A catch-all, catch-up post
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In addition to nursing the sick family back to health, lately I’ve been doing some well-deserved reading. The book I’m reading at the moment is Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle To Save The World. It’s a compelling read about Ike’s efforts to maintain peace in a newly nuclear-armed world.
I’ll give a more complete recap once I’m done with it. For now, back to the book!
Monday’s home invasion and shooting in Oakwood has left Raleigh’s downtown neighborhoods in shock. It has also shocked me as well. This took things to a new level and as good as the Raleigh Police Department is, there was little they could’ve done to stop it. As the saying goes, shit just got real.
Fortunately, the perps picked the wrong neighborhood to mess with. Oakwood is as close-knit as neighborhoods come, and residents spotted the suspects immediately. Brothers Shabar Marshall and Jahaad Marshall were arrested shortly afterward.
I learned this morning that the rumored neighborhood home invasion did, in fact, occur. A neighbor shared the details today and this previous crime was just as scary as the one this week. The evening of November 19th, a burglar broke into a home on Wake Forest Road in Mordecai and held the daughter at gunpoint there for 10 minutes while he looked for cash. The suspect escaped before anyone was hurt but it shook the family up so much that they moved away. No mention of this incident was made in the media, nor did RPD make any announcements. If it weren’t for the chat I had with the man at the local restaurant over the holidays I wouldn’t have known about it at all.
The good news is that the victim of the previous home invasion believes that Shabar Marshall was the perpetrator of the previous crime. He’s now behind bars, but for many neighbors that’s not good enough. This serious escalation deserves an escalated response from the community. The question is, what do we do?
Kelly started feeling better Saturday afternoon, when we all got out of the house for some outdoor time at Horseshoe Farm Park. By yesterday she was feeling back to 90%.
I think we’re out of the woods on this thing now. While there was nothing funny about my family being sick, I find it amusing that I avoided getting sick and I’m the only one who didn’t get a flu shot. Y’all already know how I feel about flu shots, don’t ya.
Well, that was an interesting 48 hours. The evening following our fun brunch at our neighbors’ home, Kelly remarked how emotional our son was acting. She had a hunch he wasn’t feeling well.
That night, we discovered that Kelly’s Mom Sense was right on the money, only it began with Hallie, not Travis. Both kids spent all night throwing up. We finally turned a corner about 3:30 AM.
I worked from home yesterday, caring for our sick kids and doing a huge amount of laundry. Kelly had to make a business trip to Charlotte, which she somehow successfully did on reduced sleep. When she returned she had zero appetite and, not long afterward, she fell victim, too. She had a rough night last night. Fortunately today the kids seem to be 90% or so and took care of her while I was at work this morning.
Somehow I’ve managed to avoid all of this germy muck, though I was everywhere my family was over the past few days and I’ve also eaten everything they’ve eaten. While the rest of the family was laid low last night, I felt a burst of energy and took down our Christmas tree single-handedly. I’ve often thought I have the most sensitive stomach in the family but I may need to change my thinking.
At any rate, the Turners seem to be all on the mend. Our kids are pining to return to school, too. Things appear to be returning to normal.
I know I don’t usually wait until January to begin my annual Highlights of the year posts. I’ve had tough time narrowing down my choices this time around, however.
Look for the first of these posts shortly.
I’ve been pondering my reality today, after spending much of the morning and afternoon meeting new friends at our neighbors’ New Year’s Day brunch. The question of what I might wish for in this new year has crossed my mind.
Truth is, I am extraordinarily blessed. Things are going incredibly well for me at the moment. I have a loving family, a good job, plenty of outlets in which to channel my civic passion, health, happiness, good friends, and boundless potential. I am right where I need to be, always.
Does this mean my life is perfect? Not at all. I still have challenges to overcome. We all do. I will do my best to learn from my challenges so that they create in me a better person.
We all have a finite amount of time on this planet. Love what you’re given.
If I had one resolution for 2013, it would simply be to focus on my goals. I remember reading a quote on a poster in my middle school library which said:
“Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off the goal.”
It’s easy to get discouraged by little setbacks but that should never stop one from trying harder to make something good happen.
Peace to all of you for the new year.
-Mark
So it looks like the Mayan calendar is going to come up short and the world isn’t going to end today after all. I’m kinda glad.
In addition to the ton of other stuff I got done this weekend, I spent a lot of time getting my gadgets up and running. Last night I’ve stayed up way too late futzing with my new Lenovo laptop, for instance, trying to get Red Hat’s Fedora Linux installed on it. Apparently this is something that’s damn near impossible. It’s taken all (and I mean all) of my considerable Linux skills to make any progress with this.
Lenovo apparently took some shortcuts with its laptop firmware which throws Linux for a loop during an installation. Rather than work around it, Red Hat tends to frown on Lenovo’s broken implementation. They do this in spite of Lenovo being, oh, just the world’s largest PC manufacturer whose North America headquarters is, oh, just fifteen miles away from Red Hat’s headquarters. You’d think these two companies could get it together but you’d apparently be smoking something if you did.
My solution involves hacking Fedora’s installer and learning far more about it than I care to know. I’ll post my working solution once I find it. For now, suffice to say that a if a grizzled Linux veteran like me has this much trouble simply getting Linux set up on a new laptop then it’s no wonder most people don’t want to touch it.
Well, that didn’t last long. I was all set to eschew getting more stuff when local PC manufacturer Lenovo had its public warehouse sale on Saturday. I wound up buying a new laptop and an IdeaPad K1 tablet. Much of my Copious Free Time has been spent getting these set up, leaving me less time for blogging. I hope to be able to post more starting this evening.
In my defense, this is the first brand-new laptop I’ve ever bought. This explains why there are so many non-working old laptops lying around the house. That, and I’m a packrat and a geek!
