a pun) which she agreed to do.  I received a call from Detective B later in the day that I could go to the Sheriff's office and talk to the Evidence department to get Erich's things. And thus I found a major gap in the Comal county system - my case was not reassigned (Issue #1) and the sheriff is the one to make called and find that the autopsy report has been completed by the Judge's court. Why don't the systems talk to each other (Issue #2) so so many people don't have to make so many calls?? 
 
CF#0.5
After the events earlier in the day, I went to the library for a knit and sit meetup. While there I was working on my big chunky sideways knit sweater which I had not touched in over a month because I had be working on a baby sweater. I had already knit the right sleeve and shoulder and done the split for the front and back plus I had knit the front half. I was working on the back when I put the project down. To resume, I laid the project out on a table and verified where I was on the back with the instruction and realized that even though I though i was ready to start the increases to then rejoin the front on back the number of rows on the back was wrong. I then looked at what was going on with front - between the actual knit and the pattern and it was wrong so I figured I would rip out rows on the front to the mid-point there and get the front and back even. As I was putting the stitches back on the needles, I realized the stitch count on the front half was wrong; then I counted the stitches on the back and it was wrong too PLUS when added together the total count was also WRONG. I was not having a good day and since the 3 hours of the meeting was over and everyone else was ready to leave I decided to go home and sort this out on the kitchen table. When I got time I took some time to calm down with Boots as petting and scratching her always helps along with a glass of wine. I cleared the table and laid out the sweater and looked for where I had messed up and could not find it so my assumption was that I did the split and decreases wrong; it was time to rip out both the front and back to that split point; it was time for a second glass of wine. Some time later I was done and had the correct number of stitches on the needle along with the stitch markers; I was one row back/before where the split was to occur. I had a large pile of yarn on the table so I left it and then made dinner as it was now 6:30 pm and I went upstairs to relax and watch TV. This was Tuesday, I spent the weekend re-knitting the front and now I am half way done with it (again). The pulled out yarn is on the swift to allow the yarn to relax and the kinks to disappear. I also re-wrote the instructions for the front and back with the increases and decreases so I can easily track where I am and not make the same mistake again.