Daddy Dearest

Today I'm thankful for ...

... chilling with the Dad. I got up late and walked down to the back patio. Dad was sitting there looking at some paintings he's working on. Sure I had promised Mom I'd get some dusting done and maybe even polish her teak cabinets. But Dad and I got to talking for a while. It's good catching up with him and I learn a little bit more about him every time I talk to him. He doesn't say much about his life, so it took a lot of prying to figure out where and when he went to school, who were the people he knew, where he went driving in his car, etc.

Mom is similar too. I never got to know her mom (my maternal grandmother) because she passed away when I was really young. I asked about what she was like. Of course my Mom said "oh she was normal" or things she did were "just regular". But I have no context what that really means. I asked if she was boisterous or quiet, if she was into cooking or arts and crafts. I got a few answers but they're still pretty foggy. I haven't even really seen pictures of her.

Also, credit needs to be given to Super Duper, the awesome backup/copy program for Macs. I'm definitely registering this bad boy. Going from my 120 GB HDD to a new 250 GB HDD was so painless it's crazy! I was dreading the upgrade because I've been through it before where you have to reinstall everything. Unless the drives would be an exact image (e.g. same size) I was thinking that I'd have to go through a backup, reinstall, and transfer process. However, Super Duper creates bootable clones of your hard drive and does it on a file-by-file level. So, no downtime! Yay! So if you ever need to upgrade your Mac's hard drives, definitely give Super Duper a shot!

We're all one big happy family

Today I'm thankful for ...

... my cousin who arranged a very large family reunion. It wasn't an extravagant reunion---we had it over dim sum. But it was very very important to me. I had not seen everyone for over 10 years. Since they live up in Canada and I'm in California, it's not like I can hop over to someone's house for dinner or meet them up to play with their kids. (And so many people have kids now!!!) I've been living someone vicariously through the photos my Mom and Dad bring back from their visits up there. I wish I could have been a part of many of the life events that have transpired in the past 10 years, but I guess better late than never. And this reunion was possible by the efforts of one very special person.

Do you remember when . . .

Today I'm thankful for ...

... my Dad sharing his stories. There's a lot of interesting stuff about my Dad which he keeps totally private. I'm not sure why. I suspect a good number of people would love to talk about things in their lives, places they've been, people they've met. No, not my Dad. It has taken a good portion of my life for me to figure out just his general timeline. I will one day try to write all of this down...