The holidays went pretty well, and I mostly managed to avoid wanting to kill my relatives. That's considered a success with our family. My parents and aunt got me and my cousin Derek American Express giftcards that will be very handy, and I also got some books and trinkets.  I also made my grandmother some breakfast rolls using my mom's ( Read more... )

And for the other side of the family, and my maternal grandfather, who I unfortunately never met, this is a letter he wrote during WWII that I posted before. I did two separate posts for today because I realized the moods of the two would clash if they were in the same post. Comments in brackets are from my mother:

[I received this letter from my ( Read more... )

So this weekend while I was home we got some Asahi Beer, and as I was heading downstairs I passed the printout we have of my great-great-great grandfather's obituary. He was the one who was in Japan just as it opened and died there, so when we were in Japan we visited his grave ( Read more... )

So over the past three days I've had three separate dreams involving getting turned into a mermaid and finding out it was to teach a lesson (my in-dream response, "Bullshit"), getting caught in a mudslide up a mountain, and trying to figure out who hurt Nightwing along with something involving the commuter rail. I'm not sure what this means ( Read more... )

Reposted from my mom's journal with permission. My grandfather wrote this letter while he was in the Ardennes Forest in WWII. These were her comments on the letter:

I received this letter from my uncle, quite unexpectedly, a year or so ago. I believe the "shrine" my Dad refers to is the helmet on top of a gun. Wasn't sure what he meant at the time I ( Read more... )

Christmas as the relatives' was the usual mix of insanity and normalcy, though it was more subdued than in previous years. My aunt had an extremely ironic comment where we were going through some of my grandfather's things about us being crossdressers since I was taking some of his stuff. Oh dear, she has no idea how true that comment is ( Read more... )

I think I got my dad addicted to Firefly. Also, Gina Torres (Zoe) is damn hot ( Read more... )

I'm doing better today, am still pissed off but not a blubbering mess like yesterday. It helps that I went into church today and was able to commiserate with people there ( Read more... )

Subject line is sarcastic in case you couldn't tell ( Read more... )

Family is being annoyed by what people say but knowing you can't strangle them for it ( Read more... )