My brother-in-law, John, while not giving up, is nearing the end. It feels odd and somewhat painful to write that. I published a recent email that his wife, Steph, sent out to a bunch of us on his website (the link will open in a new window/tab). Please feel free to go read it. We are going to make the best of whatever time he has left, much as we have done in the past.

One of the things John wanted to do before he goes is to go to The Shout House in Minneapolis. Not knowing how much time we actually have, Steph called there to see how hard it would be to get a reservation. They told her that they were booked out many Saturdays in advance. She told them the story and they made room for us. All fourteen of us. They were extremely accommodating and they were so awesome the whole night. Our waitress was the bomb. They just made us feel like we were special and we had a great time all night. They were the epitome of great customer service.

They have locations in Minneapolis, Minnesota, San Diego, California and Glendale, Arizona. If you are looking for a great night out, please go there. It’s a lot of fun and laughs and they deserve your business.

And, no, I am NOT being paid for this post. I just believe in giving credit where it’s due.

Just found out that a dear friend who has cancer and had a stem cell transplant around Christmas time isn’t doing well and there’s not much else to do. Then the song “How to Save a Life”, by The Fray came on. Sometimes, I think that there’s this sort of cosmic thing going on. It’s like, when my Dad was dying and my brother was trying desperately to get home before he died and then, almost at the exact moment my Dad died, the song “In the Arms of the Angels” by Sarah Maclachlan came on the radio in my brother’s car, and he knew that Dad was gone. It’s just weird, y’know?

A little blog housekeeping here. Don’t run away. Please.

When I was little, I was in Bluebirds and/or Brownies and I learned the song that’s first verse is “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other is gold.” I have lots of good “old” (the term is not in reference to age) friends and I am making some new ones.

I have been neglectful in mentioning that I was awarded this I Love Your Blog award. Twice. First, Fantastagirl, from The Adventures of Fantastagirl, gave it to me. Um, a long time ago. Then about a week or so ago, Wander, from Wander’s World, gave it to me again. I really have no excuse for not putting it up. Well, except that I was either without computer, working, doing lots of end of the summer stuff, doing family stuff or I was having lots of inspiration for posting fodder. I’m sorry. I hope you guys will forgive me for not getting to this sooner. Thank you for bestowing this upon me. You are good, long time (that’s better than old, isn’t it?) friends.

I’m sure you all noticed that I did some changing around here. Not only did I change the template, but, in an extreme period of geekiness, I signed up for a bunch of social networking stuff. This is the making new friends part. You can follow me or friend me at these places, among others: digg, LinkedIn, Mixx, see my Netflix queue, Plurk, Reddit, Stumbleupon (give me some Stumble love), Vimeo and Popego.

My Popego link over there in the sidebar is really cool. It’s just below my FriendFeed button. Click on it. I’ll wait. *whistling* You back? Isn’t that cool? You can also click through to the actual site and it will show you all my moves around the net and stuff I’ve posted and whatever. FriendFeed also does thata. You can click on my FF link over there, too. I think Popego is more organized and easier to read than FF, so if you were only going to sign up for one, I’d recommend Popego.

Of course you can still find me at YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and gtalk (shellimil is my gtalk username). Good grief, you would think that I don’t have a real life or something. Wait, do I? The really cool thing about FriendFeed and Popego is that it pulls it all together for you through some weird Internet magic thing. I don’t know if that scares me or thrills me. hmmmm…Can you say extreme dork? Yep that’s me.

All that stuff that I just talked about is in the sidebar. Take a look around. Also, there is a box that says, “Shelli’s Shared Items”. That’s the stuff that I read in my Google Reader that I think is worth sharing with the rest of the world. Check it out and then check back again from time to time. You might be there sometimes or you may find a new friend or two.

(Quick note: If you didn’t see my post that I did from my Blackberry and you have a smartphone such as Blackberry or iPhone, you should check it out. It’s about a cool plugin you can get for your WordPress blog that allows you to publish from your phone. It’s pretty awesome.)

