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Just an update in the public realm since my last two posts were protected. On Sunday, I found out that my biological father passed away on October 30th. His funeral was last Thursday and I was not located in time even though I would certainly have gone. I didn’t know him at all; we had not had contact in more than 20 years except for half an hour on the phone about a year ago. Unfortunately, I find myself in the very awkward predicament of being his sole heir. His brother lives in Delaware, but my father died in New Jersey and according to intestate succession laws, I would likely be appointed administrator of his estate. Needless to say I have no experience with this, and having been out of contact with him I never expected to be in this position. Also, he was only 55, and while I knew he had heart disease I didn’t expect him to die anytime soon.
I am trying to figure out what to do. I was fortunate to have yesterday off (for my foot) because that gave me an opportunity to do a lot of research. I am probably going to have to go to New Jersey this Thursday to meet with a local attorney and start going through his papers.
I haven’t been doing much online at all lately because I’ve been throwing myself into genealogical research on Ancestry.com for a couple of days now. I’ve collected a lot of different names - multiple marriages will do that - but I haven’t traced back any further than my great-great-great-grandfather. I realize that’s further than many people can go, but I don’t actually know much beyond my great-grandmother’s generation. I know a little about her and her sisters, and I know my great-grandfather was naturalized in 1913, but I don’t know when they came to the U.S. or even where they came from. Family lore says Russia, so it was definitely eastern Europe, but that’s as far as I know. The easiest people to find are the dead ones, of course, because they show up in the Social Security Death Index. I’ve confirmed a lot of dates of death that way, and thanks to California’s death index I’ve found a few people that I didn’t know existed - my stepfather’s grandparents, mostly. The tree is a mess of course! A narrative would probably be easier…maybe I’ll try writing one.
Have you ever noticed that when you really need to pee, the closer you get to the toilet the more urgent the need becomes? I hate that!
Here is an example of my wife’s sense of humor. This is from an actual incident that happened when she was not more than five years old, but she wrote it just this morning.
CHUCK THE HAMMSTAIR HE WANTED TO DRIVE THE TONKA TRUCK HE SED SO AND SO I PUT HIM IN THE DRIVER SEAT AND HE WENT VROOM VROOM AND HE DROVE AROUND VROOM VROOM SUM MORE AND I FIGURED WHEN HE IS DONE HE WILL GET OUT THE TRUCK BUT HE DID NOT WANNA COME OUT SO DADDY HADDA GET A SAW AND HE SAW OFF THE TOP OF THE TRUCK AND THEN CHUCK CAME OUT AND HE HAD FUN BECAUSE HE LIKES DRIVING TRUCKS THE END
I love her so much!
My mom is cool because she’s taking charge of her life. She got braces a couple of years ago, at an age when very few people would bother with them anymore. And though it pains me to say it, she’s separating from my stepdad because she knows it’s not a healthy relationship for her.
She’s also a very good organizer - highly involved in her church and in many online communities. And she’s awfully tolerant…not only of various cultures but of her daughter saying things like “I’m a lesbian” and “I got a tattoo” and “I had pictures of me naked in a lesbian porno mag!”
(This was going to be longer, and I would like to expand it, but I’ve been so busy doing other things that I figured I would post what I have and come back later!)
I’ve been playing Katamari Damacy like crazy, thanks to Chris-O, and A has been watching me this whole time. She’s had the main theme in her head thanks to Eclipse and Malcolm pooling their resources to send me the soundtrack, and so she knows basically how everything works. I’m quite pleased to say that she’s picked it up herself now, and she’s completed Make a Star 1 and she’s working on Make a Star 2! We’ve been discussing KD a lot on MOO, so I posted about her playing and had the following exchange with P7:
A has just completed Make a Star 1 for the first time. This woman almost *never* plays a video game. Mwahahaha.
How sad that the holy grail - a chick who plays videogames - still has problems finding a mate who plays videogames.Heh! Well, at least it means we’re not fighting over it. And now I have somebody to try two-player KD with.
I really am happy that she’s playing too. I like it when we can share fun things. 
I can finally tell the secret I’ve been holding on to for…oh, a couple of months now!
click to enlarge
Those are our “wedding” rings. We can’t get legally married, of course, and we’ve been practically married for a few years now, but this just symbolizes our commitment. I’m on cloud nine now that we finally have them. We ordered them a couple of weeks ago from DVB, a New York-based company that is the source for many other sellers. My wife (I’ll be calling her that more often now) felt strongly that she wanted a poesy ring, so we were looking at those pretty much exclusively. The ones we ended up getting are in Old French, and they say here is my heart, guard it well. You can see a close-up picture from the maker, but it doesn’t show that the word coeur is actually a drawn heart. It’s based on a ring that is currently in the British Museum, and it dates to about the 15th century. My ring is 14k white gold, and my wife’s ring is 18k yellow gold. For heterosexual couples, the man doesn’t usually have other jewelry to coordinate with and doesn’t care what color the rings are. But being two women, we each had different tastes! We’re not having a ceremony just yet, though…we will probably have some kind of party for our ten-year anniversary, but we don’t really feel the need for a ceremony right now.
As I mentioned, I am absolutely flying high with this. I love our rings, and I love my wife.