Sharan Volin

I know I haven't been posting much here but I wanted to post here. Yesterday my father, Stanley Volin, died. They said it was cardiac arrest. He didn't have any heart problems, but he was getting pretty old so I guess it was just his time. The funeral will be Monday morning at 10:30 (I'll know more when I get to NY. I'm flying there now and using in-flight internet).

Getting a flight was a complete nightmare since many airlines can't be bothered to offer bereavement fares (Virgin America, I love you guys, but $700+ round trip != "low fares" so saying you don't offer it because you offer low fares to everyone is total B.S.). Even the ones that do charge too much ($745???). United might have been better but I didn't have the info on the funeral home to give them. So for now I got a 1 way flight for about $300, which is what I normally pay for round trip:P.

I probably got a lot of my love for audio from him. He used to work as an engineer for radio stations and then was a recording engineer for Decca Records. When Decca moved out to L.A. he was married with kids and his radio license had expired so he went to work for the phone company as a repairman, which he did until he retired. I wish I'd been able to talk to him more about how I want to go into audio programming, but he'd gotten confused in recent years so it was hard to talk to him about things like that. He always had a LOT of records he kept in the basement.

He also was a travel agent in his spare time for years (we went on many trips and cruises at a discount when I was a kid). He even wrote a book, "How to Become a Spare Time Travel Agent", which he self-published and sold himself for years. I guess I got the writing from both sides. I wanted to teach him how to sell it himself on Amazon but he never really did much with computers after giving up webtv.

He was a great guy, and very easy-going. Everyone liked him, and he will definitely be missed.

BTW, Val, my white siamese cat, is named after a little white stuffed cat he gave me on Valentines Day when I was 2 years old. I still have the original Val.

My brother is getting married in 3 weeks and it's too bad he couldn't make it, but as a friend said he'll be there and will probably appreciate it more from where he is.