OKay

[chadu]

I was GONNA watch Serpico, then make dinner and watch Olbermaddow

Comments

[nixieq]

my family's actually started doing a bit of the pre-tagging thing, too. certainly my mom's started talking about what big furniture either ought to stay in the family or at least is valuable, so we don't just chuck it on craigslist or something. and there are one or two items i've expressed interest in (like my grandfather's bizarre 50s glass collection. vases & pitchers and a decanter that looks like a big science flask, all in sunset reds, oranges, and yellows. oh, and they're all HUGE.)

i think as long as the relatives being queried understand that it's not in eager anticipation of their death, but rather having an orderly... uh, distribution of property, kind of thing, it's okay.

your grandma might actually be as cool as mine was. quite possibly. >;) she sounds pretty nifty.

[multiplexer]

Pre-tagging heirlooms is a big Catholic thing. And I would TOTALLY lay claim to the St. Jude relic!!!!!! Even if it's just a toenail in there, an icky toe nail, I would totally lay claim. Because man, that means that St. Jude is PROTECTING YOUR STUFF.

And there is more than enough Polish old world superstition bred into me that I totally believe that a relic of St. Jude will totally have St. Jude protecting your stuff.

[wombattery]

We had an orderly disbusement of the heirlooms when my grandmother downsized as she moved from the home where my parents' generation grew up to a retirement place (accompanied by a selling off of furniture for a tidy sum; all original mid-century modern in excellent condition), and another one when she moved from there into a nursing home. I've gotten some nifty things out of those moves, but I'm not at all happy about it.

[penguinet]

We do something similar. From time and again we visit my grandmother and she sends us home with all of her stuff. I'm just glad I don't have a van anymore because she'd send me home with some strange furniture when I did.

At some point she decided that she was dying. I think it was a ploy to get rid of more things. She's funny like that.

[whswhs]

I don't know the context you're talking about, but in the universe I inhabit, Slovaks and Slovenes (the correct noun for people of Slovenian nationality, as "Slovak" is for people of Slovakian nationality) certainly are different. Slovaks are descended from the inhabitants of the former eastern part of Czechoslovakia. Slovenes are descended from the inhabitants of the northwesternmost of the six former Yugoslavian republics. I suppose the two words might have acquired some other meanings in relation to American ethnic groups, though, as a result of confusion over which "old country" they came from.

[chadu]

I think that since most of the people we're talking about here emigrated 1) into side-by-side towns back when 2) the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a going concern, that the initial divisions (Slovaks in Canonsburg and Slovenes in Strabane) made sense as you would see it.

However, over the decades, due to intermarriage and relative bigotry from other ethnic groups (Italians, Germans, Poles, Scots), they got lumped together as two names for the same central European group of mutts.

Over the years, it's happened to an extent between the other groups -- for example, it is not unusual to do the polka at an otherwise classic Italian wedding in my family.

[penguinet]

My previous fiance was the brother of my previous best friend. She went around the house and wrote her name on everything she wanted in case her parents died. They all thought it was funny. I was appauled. Apparently, my ex didn't care.