A couple more months and I could totally pull off a Robert Smith look.  The Cure has been one of my long standing favorite bands. I’d have to learn how to be a little more morose.

Ok.  Aside from a crazy long road trip this last weekend and a my nephew being born things have been a little slow lately.  However those two things are rather large.

Tomorrow marks my brother’s birthday.  Weird.  Haven’t talked to him in a long while.  I wrote him a letter.  I should mail it off.  Probably will tomorrow.  He’s in basic training right now.  And I don’t want to say I’m not supportive, but maybe I’m a little indifferent.  It feels hard to put a lot of emphasis into caring when I haven’t spoken to him in any great length since last July, and even then he just blew me off.  I was waiting and sitting and hoping he would call me, or reach out in some manner, like I’ve tried for him on occasions in the past, but it never happened.  The letter I wrote could hardly be called a letter at all.  Its filled with minutia.  I really was hoping we could clear the air in person, or at least on the phone.  We are brothers after all, and as easy as it would be to forgive, its still hard to forget.

Its hard to forgive someone you don’t really know, and out of all my siblings, I just don’t know my brother.  And of the opportunities we’ve had to get to know each other, I got excited, and then let down when the didn’t come about.  And that was the most frustrating part.  Maybe he didn’t want to get to know me.  Maybe he did and didn’t know how to go about it.  But then again, it really felt like he didn’t even try.  I’m an easy person to clear the air with, I’m quick to forgive.  But only if I see effort and reason to.

Hmmm…. reminds me of what I always told my sixth grade students.  “I’ll always care about your grades and work, probably more than you do.  But until you care about them, and put in the work that goes along with caring about them, nothing is going to change.”  Anyways, happy birthday PJ.  I hope its a great day than all your other days in basic.

(and I say all of this even though he didn’t write me for my birthday, or say happy birthday to me in any manner last month)

Eeeeeeeeeeee. I’m an Uncle (again). My older sister Carrie had her second son yesterday morning. His name is Wyatt.

Yesterday was my sister’s birthday.  Embarrassing pictures of her from our childhood will be scanned and posted on here tonight.  Wait and see.

Its all relative really.  My assumptions about driving in Cleveland in their “deadly storms.”  I grew up in the Northeast.  I delivered newspapers at 5:30 am in snowstorms on a bicycle for years.  I remember temperatures in – 30’s, and I still delivered newspapers.  “Bad” is relative I suppose.  It doesn’t make me wrong to say roads were not bad at all.  I’ve to a few people from Cleveland, that lived elsewhere in the Northeast, came back to Cleveland, and laugh at Cleveland’s “horrible snow storms” and “bad roads.”  Its not just me.

Anyways.  I always like stories of people moving to say Virginia.  And then there is an inch of snow on the ground and everyone in Virginia freaks out and everything closes.  Cleveland however isn’t Virginia, but acts in a similar fashion in some ways.  I wouldn’t call myself “the best driver ever” but I would call myself a self-assured driver, a driver who trusts his instincts, and a driver who knows how to drive in just about all conditions.  I know bad roads.  I grew up in Upstate New York.  It forces you to learn how to drive in all conditions from flooding rains to white out snow storms.  Cleveland has had neither of those.  But maybe, if you’ve never experienced driving conditions other than what is here in Cleveland, you’d think Friday was a horrible driving condition.  Just like someone in Virginia that hasn’t driven anywhere else would think an inch of snow makes for horrible driving conditions (although with after the winter the East Coast has had this year, maybe they’ll freak out at an inch of snow less next year).

And as for the joke about Buffalonians grabbing a beer and hitting the road in a snowstorm; I’ve gotten more than a few comments on how its not a funny joke.  A joke, especially one like that, is meant to be a gross exaggeration.  It is meant to say people from Buffalo are confident driving in snowy conditions.  It is not meant to imply all people from Buffalo grab beers and drive (only their football players…. ha…I kill myself).  I’m sure Buffalo has that same small minority that think its fine driving around with a beer in their hand as any other city in the US or world, but that’s not the majority.  And if I had written the joke any other I would have changed it from how it was told to me.  And lastly, as someone from Buffalo, I did laugh when I heard it, and it was funny.