12 November 2004

Greetings from the computer in the lobby of the Hampton Inn in Voorhees, New Jersey! Sarah and I are here for a wedding, as fellow BUCBer Chris Rosenberg takes the plunge.

This is a very positive end to a week that saw me attend a funeral on Tuesday for a family friend and former co-worker of my mother. She had the same cancer as her husband, which was also the same sort of cancer as my mother. As you can imagine this has raised some warning signs regarding unusual environmental exposures (especially as we all live near the town Highway Department yard), though my mom and the friend's husband were both long-term smokers. Not sure if it's time to go all A Civil Action on people or not.

In a lot of ways, Tuesday marked the end of our neighborhood. The people I remember growing up are all pretty much dead (outside of one family that moved in next door when I was in late elementary/junior high). As much as I went to mourn this woman, I also went to mourn the end of where I grew up. I suppose this happens to everyone eventually, but I'd not really considered it until Tuesday.

This was also the first non-Catholic funeral I've ever attended (not counting graveside-only funerals), which suggests I'm a little closer to Mike Kellerman's Irish Catholic cocoon that I'd imagined previously. For those of you who don't get that reference, please peruse an episode guide for Homicide: Life on the Streets and don't expect me to say anything about wanting to plotz.

Anyway, more positive focus tomorrow for Chris and Ali. It should be a joyous time!

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For want of anything better to post, here's a breakdown of if I've been to the most populous 100 cities in the US, and if so for how...