Sleep was not to be on the agenda for last night, as I'd hoped it would be. I got into bed about half an hour after posting my previous Garbage entry, thinking that I might finally be able to get a real night's sleep, only to wake up at around 5 AM to the sound of paramedics entering the unit - my mum was having a heart attack! :(

Needless to say, that was totally unexpected.

It wasn't long before she was being rushed away in an ambulance to the nearest hospital. Luckily, she's OK - as OK as one can be after a heart attack, anyway. They later performed an angiogram, which involves x-raying the area after a radiopaque liquid has been injected (by using a tiny catheter and tracing it back to the heart through a main artery). This allows them to see the flow of blood through the area and exposes any clots or narrowing in the arteries. Due to the type of problem found, they were able to then perform an angioplasty, which is a form of surgery that is undertaken inside the artery in the same way that's used for the angiogram (using a tiny catheter). So far, so good! It's been a roller coaster ride, but it looks like things will be OK, which is a massive relief. The initial results have been good and mum's certainly acting like herself again, so now it's a waiting game to see what happens in the next few days.

Today has been a frightening experience I won't ever forget.

For now, I'm going to try to get some sleep again, hopefully without the eventfulness this time... *gulp*

I don't know where I should start with this entry because so many things have happened since I last logged my thoughts, but Wednesday of last week seems as good a place as any.

After an early wake up (I've been going to bed at 6 AM for the past few weeks) I headed to Cooloola for two meetings regarding quotations. Both of those meetings generated an enormous amount of work, some of which had previously not been brought up but had to be completed on a tight deadline (from Friday last week to Monday). I had very little sleep from Wednesday onwards as a result, but as it would soon become apparent, that was just the tip of the iceberg; insignificant compared to what was about to happen.

After getting around two hours of sleep on Saturday morning, I was woken up. It was my "sister" (Erika) on the phone and something was obviously wrong. It's amazing how much you can derive from someone's voice.

A friend of ours from school, Pryde, had killed himself on Friday night. I don't think I need to explain anything else; all I can say is that I was (and still am) shocked.

Erika came up to the bay later that day and we caught up... then Wade and Casey the next day. It was comforting to see everyone again and just be able to talk to people about it. A dinner was organised for Wednesday night (the funeral was on Thursday) at a place called The China Pearl (where Erika is apparently their best customer, even if she only ever orders the "satay calimari, no capsicum") and a lot of friends that I hadn't seen in years were able to make it. Having everyone in the same place after so many years was really good and made it a lot easier to deal with for all concerned. Thursday was very difficult, as had been the entire week, but to try to find a positive in an otherwise obviously negative situation, it did manage to give some closure (as cliché as it sounds). It's been surreal. Although I'm probably sounding clinical, I don't feel I can go into emotive detail at this point and still have it make sense without writing a 20-page epic, so please excuse my unemotional succinctness.

Having an open casket was probably difficult for many people but was something that I found to be a quasi-Zen-infusing experience. It gave a high level of completeness to something that would otherwise feel open-ended and passive. It was like a real world example of the "Zen Circle" principles. He looked just as he always had, except that what was there no longer felt like "him" anymore.

It is a tragedy, but I try to remain philosophical. I would rather remember him for that priceless grin than for what happened on that Friday night. It will be a while before things start to become "normal" again, but all of life is a part of life, even death.

I'll probably write more when I have the time and energy, but for now it's time that I got some sleep.

It's been over a week since the last update and things have been busy, but that's not anything you wouldn't have already assumed, given how often I say that :)

My wisdom teeth, or more correctly the sockets where they were, are starting to heal over now. The stitches finally dissolved on Saturday night (to tell the truth, I cut the last one out; it was getting exceedingly annoying and wasn't doing much). It's great to be able to eat anything I want again without having to carefully nibble at it. The experience wasn't as bad as I'd thought it would be, though. I was eating pizza the night I got home from the hospital, for example, albeit gingerly. My main concern was getting an infection and not having the sockets heal over, but it appears I was careful enough and won't have to go through that ordeal.

I'm now left with 24 teeth out of a possible 32 (they said to the other 4 wisdom and 4 premolars, "Sorry, but this mouth ain't big enough for the 32 of us!" *picture cartoon teeth with guns, here*).

I was in Brisbane over the weekend but didn't have much spare time. A lot of it was spent coding things, emailing a company in the US regarding an order I was trying to place (the Australian branch had no idea, which isn't atypical) and sleeping odd hours.

The logo I designed for a local café is now up on their building and looks pretty good. The colours didn't turn out exactly as I'd wanted, partly because it's difficult to match screen colours to vinyl colours, but more so because they decided to change the background colour from black (which they had specifically requested), to navy, which changed the perception of the other colours. *cough*butchered*couch* ;) But it still looks good, just not how I'd intended it to :)

In addition to that, I was asked to do another logo recently. It's also now on public display and looks really clean and classy. I'm pleased with how it looks; a design that was perfect from the first version.

I heard that The Matrix Reloaded was banned in Egypt... how unfortunate for the people there - The Matrix was released without any problems in 1999. One thing is certain: if the people want it, they'll find a way to get it.

I also finished a cantenna but haven't had much time to test it, I'll post more about that later in the week.

Time for bed. I hope you're rugging up warmly in this cold weather!

Forum-nazi signing off :)