Our neighborhood has lost it's [sic] mean old man yelling from the porch. If there is a God, I hope he knows what he's in for.--- Usenet poster

We went up to Reno to visit Wowbagger's dad. This was fraught with emotion, since the last time we'd all three had such fun together. I wept and wailed all the way up. Sailor got to go with us, and he and the resident dog got on well. Our dog got so excited he tried to mark indoors, so he was banished to the porch.

We'd been going to walk him, but I slipped on sandals for no good reason. I'm not coping all that well.

I tried my hand at opening the safe, and had no better luck. It should work, we have the combination and should have the directions right. Very frustrating.

We did some reminiscing and some crying. He handed over a 1757 violin to give to someone down here. We stayed 4 hours and then left. We stopped at a Taco Bell in Verdi but we didn't win anything!

On the way home I got another beautiful example of denial logic. We passed the ramp for highway 20 to Nevada City, which we took in April because we tried to go to the bookstore in Grass Valley. It closes early on Sunday so we couldn't actually go, and Casanunda and I had planned to go back sometime this summer. We were also going to hunt down the other bookstores in town. GV is trying to become the Hay-on-Wye book town of the US. I thought, "well, I'll never go back to Grass Valley, but Nevada City is OK because the memories there are associated with Rich. Like the Independence Trail. I'll have to take GoE there someda... oh."

Back home, back to Usenet. Bernadette has a post at alt.callahans that just about did me in.

An independent source says: "I suspect he's hanging out with Doc Smith and Heinlein and telling Asimov he got his science wrong." Yep. I think that's the answer.

Joseph Michael Bay wrote this haiku:

Gharlane of Eddore
Tentacled sphere in a cube
Alt.dev.null

Rich got a letter-to-the-editor published, and he's sad Gharlane couldn't see it.

I think in some ways this is harder than my mother dying. After all, that one wasn't a surprise. She'd been ill, she was in the hospital, she was having an operation.

I'm a little surprised at how this memorial is shaping up. I listened to the phone message on his phone and the woman was all choked up. I got a really nice note from the network administrator, who hopes to be asked to any private ceremony. People are coming from Texas and Southern California. Maybe he wouldn't have hated it, but would have mellowed to it, just as he did for his 50th birthday party.