So I've been absent. What's been up? Let's start from last Friday:

Funeral - had my aunt Shirley's funeral on Friday, which went as well as a funeral could go. Saw a fair amount of family that I'd not seen in a while, and the rain managed to hold off for the most part. I did get to spend some quality time with the neices and nephews, which is always good. We got back to the house late in the afternoon, actually pulling up at the same time as our...

Houseguests - the wife's cousin and her husband are over from England, and they stayed with us for a few days. It was great fun, as we got to sightsee a bit, drank too much, and probably watched more Olympic coverage than they'd have liked (though we did see a swimming event where the Brits went gold-bronze, which went over well). I didn't get to spend quite as much time with them as I'd have liked, thanks to...

Work - our big graduation was today, and we added a little over 500 new alumni to the rolls without too many problems. We did have a few more problems than usual, though, thanks to a database problem on Monday that kept us from releasing grades to students until Friday. We could see them, so I was able to do a fair amount of my usual pre-graduation work, but parts of it got pushed back. I had a nice little plan going into the week, which was summarily blown to hell. We should have seen this coming when we closed grading with fewer than 20 individual grades missing. When I did get home, it was time to settle in and relax with...

The Olympics - which would be fine if I was in as much in love with swimming and gymnastics as NBC would like me to be. I wound up missing some sports entirely (cycling and judo), which others I've only caught fragments when I managed to catch a recap or the start of early morning coverage on one of the cable outlets. I feel like there was more variety to coverage in 2004, or at least the scheduling allowed me to see more.

So there it is. Back on the blogging wagon this week. Expect multiple appearances of the Book Log.

I've not written here before about my aunt Shirley, which isn't surprising as I rarely write about my family here (they do know about this blog, after all). I bring her up today as she passed away yesterday, which wasn't unexpected but is still a little challenging to face as she was the last direct relative we had of that generation on my dad's side.

I don't have any specific fond memories to share (she never killed a rattlesnake as far as I know), but she did play a fairly important role in my life thanks to a Christmas present to all of us kids back when I was just starting school: a full set of the World Book Encyclopedia (with annual news and science supplements, too!).

As you can imagine, I spent a fair amount of time with the various volumes of the encyclopedia. I was especially fond of articles on countries, and enjoyed the section on human anatomy where you could peel back plastic pages to reveal the various systems and organs.

There are a number of other notable things I could discuss - her career as an educator, missed opportunities to get family history, the personality quirks that she shared with my dad and that seem to be coming for me - but I think the main thing, for me, is the role she played in fostering my love of reading and thirst for knowledge, trivial or not. And for that, I thank her.