I forgot to forget...

Quite a few times, I have had difficulty coming back to work after a holiday and remembering to adjust for it being a day later.  For example, if the holiday fell on a Monday, I would find myself doing Monday tasks when returning to work on Tuesday.  Somehow I avoided that yesterday.  Go me!  It might not seem like much, but sometimes one has to celebrate one's victories wherever he or she can find them.  Speaking of "wherever", doesn't it seem like there should be another "e" in there since it's made up of "where" and "ever".  For those interested, yes, such randomness is typical for my thought patterns, although I'm usually quiet about what I'm thinking when they are.  Ooh, look, a squirrel....
Now, where was I?  Oh, yeah, Los Angeles, CA.  Wait, that isn't what I meant.  I also wanted to mention that today is the last day I get to see 283 pageviews in one day stat for Jun¹ 28, 2016 on the Overview page for the blog.  The weird thing about is that a different page for the stats shows the pageviews at about half that.  Even if the former counts my pageviews and the latter doesn't, I still don't see that coming anywhere close to making up the difference between the two numbers.  Curiouser and curiouser.
Anyway, happy sixth of July!<sup>2

1</sup> Before anyone comments that this is a typo, that's the way the infotip shortens it.
² What? Would you rather I wished you a unhappy sixth of July?

Important information for those getting an eye exam

When getting an eye exam, make sure to ask the optometrist if a pupillary distance measurement is included in the prescription, especially if you plan to buy your glasses online.  While you might be able to do the measurement yourself, it's one of those things best left up to a professional¹.  If they won't supply it, you might want to consider taking your business to someone else who will.  I found out the hard way at Target Optical, they will only provide one when you purchase glasses with them².

¹ In fact, I believe I read somewhere while searching online to buy glasses that New York (state or city, I can't remember which) law requires a professional measurement when buying eyeglasses.  I don't know whether or not this means an optometrist is required to provide one.  Yes, I'm too lazy to look it up, so if anyone who knows could leave a comment, it would be greatly appreciated.
² While I do not have a problem with them having such a policy, I think it's a bit dishonest to not inform people getting an exam of this beforehand.

My Mom... celebrity lookalike?

I'll just let you, the readers, be the judge:

Then again, I could just be falling into the temptations of letting my imagination run away with me.
Did I mention how much I love you, Mom?

A cautionary tale

I cannot recall the month, much less the date, it happened.  I thought I had narrowed down the time frame by finding a purchase made at the Salinas Amtrak followed by another at an Inglewood Costco, but their date of April 25, 2011 marks them as about a year too late.  While the exact "when" remains a mystery, the "what" I remember all too well despite dismissing it as trifling at the time.  My wife had returned to our Salinas, California apartment after visiting her sister in Los Angeles.  While there, she said, she went to the hospital with abdominal pain and the doctors discovered a lump/mass (masa) in that area of her body.  Maybe it was fear of the effect of hospital bills on our financial situation (we weren't too far from almost losing our apartment due to back rent we eventually paid off and both of us being temporarily unemployed) or perhaps I didn't want to believe that it was what it almost definitely was, but I should have rushed her to Natividad Hospital or pretty much anywhere to have it checked out.  I didn't.
And so I am left here to wonder: would they have caught it in time if I had?  Would it have made a difference?  Would she still be alive, perhaps even well?  What kind of husband was/am I, to allow that to have happened to her?
 I cannot prevent questions like these from haunting my thoughts or wounding my heart.  But that is as far as I will let them go in crippling my life and destroying my future.  Yes, I made those choices.  Yes, I own up to my failures.  However, I am human.  I recognize my imperfections.  The past remains unchangeable, but I can repent of what I have done and use the knowledge I have gained from my errors to make better choices now and in the future.  The story has not finished and I feel joy over that.

In which I compose why I suppose I have to propose a purpose for this blog

Welcome and I hope you enjoy reading this blog and I, for the most part, enjoy writing it. Please note that while many of the early posts will deal will have a somber tone, I will balance these out with lighter pieces later on.  This brings me to the first few reasons for my blog:

1.  To show the pain in my life and the causes thereof in my life, especially those related to my wife's death.  I wanted the blog to reflect all aspects of my life and realistically portray my experiences rather than cherry-pick the good.
2. I hope that by sharing such events, I can multiply the joy and divide the sorrow brought by them.
3. To show that at least one person (i.e., me) has learned how to overcome such pain and possibly give hope to someone who thinks he or she cannot.

But wait... that's not all!  Act now (or any other time before this blog ends) and you'll also receive these additional reasons for no extra charge:

4. To share some of my and my wife's history, both before and after we met.
5.  To encourage myself to become more social.  A couple of consequences of moving around so much throughout my life are first, I do not know how to develop roots within a community, and, second, I have a hard time picking up social cues that would have been more obvious.

That's all I can think of for now, but I'll come back and add any more that come to mind.