Well, Dad made it to the New Year by about thirty minutes, then quietly left. He always was a stubborn old fart. ;-)

Thank you to everyone who sent email over the past few days and weeks. I'm sorry that I'm not able to respond to each individually, but I will say that it is wonderful to know how many people out there care. I'm not sure if anyone who reads this journal is local, but funeral services are going to be Wednesday evening at 7:30pm, at Christ Episcopal Church in Slidell, LA, with visitation afterwards.

But yes, life does go on for the rest of us. Mom and I spent yesterday making various arrangements, and then spent much of today going through Dad's clothing and deciding which charities would get which clothing. Actually, the best of the clothing is being saved out for a reserve deputy whose house burned down on New Year's Eve. They lost pretty much everything, including their two dogs who'd been inside.

So last night Mom and I decided to go out, to get away from the house, and see Bicentennial Man. We figured, from the trailers that we'd seen and from memories of the original Asimov story, that it would be a nice, pleasant escape, with some occasional humor...

Mistake. Big mistake. Huge mistake. There are three jillion deathbed scenes scattered throughout the movie. Add that to the fact that the movie was long, dragging, boring, had no plot, and had very little resemblance to Asimov's story, and it made for a fairly ludicrous experience. Actually, we figured that the fact that we were able to laugh about how wrong a movie it was for us to be seeing was a sign that we're doing okay.

But anyway, I don't recommend wasting your money on Bicenntenial Man (and heck, it only cost a dollar for the both of us to see it since I get a Law Enforcement discount) even for people who have not recently been through their own deathbed vigil. Ugh.

And in that whole "getting on with life" ideal, I start the Academy tomorrow morning bright and early. Twelve weeks of... who knows. After the Academy I'll do one more week of field training, and then I'll be out on the streets on my own as an honest-to-god POST certified Deputy. Be afraid!

Oh, and I got my unit! My car, that is. It's sitting in my driveway now, with my radio number on the license plates. I, of course, had to wash and wax it after I got it home this week. I took some pictures of it a little while ago, but the light was already pretty bad, and they didn't come out too well, so I'll try to remember to take some more tomorrow.