January:

Ugh, January. It was kind of a crap shoot.

It started out with good intentions, kind of getting out of the exhausting and sometimes anxiety filled holidays, and holiday parties. It took a while to get, but I did get that Epiphone Valve Junior head that I had been looking at. I even built a speaker cabinet for it. I then was able to sell my Marshall JCM800 to someone who will really use the amp the way it's supposed to be used. I also sold my PSP. Both on Craigslist. Pretty easy, free, and not really too much of a hassle. I even got a new computer at work, which is one of the new Mac Pro's with the two Dual Core processors in it (Quad Core). I got a new LCD screen there too, which is really nice. Widescreen is great for the crazy illustrations I need to do, or the video editing I need to do in Final Cut Pro. So is the mighty mouse for scrolling around the infinite abyss of exploded drawings. I learned how to change the battery in the Beetle after it died a couple of Monday's ago. It was probably not a great time to be messing with that stuff, considering what sort of mind frame I was in, but I was able to change the battery, and drive around with a duct taped steering pump reservoir for almost a week. This past week, I even ordered a refurbished iPod video 60GB.

But something disastrous happened in January, something I can't even really describe, and really haven't been able to figure out how I want to write about it, or if I should even write about it. I was debating, honestly, to even continue writing here, and just start my own WordPress server, just for keeping my own internal weblog; my own diary, which no one would read but myself. An easy way to keep up with myself, since I'm not sure many people read this stuff anyway. I suppose something even easier would be to just set up a bogus email address, and email my diary to myself for logging. Easy enough, maybe I'll do that anyway. But... maybe this is just another corner I need to get around in order to get back to some sort of normalcy (though that'll never happen), or to be able to work through it further.

While my Grandparents were down in Texas for the winter, which they've been doing for quite some time now (at least 10 years), my Grandma passed away--on January 18th. Two weeks ago. I've been trying to deal with it ever since. Sometimes it's tough, sometimes I don't understand, sometimes I get really confused, and sometimes I can't deal. I found out at work, while I was working on something pretty in-depth, and it was so bizarre, like I was living in a totally different world. My response to it was really canned, almost scripted, though really I was in an immense amount of shock. It took about an hour for it all to sink in. Luckily, I wasn't at work anymore. That night was even more difficult. Then from that point, it's been sinking in ever since.

They say there are many different stages of grief and loss. I probably experienced all of them, and then some. And they were certainly not in order. Right now, I have no idea what stage I'm in. I don't really care. I'm just trying to go with the flow on these things, and try to do what I can. There was a weird stage for almost a week that I've never experienced before. I couldn't listen to any of my music. Nothing seemed to soothe my ears. I'd listen to a few measures of anything, and it just wouldn't work. I'd shut it off. I think my thoughts were just too loud for music to do anything. I listened to a lot of talk radio in the car--public radio mainly. I tried listening to Eisley, Chavez, Failure, anything, to no avail. This past weekend, I picked up Imogen Heap's record, "Speak For Yourself" and I started listening to it on Monday. So far, it's the only thing that I've been able to listen to with any sort of listening cued in. Other stuff will hopefully come with time... I can only assume that it will. Yesterday I listened to a little bit of Eisley, but quickly switched back to Imogen Heap. It's all about turning corners I guess.

Well, I suppose I've done enough turning for right now, and my own dealing. It's time to go back to my mindless task of adding album art to most, if not all, of the tracks in my iTunes library for the iPod video when it comes. My prediction with the next iPod that comes out, is that cover flow will be built-in, like the iPhone has. When that day comes, I can only assume that I'll find some way to fork over more hard earned cash for something like that... but, it's all just "stuff".