(Quick note 2: It was my Mom’s birthday yesterday. Happy birthday, Mom. I didn’t post yesterday or I would have mentioned it then. She’s old now. Almost old enough to retire. She has to win the lottery first so she can help support me, too.)

It was a very good weekend. Sometimes, when you experience something that moves you and entertains you and is wonderful and sad all at the same time, it’s hard to put it to words to tell people about it because there is no way to do it justice. It’s one of those “you had to be there” things. We really enjoyed each other’s company. There were 15 of us that were there for the whole weekend and one couple joined us on Saturday and Saturday night and another couple joined us just for the day on Saturday. All total, there were 19 of us who floated for at least a 5 hour trip down the river.

One of the cool things about the weekend was that we had two couples who were new to our experience. I cannot remember if I have talked about it before, so forgive me if I am repeating myself. As a result of the website that I did for my brother-in-law with regards to his ALS and for the benefit we had for them, another couple in our area who also had a recent diagnosis of ALS, found us and came to the benefit in April. Kip was diagnosed in October of 2007. His wife, Shannon, was 8 months pregnant at the time. Kip and Shannon also have an amazing spirit and they are an inspiration to everyone they come in contact with. This year, they joined us with another couple that they are best friends with. It was awesome to all sit and joke about the funny things about ALS (yes there are funny things) without people getting all uptight and feeling all “oh this is taboo, we shouldn’t say that”. It was awesome. It was just a good time to kick back and sit and gab about anything and everything. (Hi Kip and Shannon, Kane and Rian, if you’re reading, too. Love you guys!)

It went really well getting both Kip and John on the river and the people at River’s Edge were so awesome helping us get them off the river and then back to our campsite. I cannot say enough good things about River’s Edge. If you ever find yourself in the area, or if you live in the area and want to tube down the Apple River, please use River’s Edge for whatever your camping and/or tubing needs are. /end commercial/ They really were so awesome, though, and I am not sure we would have been able to do it without their help.

There were a few tears and a little bit of speculation for what the future holds, but, for the most part, it was just laughter and fun and enjoying the moment. I wish I had pictures that I could share with you. I can’t because they are either too, um, not for my kids to see or they are on the water camera that we haven’t brought in to the photo shop for developing. I’m not sure that there are photos on there that I would want my kids to see either. We’ll see.

Our kids did come on Sunday afternoon and they all went down the river again. I skipped out on that excursion by taking my daughter’s car back home. Saturday’s 5 hour trip was too much sun for this girl. I couldn’t do it another time. On my way home, although I have been to the river a gazillion times, I somehow managed to get lost. Luckily, I had my handy dandy Blackberry which, along with Google Maps, found where I was and told me how to get home. Gotta love Blackberry and Google Maps. It was totally awesome. When I got home I took a long nap.

I’m still exhausted. I may sleep all day tomorrow, my one day off this week. Then I work Thursday and Friday and then I am on vacation! Hurray!

Okay. Tonight I went out with 2 of my SILs and a couple family friends. I had an awesome fucking time. It was 2 for 1 from the time we got there (7:45) until 10. I think we had 5 rounds (multiply that by 2) by the time 10 came around and several after that. After 10 t5here were only 3 of us. I am no longer coerrecting typos. Just so you know.

Let me just say, my SIL is fucking awesome. she really is an inspirationg. I don’t know how she does it, having a husband with ALS. I wish I could take away some of her pain. She is amaizing. We really had a great time and I am so thankful that we could take her out of her situation for several hours. It was her 40th birthday, too, so doubly great. She was having a good time.

Fab wanted me to sing karaoke tongight and record it, but none of us sang, inspite of the fact that 2 of my SILs are music teachers. There was way too much music to cooose from. Plust htere were only about 10 people in the whole place. What the lell is the poing? Seriolusly. We played darts. That was fun, but we didn’t finish our game before they ckicked us out. That suckedc.

Okay. I have a headache. Jason came and pickedc ups up. I dinnt drive. Jason broght then home and then brought me back there. I mean here. Now he wants me to come do betd. I thin k I better go.

Did I mention that I have 6 13 year old boys here for a sleep over for Sam’s bithday? Yeah. I got a headache alrday.