April 14, 2005
I found out late yesterday that a friend of mine died on Wednesday. He was 36 years old and apparently died in an accident when a piece of machinery at work fell on him. He was separated from his wife and he had two children. I think their ages were 5 and 6, thereabouts. I hadn't seen or spoken to him in a very long time and we were never what you would call close friends. I know his wife much better, but I had known them a long time. I know things had not been going well for him of late and I find this to be a tragedy, no matter what the details of his death are. It reminds me, in a way that circumstances occasionally force me to recognize, that life is fragile and often tragic. A lesson that we should try to count our blessings, savor the present and have an attitude of gratitude.

And in the category of when it rains it pours, my brother-in-law called last night late to say he and my sister were taking my mother to the hospital ER. She lives in an assisted-living facility with some level of Alzheimer's and she was claiming her hip hurt, she wasn't eating, felt dizzy and lightheaded and nauseated. I spoke to my brother-in-law this morning and at one point her blood pressure was 200/70?, which is really high. They didn't perform a CT scan, and her blood work was ok, but we wonder if she suffered a TIA, or mini-stroke. We're fairly certain this has happened before. Back to fragile again. Apparently she's fine, seemed to perk up a bit at the ER, and when they dropped her off back at her apartment she aid, "thank you, I had a nice time." Life can be bitterly ironic.

On the work front, I'm in telemarketer mode today, calling people to try and set up interviews about Medicare reform. Not going very well, but other aspects of the job are--got an interview scheduled for 10 minutes from now about Hepatitis C and I proofed a galley of an article and set up another interview for next week for a medical feature. Applied for a job or two--query letters, we freelancers call them, or cold calls or whatever.

Read a bunch of materials late yesterday for the new novel. I'm trying to get a sense of how thorough and intensive security is for G8 summits. The answer, of course, is very. I'll have to make a few phone calls soon to see if anybody'll talk to me about hypothetical security situations. Always a highlight of your day to have the federal government wonder if you're a terrorist.

Oh! Got my greenbelt in karate this week. We ordered it today. I've now got the same rank I had in American Karate System back in college before I had to quit and, you know, like study. The style I'm studying now is Sanchin-Ryu, which is so different from AKS to practically be something besides karate in many ways. Having fun, though.

Best,
Mark Terry