Back from the Quad

Ken's grandmother's funeral was today. There isn't really too much to say about it other than Ken's family buries people completely different than mine does. My father's side, anyway. His family is Catholic, and so there was an hour-long funeral mass at the church as well as a graveside service (which was actually in a mausoleum because of the weather). When we buried my paternal grandmother a few years ago, we only had a graveside service. The whole thing took twenty minutes. Then we went to a local church to eat lunch. If someone younger dies, we have a visitation at the funeral home the night before ... but my father's side isn't religious at all, so they don't have church services. I don't think I've attended a funeral for my mother's side yet, so I don't know what they would do. I think they'd probably have a church service.

Oh, there was one notable occurrence: in the mausoleum, there were several vaults that had been purchased, and instead of a "Purchased for future need" plaque, they had a name, date of birth, and a blank date of death. I'm not entirely certain I'd put my name on a tomb before I had to. Talk about looking your own mortality in the eye. It gave me the creeps.

On the writing front, I received a rejection from Realms of Fantasy today for "Sudden Death." You know what this means--I get to buy my poker game now! Woooohoooo! Oh, yeah, I get to send if off again, though not exactly sure to whom. I had toyed with entering it into Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Award contest--the winner gets a big chunk 'o change--but it'll basically take it out of circulation until May 1st, which is the stated response time. I have a few days to decide.