Have you ever watched WarGames? AMC has been playing WarGames quite often lately, because its twenty-fifth anniversary is this year. I remember watching this movie as a kid and wondering if someone could really hack into the Air Force computer like that. Of course my 5 or 6 year old brain had no idea what hack was, but it still was wowed!

What makes this movie really great is the fact that twenty-five years later, and major jumps in technology later this movie still makes me go wow. Of course its more of a "Oh #@*& that could happen" kinda wow, because my mind can now grasp the horror of nuclear war.

Mark it up to nostalgia but this movie still has an edge that while it might not be as sharp as it once was it can still cut to the point. Look it up and enjoy!

 I am always amazed how we remember things differently depending on our current circumstances. Case in point, for the past two and a half years I have had an ongoing feud with my Grandad. It started when I went down and tried to live with him after my Grandmother had died. He had decided that dialysis was out of the question, and without it had been given only a month to live.

Knowing my Mom was worried and that I wasn't working for the summer (I was working full time for the school district at the time) so I volunteered to move in with him. My Aunt Laura arranged for me to have a job as a caregiver for a WWII veteran and things looked like it was going to be a cool summer, except the 110+ temperatures in Phoenix that summer.

While I was there several things happened that slowly caused a rift between me and my Grandad but one of the more important events was that somehow me and my Aunt Laura convinced him to start dialysis.  So his month to live has stretched out into years. Not that I regret the fact that he lived, not in the least, but I have to admit it has made things slighly awkward. (have you ever noticed that awkward is awkward to spell?)

Things didn't get better when I moved back in the fall, a few moths later my nephew was in the need of help, the life and death kind, and my Grandad was being a real *&&*^&* (pronounced jerk) about the whole thing and refused to help. During this time there was a phone call placed from him to my mom which I answered and that was the last time more than 5 words passed between us.

Then my Dad died. This is the guy who dedicated his last healthy summer running between Snowflake and the valley helping my Grandad out. My Grandad didn't even try to make the funeral, it didn't help mend our relationship. During this time my Granddad hasn't been in the best of health and I have still gone down when things looked really hairy and like he might not make it, they were just extremely quiet visits.

Last Tuesday I woke up at 4:30 in the morning with the sudden feeling that my Grandad was in the room with me. The feeling made me feel uneasy all morning. As soon as I thought my Mom would be awake I called her and said she needed to call him, honestly fearing that he had passed away. When she called me back she said he was fine but had a rough night. The feeling eased a little, but it didn't go away completely.

Because of what happened I told my wife I wanted to take her and the kids down to meet my Grandad as soon as possible, and she agreed. Wednesday he was rushed to the hospital and admitted to ICU. To say I was a little stressed would be competeing for the understatement champion title, the hardest part being that we had splurged on Monday, and didn't for see a possible emergency run to the Valley, so we didn't have the funds to go down. I want to say right now that my Grandad is fine and cussing out his doctors, literally cussing them out because thats just his attitude. This pass weekend I wasn't sure of this though and had a night of laying in bed remembering days gone by.

An amazing thing that happened is I couldn't remember any bad times, I only could remember the good times growing up I had spent with my Grandad, sitting in his Semi, working on old trucks, and restoring old rifles. I couldn't remember a single day of that summer except the few happy times. It was weird, because I knew the bad days existed but I could no longer call them to memory. The next day I talked to my Grandad for longer than five minutes, not long by some scales but considering the length of silence it was an eternity, and it ended with a "love ya" which I think was a huge step forward.

Last night I saw a piece of a binocular that had been broken by my son and his friends, picking it up I held the triangular piece to my eye and realized that while I was looking at the closet I could see my wife lying in bed. I remembered from one of my semesters of college physics that angular chunks of glass refracted images ninety degrees. So I played around with the glass and looked around corners then realized that the possible tragedy of losing my Grandad had caused me to look at the pass as if it were through a angular piece of glass and only the happy moments came through.

I need to learn how to look through that glass more often, then maybe it wouldn't be two and a half years of rift, but just enjoying each other while we can. I have already cheated my kids of six months of memories that may have been the best memory they will ever have of a man that was so influential in my life. I hope I have time to make up for that.