First few Alaska pictures up.

The thumbnails actually turned out pretty good on their own, without the full sized files.

http://www.megaloceros.net/images/Alaska.htm

It's only the pictures of my first two days in the state, but there's a few there, at least. More tomorrow, or whenever i get the chance.

Oy.

My grandmother- my father's mother- just passed away today. This morning, a little before noon, I think. She'd had MS, and she'd had a stroke, and she'd been making progress of a sort- for quite some time she'd been not remembering people or speaking unless spoken to, but the last time I saw her she asked 'did she bring cookies' when Grandpa managed to get her to comprehend my name. And she even remembered (more or less) the name of the woman who was staying with her and Grandpa to help with medical things.

Then last night she had a respiratory emergency somewhere around 5 PM, and the doctors said there was sepsis involved and got her resting and stuff. And then this morning, around seven, the phone call came in- with words like 'probably not going to last the morning'.

I dunno quite what to say at the moment. I'm glad it's over; the stroke damaged Grandma's personality badly, turning her petulant and leaving her unable to remember that a person who walked out of the room and was standing in the next room over was still there. I don't think she was retaining things from one minute to the next, for a while... I wish I'd known some kind of Buddhist sutra or something to start reciting, something for the liberation of the soul or some such. I mean, we had the Catholic priest in there, and we had the hospital chaplain (I think he was a Presbyterian minister)... funny, the only time I actually got to crying was when the religious stuff was going on. Dunno why...

At any rate, RIP, Grandma. You will be missed.