My dad died

I got a call a little over a month ago. I found out my dad died that morning. He had been in marginal health for a couple of years and his mobility had definitely decreased in the past ten years. Although mortality is a fact of life (no pun intended), it is still a shock when it happens to someone you've known all your life.

After returning home, I discovered I had 48 hours to prepare a eulogy. This is what I delivered. I could have gone on and on and made it longer - but keeping in the spirit of my father, I didn't want to make anyone spend any more time in the church than was necessary. (He was a bigger fan of eating breakfast at the local Marie Callender's after mass.)

Some friends and family have requested a copy of the eulogy because they were unable to attend in person. Instead of trying to remember everyone who requested the verbiage, I uploaded it here. Click on this link and you'll be able to read the eulogy I delivered.

P.S. Many people have asked me "Let me know if there is anything I can do." Like I said in the eulogy, my dad wasn't someone who ever asked for help. He was the one who provided help. In light of this, something you can do in his memory is consider making a donation in memory of his name (Raymond Chabot) to the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Click here If you're interested in making a donation.

Vomiting pumpkins

I found these emails in my inbox and before deleting them, figured it might be good to post them here before I remove them from my personal internetz. (Source is a bunch of emails forwarded to me by people who like to forward emails. In this case, it was from my mom. She's a stitch. Obviously.)

Happy Halloween, everybody.

The bees are taking over

So my dad sends me these photos. Apparently, my mom mentioned that there seemed to be a lot of bees buzzing around in their backyard. One of their neighbors offered to look around for them to see if she could figure out what the commotion was all about ... it turns out there is this HUGE hive of honeybees in this small plastic cabinet thingy my mom uses for gardening related stuff.

Winnie the Pooh is drooling somewhere

Umm, can you grab that box of Miracle Grow for me?

Where is a bear when you need one?

I don't think my parents imagined this as part of their retirement plan.

The punchline to this story: So I look up some exterminators for my dad to call so he can get this safely removed. (My dad is *really* allergic to bee stings - to the point that if he gets stung, it's probably curtains for him.) After I give him the info, he asks me, "Will we be able to keep the food?" (He meant, "Can I keep the honey?") My answer: "Perhaps. But Lars Gustafsson would tell you to just go to the store if you want some honey."

Post Christmas stuff

So I worked like a fool to help subsidize the US Post Office, err, get my Christmas cards out on time this year. I mailed them the day before Christmas. Which means they were technically on time. Whether they got to anyone on or before Christmas wasn't my fault.

If you're reading this post, it's possible you received one of my world famous annual newsletters since this blog's web address is published on the newsletter. (And by "world famous," I mean three people I know have heard of it.) And if you read the newsletter, you probably noticed a bunch of bullsh!t interspersed with the banality and trivial events I recounted through the newsletter. Why do I do this? It's a backlash to newsletters I get. It's one thing to get a newsletter filled with references to people I actually know. It's another thing to read a newsletter and wonder aloud, "Who the EFF is this? And why did she accompany Jake to the school's hayride? And who the eff is Jake?" You get my point. Those sort of newsletters are written for an audience of one - the person who wrote the letter. And maybe his/her grandma. But that's about it.


Accordingly, this year's newsletter featured pirate talk, Charlie Sheen, and discussion of a Higgs boson. I'd post a copy of the newsletter here for easy download but that requires more work. And all that mailing a few days ago sucked the life out of me, 44 cents at a time.

So I'm was stuck at Boston Logan ...

I was in Boston for a two day business-related conference. (Don't ask me about the conference. That's work related and I find it energy sapping to discuss.)

My itinerary connects through Baltimore. Leave Boston around 6PM, get into Columbus around 10:45PM. Sort of late but I've flown through Baltimore before and there are certainly worse airports to get stuck in. I check the status of my flight before leaving downtown Boston and it appears that my flight is delayed by an hour. I briefly consider hanging out in downtown Boston for a bit before heading to the airport but decide against it since i) you never know how long it will actually take to get to the airport (Boston traffic ain't something you want to be stuck in) and ii) I have no idea how long it will take to get through security.

The Mud Pots of Calipatria CA

In January 2011, I visited one of my favorite parts of California: the Salton Sea. Below is video I shot of the mud pots near the small town of Calipatria CA. More information is in the description posted on Youtube.

When your spring garden smells like road kill :: Titan Arum in Columbus OH

Ohio State's Biological Greenhouse grows a lot of stuff. One of the plants in its collection is Titan Anum, aka "Corpse Flower," because is smells like putrid rancid meat when it blooms. It bloomed yesterday and the greenhouse opened its doors to the public to show off this rare event.

• When it blooms, it reeks.
• It's a big deal when one of these plants bloom. It blooms around once per ten years.
• It's a huge flower - about three feet across.
• The bloom dies off within 48 hours of the bloom emerging.

More info on the plant can be found here.

The line for the exhibit was long. When I first showed up, someone said it would take about 1.5 hours from where I was to get into the exhibit. I initially considered leaving but then thought, "it's not raining, it's not hot or cold ... waiting in line won't kill me." I'm glad I stayed. I stood in line for maybe 45 minutes (if that) before seeing the flower. It was worth the wait.

This sign was placed in front of the flower. It gives you its stats - size, weight, age, etc.

The good people who work in the greenhouse have a sense of humor.

In person, the flower definitely looks like something out of Jurassic Park.

When I first entered the greenhouse, I didn't really smell anything. One of the curators said that most of the smell was on the "other side" of the plant. I wasn't sure what she meant. Until I got to the other side of the plant. Then I smelled it. It was definitely an unpleasant smell but it certainly wasn't as bad as I was led to believe. I expected it to be smell like a zombie kill-fest ... four days later in the middle of summer. It was more like that bad smell you get if you throw away some packaging that had chicken in it and it sits in your garbage can in the kitchen and it stinks a couple of days later. But not quite as intense.

One of the caretakers cut a hole into the flower near its base. The purple spikes are the female flowers and the yellow buds on top) are the male flowers. The female flowers open first then, a day or two later, the male flowers open up. Apparently, they don't open up at the same time in order to prevent the plants from self pollinating themselves.

Apparently, the Ohio State Biological Sciences Greenhouse has five of these plants. You can see the four other plants in these photos.

All in all, it was an interesting way to spend part of a Sunday afternoon. If you've got one of these plants blooming near you, check it out. I guarantee, you haven't smelled seen anything like it before.