   Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
My grandmother died last night. This wasn't a shock or a surprise. Her health has been on the decline, and she's been in hospice for the last month. She lived a long life, and in her final days she was surrounded by her three adult children.
My grandma was a kind woman. She wasn't perfect, but I always felt loved in her presence. She was a retired kindergarten teacher, and was still working when I was a kid. I have so many happy memories sitting at her kitchen table, and I'm going to carry those with me for the rest of my life. She was also proof that anyone who claims that you get more conservative as you get older is full of shit, because she certainly didn't.
I think it's interesting how the body processes grief sometimes. I don't know that I'll cry, but over the past month, knowing this was coming, I've felt a tension in my gut. Now that she's passed, instead of relief that tension is replaced by a sense of emptiness. That something is missing that should still be there. Something has been taken away, and I feel it.
Of course, as I wrote that, I immediately started crying... so I guess my body processes grief in pretty ordinary ways too.
I wanted to come up with something profound linking this to Beltane, which we sit in the middle of right now, but it just seemed hackneyed. Like I was trying to dig out some greater significance when the truth is death comes whenever it wants. The only predictable thing about it is that it's the end of all of our journeys. I hope that when I pass I'm so lucky to have lived such a long life with people that I love around me in my final days.
For the record, I will be fine. I just needed to get these words out while they were still in my head. I don't have some rousing conclusion or deep insight to tack on here at the end, just that gut feeling that something is missing.
Because it is.
![Nerd & Tie[dot]Social Forums](https://www.nerdandtie.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/natsocial-nicepreview-square-300x300.png)
What kind of hat is that? The ears can bend when you have some anxiety.
It’s a normal hat that happens to exist in a comic. Like Max’s hair, it doesn’t need to make sense.
It could also be a modified version of those ears that move based on your brainwaves. I’ve forgotten the product name, but you can buy them.
Yet it isn’t! 😛
Now I want to kit-bash a hat that actually does that.
Maybe once Necomimi comes down sufficiently in price…
Necomimi [sic]
We havn’t -lost- anyone doing this… but there was the one time a guy got placed into a carefully labeled and properly recorded crate. We knew right where he was the whole time.
That happened to Duct Tape boy once…
Got caught in one of those earlier this year – seems the decision was made to extend the con to the end of Sunday, figuring we could stash everything in the temporary storage room. Alas, it turned out that we didn’t HAVE that particular room for more than a few hours after we closed down before the hotel had to make it up for something else coming up Monday morning. Good old missed communications. This will not happen next year. 🙂
I love how Sarah’s hat ears droop when she gets upset, it looks adorable.
In my experience, tear-down goes a *lot* faster then setup, at least if it’s well organised. I don’t know whether this would work at anime cons: but at the Free Software conference I mentioned before, at the closing ceremonies they always ask people to stay around a bit if they can, to help out with the tear-down — and there are always some who do. (Including myself: I really like helping out with carrying stuff — it’s an easy way to make myself feel useful…) This way everything tends to be over within like 1 1/2 hours or so.