Eulogy for my father

When I was a little girl, I had a favorite book called “My Daddy can fix anything.” You can guess why it was my favorite – because I had a Daddy who really could fix anything. Yesterday I fielded a call from someone looking for my dad, and my mother’s comment when I told her who had called was “Yeah, they call Dad whenever they have something they can’t fix themselves.”

He started learning this ability to fix things during his youth, working with his stepfather in construction -- where they tended to take a job first and figure out how to build it the night before they started.

He enlisted in the Army, then switched to the Air Force. His career in the Air Force included being “on the front line of the cold war” by running radar evaluation squadrons as far away as Labrador and being the officer in charge of a missile site. He graduated from the Air Force’s Office Candidate School in 1963. He was a member of the Air Force and National Rifle teams, and a gunsmith.

While his intelligence was what enabled him to fix anything, I personally think it was his integrity and stubbornness that made him successful. To start and run a business for 27 years – over multiple economic “slow downs”, flirtations with bankruptcy, and changing markets – took an incredible amount of stubbornness.

It’s this integrity (and stubbornness!) that meant he had a marriage of 36 years; even though *his* parents were divorced and remarried multiple times. It began with a first date in a junkyard in the rain – Mom’s roommates said if she saw him again it had to be true love – but ended as husband and wife, business partners, parents, and grandparents who enjoyed working, dancing, reading, and dining, all done together.

My dad was not given to casual displays of affection – although hugs and kisses were available when requested – but to more practical displays of affection like driving to rescue me after my 20 year old Mercedes starting dropping pieces of itself on the Houston streets.

He used his intelligence & integrity to raise two daughters, giving them opportunities he never had, letting them (finally!) discover he didn’t know everything, and letting them go – as far away as Africa and Turkey – to become independent adults.

In the end, no one, including my Dad, could fix his cancer that grew so fast and put him in so much pain. [He was stubborn and persistent until the end, holding on until we all told him it was all right for him to go.]




(More or less the eulogy I gave Thursday night at my Dad's funeral.)

Find my sister's here (minus her creative storytelling).

How walkable is your neighborhood?

This is cool -- a site called Walk Score that rates your address based on how close you are to different services. Our house rates a 66 out of 100 -- "walkable" -- now if only we took advantage of it more.



I'd love to know how your neighborhood compares.

RIP Jim Carlstead

James Edward Carlstead, 67, of Buda passed away at MD Anderson in Houston Texas, December 4th, 2007.
He was born in Keytesville, Missouri on September 25, 1940 to Francis Pauline and George William Carlstead.

A 20 year veteran of the Air Force, Jim performed many duties for his country including running radar evaluation squadrons; officer in charge of a missile site “on the front line of the cold war”, a member of the Air Force and National Rifle teams, and gunsmith. He graduated from the Air Force’s Office Candidate School in 1963.

In 1980 he started Carlstead Truck Sales, which did business in the Buda, Texas area for 27 years. He served on the Hays Youth Athletic Association Board from 1987-1989, was a member and officer of the Austin Rifle club, coached the UT Rifle Team for 10 years, and enjoyed square dancing with the Waterloo Squares.

He is survived by his wife of 36 years, Ellen; his daughters Cristi Carlstead of Istanbul and Sara Carlstead Brumfield of Austin, a son-in-law Ben and a granddaughter Josie.

The funeral service will be Thursday, December 6 at 7PM followed by a visitation until 9PM at St. Anthony Marie Claret Catholic Church, 801 North Burleson Street in Kyle, Texas. Graveside service will be held at 9:45 AM Friday, December 7 at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

In lieu of flowers memorials can be made to the University of Texas Rifle and Pistol Club; c/o Lee Patterson; 2112 Guadalupe St., Room. 512; Austin, TX 78705 or to the St. Michael’s Academy Endowment; 3000 Barton Creek Boulevard, Austin, TX 78735.

Bye-bye Daddy. I will miss you more than I can imagine.

Dad is dying.

This is an odd forum for this sort of information, but since we don't all live in the same small town and talk over our fences, it seems like the closest equivalent.

My Dad is dying. He was scheduled for surgery at MD Anderson the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to remove a tumor, but that Tuesday we discovered the tumor had quadrupled in size in the previous month (not normal for sarcoma at all) and was no longer operable. He started chemotherapy on Thanksgiving day. By Saturday he was in the hospital with neurotoxicity -- a reaction to chemo that causes a lot of confusion and, in his case, paranoia. He also couldn't really walk, mostly due to the tumor (we think). They watched his kidney function, which was slowly getting better, but when the white blood cell the chemo was breaking down starting hitting this weekend, they just couldn't handle it. (We decided not to do dialysis, which would only have been for more chemo, which he really wasn't handling well at all, and wouldn't have helped the tumor enough to be operable...) He's basically in kidney failure right now, slipping into a coma, and waiting for the stress to start affecting his other organs.

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Austin Firefighters Calendar

One of my highschool boyfriends is on the cover of the 2008 Austin Firefighter's Calendar:


How cool is that?!


(and to think I wouldn't have known it without Facebook...)

Rice Reunion: 10 years

I just got back from my 10 year Rice Reunion, and have a couple of observations:

1) I'm pretty pleased with myself and life right now -- which is a wonderful thing to discover. How could I tell? I wasn't nervous about this at all. For instance, my 10 year high school reunion involved a new clothing purchases and drinking copious amounts of wine once I got there. For this, I was throwing clothing into a suitcase 10 minutes before we left, hoping I would cover the vagaries of Houston weather, and drank moderate amounts of wine.

2) Geeks lacking social skills in college are *still* lacking social skills 10 years later. I like to think I've improved on that account (maybe I'm deluding myself), but I was surprised how often I had to just chalk it up to personality, and how less tolerant of it I am now. Turns out the self assured ones are the worst -- they have less perceived incentive for fixing their flaws. (Or don't realize they have them.) The ones that were just shy/awkward are (somewhat) easier to talk to now.

3) Rediscovering my freshman year roommates was the highlight of the weekend. We were best friends for first semester, and could hardly speak to each other second semester (putting 5 freshman in a suite built for 4 is one of the worst ideas Rice has ever had -- and our numbers show it, since only 3 of us stuck around Rice long enough to graduate).

4) Ben and I are "successful" -- both in that we are happy (see #1) and in that when we compare ourselves to our Rice peers, we don't find much jealousy. The only people I was even a little jealous of were 2 CS friends who have/are starting companies -- but I also feel that if I want it enough I can make that happen, too (maybe on a later or slower schedule, but that's OK, too). And, it turns out, many of our peers who aren't software/CS people were jealous of Ben and my projects -- if you are a chemical engineer or you work in oil, side projects are a lot harder to do. (The CS friends didn't even manage to get to our projects; see #2)

All in all a good experience. I'm glad we went.

Baby Einstein up at ParentHacks

One of my most clever ideas is up at Parenthacks.

This was Miss J.'s first halloween costume, 2 years ago.