They're offering... say what?

While looking at various sites that offer to create an embedable¹ timeline (because I wanted to include one on a static page that shows important dates in my deceased wife's and my lives), one of the ones that I found have a paid and free (lite) versions.  At the risk of overwhelming you with their generosity, the latter includes allowing the user to create one timeline with a maximum of five events.  Maybe it's just me, but this sounds like they are hoping that people will sign up for a free account, invest time and effort into creating a free timeline only to discover they need to add more than five events (because seriously, how many timelines have you seen that have included only five events?), and then decide to upgrade to a paid account rather than waste the time and effort they have already put into making the timeline.  Thanks all the same, but I'll think I'll pass.
Oh, they also offer a 100% money-back guarantee "if you aren't able to create a timeline that you absolutely love", but one should remember that if someone really needs or wants a timeline and already has invested time and effort into creating one only to find out that he or she doesn't "absolutely love" it, how willing one would be to expend additional time and effort to start over.
While their "free offer" might skirt the legal definition of a scam, it is of such limited use that I think it makes their motives for offering one suspect.

¹ I had to look that up because my spell-checker was marking it as not a word. But what else would you describe something that can be embedded?

(NS)FAQ You're living... say what?

For those readers who may not understand Spanish, La Viudez Loca translates to "the crazy widowhood" or, in case one is referring to a guy, "the crazy widowerhood".  And, yes, it's a pun on the title of a song.  Not that I particularly like or dislike that song, I just thought the pun conveniently described the current stage of my life.

Don't try this at home (or anywhere else, for that matter)

I have always had a... peculiar... sense of humor as far as I can recall and I doubt I would have lived (and remained within shouting distance of sanity) as long as I have without the ability to find whimsy in even the most trying times.  Probably just as important to my continued survival (and avoidance of jail time), though, is that I lack the proclivity to follow through on such deeds mischievous despite how many of them I might dream up.  To put it another way, it is largely the same imagination that allows to think up such ideas that prevents me from carrying them out.  Case in point: while transporting my wife's urn/ashes back to Los Angeles from my step-daughter's apartment, I wondered what would happen if I "accidentally on purpose" left them on the train.  Mind you, I haven't taken leave of senses to the point where I would do that, for her remains are far too valuable to me to try.  For example, whoever found them might report them as a suspicious package and they might receive less than ideal treatment by those called in to deal and/or dispose of them, especially in this age of heightened security.  However, I don't think anyone has yet devised a way to punish someone for merely having such thoughts, thus allowing me to indulge in a capricious mental exercise of visualizing the reaction of the poor, unsuspecting soul who happened upon them had I actually gone through with it.

Until (a) death (certificate) do us part, the conclusion

In which we find our intrepid hero (i.e., me in case you missed the last two parts of this gripping tale) returning home to make an important discovery.  Sometime after returning home, inspecting the purchases he had made while downtown, and resting a bit, our protagonist decides not only to change his pants, but to put on the same pants he wore the day he went to Oceanside to get his wife's urn/ashes.  At which point, it behooves your humble narrator to make a slight backtracking in the story to revisit a significant detail that turns out to have been in error.  For instead of placing the death certificate inside the inner pocket of his coat as he had thought, someone (and I won't mention any names here mainly because it's me) had put them in his pants' pocket... the very pants which he had jsut changed into and whose pocket he now reached into.
[Please kindly ignore the sound in the background of what might be someone banging his or her head against the wall.]

Until (a) death (certificate) do us part, Part 2

When we last saw our intrepid hero (i.e., me), I... rather, he was leaving the Department of Public Health Vital Records at 313 N. Figueroa Street, Room Lobby-1, Los Angeles, CA 90012 ("X" on the map below, which you'll have to click on the post's link to see) with a couple of newly purchased copies of his wife's death certificate.  Looking up and down the Figueroa Street, however, failed to produce any sight of a stop for a Metro bus that would return him to downtown Los Angeles.  True, there was one a block southwest of him.  Instead, he started traipsing southeast down Figueroa and managed to turn what should have been a three-minute walk to the bus stop into a 2.1-mile trek.  But at least he eventually got home.  However, what he found when he got home... that's a whole 'nother tale for the next post.