Back online, and stuff

Back online, hooray! It was the power supply as we thought. That's the third one in 5 years or so, so we need to figure out what's going on to cause it all. Spent last night downloading a week's worth of email and spam, and now I need to find out why some of the email filters aren't working.

Non-family related sad news - the racehorse John Henry was euthanized this week, at the honorable age of 32 years. He raced successfully until he was 9 years old, which is practically unheard of in the "big leagues" of horse racing (I'm not that familiar with the horses that race on the smaller tracks). These days, if an un-gelded colt wins a Triple Crown race, you can probably bet that they'll be retired at the end of their 3-year-old year. I can see the point about not risking their health by racing them unnecessarily, but I also don't think racing an immature (physically speaking) 2-year-old is that logical either. Anyway.

Family-related update: An aunt on Dad's side passed away yesterday, fairly unexpectedly, but she'd had health problems (asthma, etc) for a while. So, probably a funeral this weekend. Uncle is still hanging in, but it's not looking good. He wasn't at the reunion; he had surgery last week to remove some masses that were obstructing his intestines, and ended up having 2/3rds of his colon removed. The prognosis now is 60 days at best, and apparently the cardiologist recommended taking him off the ventilator so as not to prolong the suffering. This is apparently a pretty aggressive cancer. Uncle had spinal surgery last fall, and presumably there were MRIs and such as prep for that, and no one saw any of this mess. My other aunt with cancer is doing well, though. Her T-cell count is better than expected, and she may not have to take the full run of chemo/radiation (I can't recall which she's taking right now).

Otherwise, the family reunions were a good time. However, next year, I swear I'm taking some sort of vegetable dish instead of our usual famous peanut-butter Rice Krispy treats. Because at both reunions, the food was 45% meat, 45% dessert, and 10% pasta- or potato-salad or bread.

Small bit of good news - there's a slight chance of a second Firefly movie. Which would make me insanely happy, especially since it would supposedly happen before the first movie, timeline-wise.