For those that have wonder what the heck happen to me, its a bit complicated.
First off I was in the progress of working on new companies while selling two existing companies. Not a lot of detail I can go into there but I should soon be gainfully unemployed soon. But this time around I will be able to actually have vacations. But these two sales were taking up the bulk of my time. I imagine the first 6 months of this year will consume a lot of my time in making new forms of income. I am not hurting for any ideas.
Secondly I recently heard that one of my grandmothers was “taking a turn for the worse”. My cousin told me that my father’s sister heard this from the step daughter of my mother’s brother who both works at a nursing home. For those that are not aware my mother and father are divorced and neither family is that friendly towards one another.
Most that know me know that I have been estranged with my family and not talked to them for 15 years, in part because I am not into girls (translation for those that don’t know I am gay). Not to mention for the greater part physical abuse from my father that I won’t go into detail. I will state that I forgave him long ago, and towards the end of my trip would learn before my father died he wanted to apologize to me. Which means a lot to me, and for that I accept his apology. I hold no grudge against him.
To find out where my grandmother was staying I had contacted the LDS church (Latter Day Saints = Mormons) office in Salt Lake City Utah. At first no one wanted to help me, at least until I tried to invoke sympathy. Because even though I had not seen my family in 15 years, my mother prevented me from seeing my grand mother for 20 years. Long story short she was embittered over me choosing to live with my father over her. Anyway after being tossed around 5 times I ended up from Salt Lake city to a Manti church where I reached a bishop that told me my grandmother was dead!!!!!!!!! Though after some pressure he got me the phone number for my grandmother’s neighbor. Who strangely has more contact with an aunt of mine then I ever had. She gave me the number for an aunt who told me my grandmother was alive, but had Alzheimer and cancer. They were not going to operate on her due to the Alzheimer.
My Aunt whom I have not talked to in a long time (and I probable talked to her more this once on the phone then I had ever talked to her in my whole life). She had asked if I had found a wife?!?!?!?!?! Apparently my mother did not tell I suffered from being the gay. I had told her that I had intended to visit my grandmother because I wanted to at least get a chance to say goodbye. I had missed that chance with my father’s dad. I had wanted to get a digital picture frame and take pictures as I was making my way up from Arizona to Salt Lake city. My Aunt had talked me into just bringing flowers and gave me the name of the nursing home my grand mother had been sent to. Funny thing is she remembered the robot toys that I got as a kid and was not surprised to hear I was working in the internet industry. I will go in to more detail about the robots in my next post.
After which I had contacted the nursing home my grand mother was staying at, and seemed from all the online reviews to be a top notch place to stay. The nursing home had told me that my grand mother had not taken a turn for the worse, and a visit would be good for her. After hearing this I have to say I was happy to find it was not as bad as I had heard second hand from the LDS church and my own family. The cancer was not life threatening. While she could not remember names, she was not far gone.
So a week later I was an hour into Utah when received a call from someone asking whom I was. I thought this had been a one of the hotels I made arrangements with. I gave her my name Benjamin, and she sounded a bit lose so I told her what my name was before my name change (the name will not be spoken). I thought maybe the friend that did the hotel arrangements may have put it under the name which I will not mention. The female voice on the other side screeched “You changed your name!!!!”. For which I asked who this was. She stated “I am your mom”. I assumed she got my cell number from my Aunt. After a brief conversation she said she would call me back. For which hours passed by and I received no call. It then occurred to me that I should ask her for a stuff toy my grandmother had made for me, which my mother kept in her bed room.
I had became estranged with my mother after telling her that I was gay and that I cut all ties off with my father. She seem to focus on the fact that I was not going to bring grand children in to the world at the time, and at the time I was under the impression that she wanted me to stop calling her as well. I forget with exact detail what it was she said, but the tone of the conversation was hard to forget. There is also more to my mother’s alienation of me that has to due with my father, but I am not going to go into that.
While in route to my first hotel the deer seemed out to get me as night fell. I had 5 near misses. Which is sort of funny after talking to one of my cousins that love to hunt, stated he never sees deer on the road at night. Here I am a vegan and not a big fan of guns.
It was not until the next day that I figured out how to find previous calls on my cell phone (out of all technology cell phone are not my favorite). I had called my mom and found out what she had really wanted me to talk to her about. Which was not that she had no problem with me being gay (for some reason she insists it’s a choice). What she wanted was for me to not visit my grand mother. Stating it was a family decision to keep “the grand children” away from grandma, because her not remembering who I was would make her feel bad”. The argument made no sense from what I had heard from my aunt and the nursing home. Both of which had encouraged me to visit my grandmother. The nursing home made it clear that a visit would be a positive thing.
I made the concession that I would not go if I could get this stuffed toy my grand mother had made, on a sewing machine that was handed down to my grandmother and was foot powered. My mother tried to claim that I had taken it with me when I had left her. But this is a item my mother claimed she was going to keep until I was old enough. This was not an item one forgets about where it went. Its way past that time for it to be in my possession. Its not worth a fortune either, but it was made for me. After this conversation I am at a point I could care less what happens to my mother. As the only reason she had chosen to contact me was to stop me from visiting my grandmother.
I visited my grandmother despite my mother’s wishes, and it was a short visit as my grand mother was tired when I had arrived. But as I was leaving and even though she was not able to remember me, or so it seemed. She started to sing part of the itsy bitsy spider song, which I think was her way of remembering me. My nick name after all is Spider. I am really grateful for this short visit, though I hope to make another visit in the near future.
On the way home I went to my last step mother’s house, as my father had passed away sometime ago. I wanted to see if she would let me have some of my things. For which she had no problem with that and actually encouraged me to take a gun of mine (the same gun that never shot an animal and I was the only one to fail gun safety in my county with). While going through my stuff I found two books from the Little House on the Prairie series. Both of which my mother’s mother gave me, and were inscribed by her on my 8th and 9th birthday. Even though haggard from my bad reading habits they were perhaps the second best thing to receive from my grandmother as these were a series that she loved.
Probable more info then most wanted, but this is the bulk of why I have not been around for the last 30 days. Never mind that there is new content to dive into from the last patch; I have not stopped playing wow because I was bored and should be back playing to some capacity soon.
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In regards to the device, there are always going to be gripes about first generation technology, and the same goes with second generation tech. It’s not in color, but the screen technology while black and white is something that should be considered as its low energy and is readable in direct sunlight. My recommendation is to focus on this device as a reading device. Which is what it is, yes it can be used to listen to mp3’s, but that’s not what I bought it for, I have other devices such as mp3 players, Sony PSP, and the most dreaded device called a cell phone (though the blue tooth head phones are nice). It cal also be used as a web browser. I imagine that the next kindle will be a huge leap in technology from the kindle 2, as was the kindle 2 from kindle 1. Keep I mind I was not expecting drastic leaps in technology from Kindle 2, so I was not open to disappointment.
, which admittedly is no where as entertaining as the first three books. After which I plan to finish off 