Call it a night to share a secret or two. Some things are better left not unsaid.

My thoughts about Rustina (see 'No Antecedent Necessary') have put a different spin on thoughts I deal with every year—the death of my grandfather. But, in this case, not so much about the death itself, but about the reinforcement of life that came with it.

There's something to be said for taking time away from work. Yes, there IS something to be said, but I'm not sure what it is, and even if I was, I wouldn't be the person to say it.

This from the person who spent all day Saturday hammering on a website to make it work. It's mostly there. geek-chick.net has been waiting for a few months to see the light of day, and I think I've finally gotten tired of waiting. When I got the offer to host it for free at my ISP, I decided to take advantage of that. The DNS for geek-chick.net hasn't propagated yet, so everything's still pointed at the old site (the one that starts off with, "Houston, we have finals"). At some random point in time, differing for each ISP, everything will point to the new site (which already has posts from friends on it). Then I will be much happier—because I will finally be able to test the silly guestbook script.

Welcome home, Amy, I say to myself. Look around. This is where you belong, whether or not you want to admit it.

Funny; this is the fifth time I've deleted a paragraph and started over. It's not that I don't have anything to say tonight. It's that my mind is tired and whirling and thinking about many different things at once.

The Christmas tree stands in the far corner of my living room, rising silently above the round tree skirt my mother quilted for me. We placed the crystal ornaments one by one on the tree, moving them close to the white and blue lights, to allow the lights to shine through them as much as possible.

Soon after I got home tonight, my mother called. I immediately suspected that something was wrong. Mom uses email to keep me updated on just about everything—she only uses phone calls when she's not comfortable conveying something through text.

Sure enough, something's up. My dad's last yearly physical turned up something abnormal, which further tests have indicated is an aortic aneurysm, size currently unknown. Judging from the fact that Russell (my family's doctor, and Mom's second cousin) has requested that Dad's tests be run as soon as possible, things point toward this aneurysm being something of a large one.