The weekend had high points and low points, starting high and ending low.

PUSH NEVADASaturday was spent with my dad, getting his network going and getting his Xbox 360 hooked up.

It took all morning to get the network going, as there was some oddness with his cable modem that would only let us connect up to it through USB. Turns out that there are some special undocumented reset steps you can go through to clear up trouble like that, so after contacting Comcast and getting that information, we did the reset and things worked fine. A quick trip to Fry’s to get some networking supplies and we got the Xbox 360 hooked up and on the network.

Dad signed up for Xbox Live so we can play against each other online. His gamertag is PUSH NEVADA, so if you see him trolling around in Halo 2, go easy.

After we got that set up, we went to see Mission: Impossible 3, and we both had fun with that. Was it the most in-depth movie you’ve ever seen? No. Did it entertain me? Hell, yes. It held its own with the Bond pictures I’ve seen, and I do so love the James Bond.

Sunday was the not-so-great portion of the weekend. My grandfather (Mom’s dad) is in the advanced stages of lung cancer, so we went to visit him. He is at home and he has hospice come in to help him out, but he can’t be left alone so my mom or one of her sisters stays with him at all times. He was getting a hospital bed delivered that day because he can’t really get up and walk around too much anymore, even with assistance. At the time we visited, he was on morphine for his pain and Ativan to calm him down, so he wasn’t really… coherent. He knew we were there, but he was very weak and slept most of the time. As I hugged him goodbye he was so weak he couldn’t lift his own arms away from me, so I had to help him with that. It’s really hard to see him like that - such a strong, proud, capable man rendered so helpless and weak.

After we visited him, we went to the hospital to visit my grandmother (Dad’s mom), who has been in there for a week (and actually should be headed home today). She was having trouble where spinal fluid was building up on her brain and not draining correctly, so they put a shunt in there to help drain the fluid off. On a positive note, she’s doing very well and seems to be more alert and spunky than I’ve seen her in months, so I think the procedure had a positive effect. That was hard to see her in there, though, with all the IVs and tubes in her head and everything. I’m glad she’s going to be OK.

And that was the weekend. One great day, one not-so-great day. Hard to say it balanced out, because it didn’t, but it wasn’t all bad. Here’s to looking forward to tomorrow.