(Phaysis)

After a six-hour drive with a low number of snags, I made it home to Texarkana safe and sound for my Christmas visit. And wouldn’t you know it, no sooner did I walk in the door, the Christmas drama Story began.

Ok. As I’m grabbing my stuff from the car for the first load into the house, I noticed that my uncle Randy’s truck was running. I looked inside and saw that he was either asleep, passed out, or just really, really chilled out. Out of the ordinary, yes, but for some reason I can expect that here. So, I walk into the door and my aunt Janet greets me. First words out of her mouth tell-all that she’s had a few too many. And she’s bawling.

“Janet, what’s wrong?”
“We can’t find Lucky.”
“How long has Lucky been gone?”
“He’s been gone for a few hours. We’ve looked all over, we’ve yelled for him, Randy has gone out to find him, he’s just, he’s just uh,” and Janet starts crying again.

So, I put my stuff away, fetched the second load, and made an attempt to wake Randy up. After a few too many knocks on his window, he stirs awake and has a tougher-than-usual time getting the truck door open. He succeeds, and I help him out.

“Yeah, that damn dawg done run off. We cain’t find ‘im. Sumbitch prolly got killed or run over. ‘Bout ta believe somebody done run off with ‘im.”
“Well, it’s possible, yeah. I’m thinking he just found a nice warm place or something.”
“Yeah, that’s a poss’bility, but I still think that damn boy, uh, what’s his name, did something.”

I nod my head. We go inside where he offers me some dinner. After nuking some nice smoked turkey, hot links and beans, we sit down and start shooting the shit about what’s been goin’ on, what’s happening at his job, some of my Austin stories, and we’re just enjoying our dinner.

Well, Janet, bless her heart, she’s sitting in the living room in sadness, despair, and heartbreak worrying about her dog. She calls me in there to ask me a question.

“Shawn, is it possible that Lucky will, I mean, y’know, it is possible he’ll come back?”

“Yeah, it’s likely that he will. Some dogs usually do, I suppose. I don’t think anything’s happened to him.”

“Oh, ok. I hope so. Thank you, Shawn, thank you.”

I go back to the kitchen, and Randy and I get back to dinner and keep chatting.

Well, about ten minutes later, roughly five minutes after the stroke of Christmas morning’s midnight, we hear Janet opening the front door and talking loudly. We bend our heads around the corner to see what’s going on, and wouldn’t you know it, Lucky zooms right into the house and runs to the kitchen to greet everybody. Lucky made it back home!

Janet was so weepy and happy that Lucky had made it home, she ran over and hugged me in a way very much resembling the way that a woman with a little too much to drink would run over and hug someone when they’re happy. She said, “Oh, Shawn, thank you, thank you for bringing Lucky back. Thank you. Oh my Lord, thank you Shawn.”

I was at a loss for what to say. I didn’t bring Lucky back, but to aunt Janet, by saying something positive about the situation to keep it from getting worse, I guess I made the miracle happen.

So, there we have it. There’s our Christmas Miracle for this year. Enjoy it in warmth. And remember, if you keep things positive, you might get Lucky. (yes, this whole story is true. Thank you.)

Mahrry Chrishmiss!

Once again, I impressed myself.

Tonight, after being stuck at home sick for two days, I went out and did my christmerch shopping. I got all my gifts, for those at home who’re most important to me, in less than two hours from start to finish. And, it gets better: I spent only $65 total. Nice.

Take that!

So, yeah, I’m feeling better. My visit to the doc yesterday was fruitful, apparently, because the drugs I got made my sinus infection go away within a half-day. The only problem, though, is that the steroid drug I’m taking is making my heart want to palpitate more than usual, but all I gotta keep in mind is to smoke much less than usual and avoid anything more than one coca-cola a day. And speaking of my chest, the sinus infection has migrated, if you will, downtown to my chest. I could feel the emigration action last night as I sat at home on IRC. Hey, as long as I can hack and cough it away, I’ll be fine.

Ok. Again, a kind reminder: I am coming home to Texarkana on Wednesday; leaving here that afternoon after I work a half-day and do some packing. I will try to go out and about that night, and spend most of Xmerch Day with my family. I will be leaving TXK on Sunday evening.

