Wmcmanus

Thanks, Dusty. I hadn't really thought of it that way, at least in terms of rewinding and wondering why I didn't pick up on any signs. But like in your experience with your co-worker, there really weren't any signs. His wife was with him all night and she didn't pick up on anything. You're also right in that the proximity in time somehow makes it hit closer to home, and oddly eerie (for lack of a better word) in some way. It doesn't seem fair, but I guess that has never been a guarantee.

Thanks, Gary. Haven't seen you two forever! Hope you're keeping well. I wasn't especially close with Bill, but did have a lot of respect for him. It's just so odd that it happened right after his class reunion when he was out having a good time catching up with people and laughing about old times. I'm dumbfounded though. He was just standing around chatting with people, stone sober, not exerting himself in any way... I've already got an appointment with my cardiologist for Monday of next week when I get back to Cayman. Probably time for another prostate exam as well.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. Essentially, it's a new design so really 30.1 but called 30.7 to run parallel to the 20.7. For a big room, they could be a lot of fun.

It's so odd... now finding out that Bill died last night at about 10:30pm, maybe an hour or so after I last saw him. The bands quit playing at 10pm, per the agreement with the Abbott at the school. He drove home, less than 10 minutes from the school, with his wife. He walked into his house and dropped to the floor and was dead in less than 30 seconds. I wasn't close with him, though we did have a nice connection and mutual respect. Just someone I knew and always enjoyed chatting with. I'm simply dumbfounded by it and the randomness of life sometimes.

Kind of a long story, and a sad one at that. I'm at home in Illinois this weekend, and attended the homecoming football game and after game tailgating party last night, including our first ever BruinsJam, which I helped to organize. Big stage, lots of great talent, and nearly everyone who performed was a graduate of the school, from the classes of '64 straight through to '15. It's not my reunion year (I was in the Class of '80), but I've been going every year of late, and really enjoying the opportunity to catch up with people from the surrounding classes. It's a small Catholic high school (about 100 students per class) on a 1,000 acre campus with a monastery, apple orchard, an amazing art barn, lots of farm land, and deep woods leading down to a river. I'm on the steering committee for a $20 million capital campaign project, and we use the homecoming weekend as an opportunity to connect with some of our key donor targets on a social level. One such highly successful person was Bill Prokup, from the Class of '82 (see pic of him and I from last night), who was a great guy and someone who (oddly enough) always seemed to look up to me. He went to Illinois State as an accounting major, and overlapped with my time there just long enough to enroll in the intermediate accounting course that I was teaching. I had done my bachelor's in 3 years and my master's in a year and a half, and then joined the faculty on a full time basis for just one semester. So it would have been my 5th year out of high school and Bill's junior year in college. So we've always had that connection, in kind of a big brother, little brother type of way. He was an A student at ISU, and went on to become a CPA and eventually left public accounting and started his own company in a totally unrelated business, which he was always quite humble about... but somehow, out of thousands of graduates, managed to land himself on the list of our top 75 most capable donors. While I wasn't, last night, directly talking with him about the capital campaign, he did bring it up to let me know that he was very much supportive and that we could count on him to be a part of it. Then I opened Facebook this afternoon and learned that he died of a massive heart attack at around midnight. Attached is a pic of he and I taken at about 9pm, and he seemed perfectly fine. He was a great guy. A humble man with a gentle spirit. I'm shocked, and will really miss him, and feel gutted for his wife and kids. As Warren Zevon would say, "enjoy every sandwich."

I'm a user, not an expert. Any chance I can crash on your couch when I'm in India next month? I'm cool with curry, but not too spicy.

Rough watching all of the endless recap of this shit in Vegas, fucking sickening. So many innocent lives taken and others will never be the same. Don't even know where to begin, how to even think about it. RIP all, nobody should have to die like that. Then the up and down all day long with Petty being reported almost dead, then dead, then not dead, and dead again... what an awful 24 hours all around. RIP, Tom. You did well with your time here.

Sounds like something to look forward to. I'm just hoping to outlive Keith Richards.

Happy birthday, Steve!

Thanks, guys. Birthdays are always nice. Now that I'm 55, my full AARP benefits set it. So look out iHop, here I come with my discount card! All I need now is my walker and some tennis balls.

RIP, Walter. This really sucks.

Ya, it's hard to know what to say sometimes. Miss you, Matt.

RIP, Jerry Lewis. A true legend. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jerry-lewis-dead-nutty-professor-bellboy-star-was-91-721408

RIP, Don Baylor - baseball great and overall good guy, much too young to die, at 68. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/sports/baseball/don-baylor-dead-baseball-mvp.html

Kind of cool, the 2 minute interview is nice: http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/articles/eric-clapton-just-caught-the-biggest-salmon-in-iceland-w433301