Wedding and family
[Timestamp in USEDT]
I felt sad when I saw Canada across the water as I drove along the edge of New York State this afternoon. I really did enjoy my stay there.
I didn't enjoy the wedding so much. My cousin's friends apparently don't value diversity that much; they all look like they'd just tried out as extras for that new 90210 show-thin blonde women and buff guys looking like American Secret Service agents. It looked nice enough, but they didn't have time for a long-haired purple-shirted bow-tied bloke like me. With only one or two exceptions, the only people who didn't completely blow me off were family members, and one of the exceptions was the barmaid at the clubhouse, who I think would have been more at home in San Francisco's Mission District.
It's always interesting seeing family, especially when there are more than a handful of us, which is extremely rare. Travel is in my blood so we're spread far and wide, and the fact that we have the same grandfather or whatever is just a trivia point-none of us know all that much about each other. Instead, we talk about places we've been.
When I told friends and colleagues in San Francisco that I was going to South Africa, the reaction ranged from 'Wow, how exotic' to 'Why are you doing there? Aren't you scared?' (Then I tell them about my ex, a white South African, who had a fabulous time exploring that country by rail with her American lesbian wife a couple of years ago. A year or two later they took their infant daughter along, so no, I'm not scared.)
By contrast, when I told family members I was going to South Africa, a typical response is 'Cool, I was there a couple of years ago and it was awesome! Here's the name of a hostel you should stay at when you're in Cape Town.' All spoken in Dutch, of course. Since South African was colonised by the Dutch once upon a time, their names for cities and towns vary very much from the English names.
One part I did enjoy was brunch the next day. The company wasn't any different, but the venue was a lot more pleasant: my cousin's new husband's lakeside home. They were showing off the beautiful new deck along the house, but I think having a nice deck over the lake is impressive enough, especially when there's a sauna right next to it. (I would've put a hot tub next to it, but these blokes apparently reckon that cutting a hole in the ice when the lake freezes over and alternating between the water under it and the sauna is more fun.)
The property also features a 70s-style A-frame shed, where they store motorcycles and various snow vehicles, and there's the kind of workshop space that I've recently realised I'd like. I'd like to live in a place like that in general, if it wasn't 400km away from the nearest cosmopolitan city, and if that city celebrated creativity and diversity more than Toronto. My dream poly-friendly intentional community would have water views like that.