Back at home

We got back Monday afternoon. Man, I hate traveling!

I used to be ambivalent about it. But now, with the disability, it's really rough. The trip was worth it, though. We all went up to the home town, Brockway PA, of my maternal grandfather for a family reunion. Now, we've been to reunions for just the relations of my maternal grandfather before. The last one I was at was in '94. There were a few of them in the 90's and the largest turnout was about 80 people. This time there were over 150 people there. And this turned out to be a bit over one forth of the actual living relatives. We have over 450 people who are descended from my great-grandfather. He had 8 children, I believe, and these children then had large broods as well. My mother is, in the Borg vernacular, 9 of 10. (My maternal "ethnicity" is Italian. I'm half Italian and half German on my paternal side) . Needless to say, the food was absolutely wonderful. I ate so much that weekend I was good to go for days. The people were great, too. We found out that one of our distant cousin's was living in Germany at the same time we were and didn't even know it till then. The stories that the elder generation told were great as well. Lots of interesting a fun tales from the past. I only wish that more of them could have been there. Five of my mothers six brothers have passed away already and one of her three sisters is recovering from some pretty heavy-duty surgery, though she's doing exceptionally well. It was funny... There were a lot of really hot looking women there but they were all related to me in one way or other. It brought to mind the Jeff Foxworthy joke, "If you've ever gone to a family reunion looking for a wife, you might be a redneck." Luckily I am not that much of a redneck.

That said, the time spent before and after the reunion was miserable. The drive is about 4 or 5 hours one way. And the first two nights we stayed with one of my aunts. I love them dearly but it's just not easy to sleep in a spare room and all. The other two nights we were in a hotel. That was a little better. From now on when I go anywhere I'm staying in a hotel. It's just to difficult any way else. It's also caused me to think about the whole idea of travel quite a bit. How much do I really want to go anywhere? I know it's not good to be a hermit but even going to work is a hard, painful task.

The only other thing that was significant from the trip was the email backlog I had. I'd brought a laptop up with me but there weren't any convenient links. I had 200 new messages of which about 120 were spam. The spam filters caught over 1600 so it could have been worse. The 120 wouldn't have gotten through if I'd ever get around to upgrading that system. It's be all set if frelling Verizon would fix the fsck'ing DSL line. Maybe this weekend I'll get a chance to yell at them some more.