Ugh. Twelve more hours of driving. Do I love the holidays or what?

Hey friends. A new entry.

friend: /frend’/ n. 1. a close acquaintance 2. one who has been befriended 3. one who reads Shawn’s journal even though there’s been no journal updates in over two weeks. “Hey friends. A new entry.”

As many of you know, I have fallen off of the wagon and back into the tobacco fields. This doesn’t surprise me, just depresses me. I realize now that I can’t hate the devil and still dance with him. Just doesn’t work like that. :sighs: The next time I quit, I intend to not have a cigarette, period. The crazy, intense dreams are gone. The hacking is back. The urge to be productive, waned. From this three-day-weekend’s round of smoking my throat is now puffy and tender. Perfect. I set myself up for an upper-respiratory thing; feelin’ it, too.

My health concerns aside, I called my family yesterday and got some disturbing news. My mother twisted her upper back pretty severe while at work about a month ago. If not for the cooler in front of her, she would’ve hit the floor. Some preliminary x-rays didn’t reveal any broken backbones, which is a relief. But there still exists the chance that a disc is blown. From what she said, it sounded like a loud pop; even some of her customers heard it. Geez. She’s been scheduled for an MRI later this month. I hope it reveals something repairable.

I also found out she lost her job. Some political b.s. involving a crooked coworker saying something to the owner. I dunno, but that whole bar was crooked. So much for that.

Called my sister, too. She and her family are doing well. Found out she’s been diagnosed with type-2 diabetes. It’s inherited from her father’s side. So she has to count sugar and sodium grams in her diet, measure her blood sugar twice a day, and take an insulin pill once a day. She has also quit smoking, and is sticking with it. I’m proud of her. She says her feet are no longer swollen; the fact that her doctors went overlooking this for so long astounds me — it’s one of the early, major signs of diabetes. Damned fools. But now that she’s watching her diet and taking better care of herself she’s losing weight and, as she says, she’s feeling better than she has in years.

As far as I’m doing, since I started smoking again (now almost back to a pack a day), I’ve been feeling rather cruddy. Especially now. Tsk tsk. (You can save your browbeating comments — I’ve enough of my own.) Stomach’s not as upsettable as it was, though. Thinking watching my own diet (sort of) is contributing to that. Dunno. It still tweaks every now and again, like it did about an hour ago at Mojo’s. Something about sitting for hours at my laptop while sucking on iced tea, peppermints, smoking, and generally not moving can kinda contribute to built-up internal pressure or something. Once I packed up, got up, and moved around by driving home I felt better.

This weekend, though, has allowed me to render several new chunks of code towards my website engine. I’m playing with a thing wherein disparate subobjects in my engine can communicate with one another and run each other’s methods transparently. What this means is that the master object in the engine, called “Kernel”, creates each subobject; when each subobject is created, it “registers” its methods and accessible data with the Kernel, and registers any messages it’ll “listen” to. Later on, during execution, objects can simply ask the Kernel to do something for them, and the Kernel looks up the task, calls the proper subobject to perform it, and then sends the results back to the original subobject that made the request.

Something like this is a huge improvement in the way I’ve been doing things in the engine thus far. By allowing this “proxy” subsystem to exist and by rewriting the current modules so that they use it, I can almost completely unlink the modules from each other; they’re no longer bound to each other, and they don’t have to know every single bit of information necessary about each other to make those calls. In the programming world, this is called “loose coupling.” If they want something, they call someone who knows where it is. Now, if I make a drastic change in how one module interacts with something from the rest of the system, everyone else is shielded from those changes; editing one part should not mean you have to edit everything else.

Pardon the geekout, but this is very exciting to me, and the fact that I was able to hammer out the guts of this in a few nights’ free time makes me feel excellently successful about it.

I think I’ll head over to some bookstore or something and pick up a ton of crossword books for my mother. She needs something to do while she’s laid-up on her back. I’m planning on sending her a care package with some books, a card, and some money to help her out. She’s in financial straits now, and if I was in her shoes, she’d do the same. She has for years, and now it’s my turn to help.