better

the rest of this month has been much better. dad got orders to take off work for a few weeks and said he's enjoying his first taste of retirement. he's gone to va beach this weekend through next. i'll be joining him for a day next week. before i go i have an interview with wichovia. i'm nervous. i haven't had an interview in... five years? hopefully i'll do just fine. before i heard back from the bank i had an offer from my new district manager to change stores and get a raise. i said i'd take it but i'm hoping i don't have to if this works out. i have today and tomorrow off. my first actual weekend on the weekend in a very long time. but gareth works this morning and tomorrow night. i opened yesterday and we went to see taking wood stock last night. besides a completely nude scene by emile hirsch, getting to see dimitri martin's large nose on the big screen and an awesome tripping scene it didn't thrill me much. we might go see ponyo tonight. i was glad to miss out on his viewing of halloween II this weekend. that and inglourious basterds were much too bloody for my taste. i think these were the last of the summer movies for gareth to review. i hope they still want him to do reviews for them. or that he can find somewhere else to do them. i think he's done really well with them. especially being his first time. he's got a passion and a talent to go with it. i hope he has more ambition or maybe just luck than i've had with those things. but even if he doesn't i know we'll be just fine. we're happy and honest hard workers and i know we'll make it through whatever comes our way.

scary

my dad had a heart attack. he's ok now but it's pretty terrifying getting the phone call that a loved one is in the hospital. especially after what my mom's been through. he left work not feeling well on thursday and stopped at an urgent care while driving home. he ended up at mary washington but they didn't know what was going on until friday morning. that's when i got the message that i should be there. i was on my way out the door to work so i called my half asleep manager and told him i wouldn't be in. gareth drove me there. he'd been up all night watching and reviewing district nine. it's nice having so many siblings in my family. especially when there's something wrong. most of us were there. my sister in seattle was there via text. we all waited a few hours for him to come out of the cath lab to learn whether he needed surgery or not. he had two blockages but they weren't as closed as moms so they were able to put stints in. we were so relieved to find out he didn't need surgery. we saw him shortly after. he was on morphine and hungry but in good spirits. we headed back to r'mond and i went in and closed so my manager didn't have to work a double. so that was all scary but had just about the best possible outcome. i have today off and i'm going to head home and either visit him there or at the hospital if he's still there. besides all that my week's been pretty uneventful. i applied at wachovia and was asked to complete an online questionnaire. they indicated that i passed and said a representative would be in contact with me shortly. it's been over a week. gareth almost quit this week. he was promoted two months ago to a shift lead. he's been leading shifts ever since but his pay raise hadn't gone through. they kept promising "it'll be on the next check" and saying he'd get a backpay check as well. he told his manager that if it wasn't on the one this week that he quit. unfortunately it was. we both need to get out of there. but it's hard to find something else working full time with everything else going on. we'll figure it out though. i saw sunshine cleaning last night. it's really good. and it has the saddest scene with an old woman who's husband has just passed. try and watch it without crying. i started welling up when i saw a preview with that scene in it afterwards. sometimes life is pretty sad. luckily it was just scary this time for me.