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Unbeknownst to most, I traveled up to visit my folks and family for the Fourth, and also gave ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cassandrasimplx a chance to meet them via something other than Skype. Family picnic on the 4th was a chance to see folks I haven't in a while, though, honestly, extended family get-togethers aren't really my thing. Parents and siblings and the neice, mostly, with some aunts and uncles and cousins and a cousin's new offspring were also present.
Taking a Texas native and exposing them to what passes for high summer in Buffalo is as amusing as you'd expect: she's in a hoodie while I'm sweating my ass off in just a pair of shorts after doing some yardwork to re-bury a drainpipe in the clay-soil-I-do-not-miss-one-fucking-bit.
It's been generally lovely, even if we do spend a good hour arguing politics[2] with my conservative and/or redneck[1] relatives while the news is on. Geeked out with my ironworking SCAdian uncle (telling stories of various D&D campaigns, natch), and took a trip to the Falls[3] to meet up with AJ Aalto, finally. We got off to a rollicking start - she flippd me off, punched me in the stomach, and I picked up her car. :-) Then we got lunch and introduced CS to Tim Horton's coffee before AJ had to bail to family obligations and I cruised up and down the river road to give CS a chance to take in the view and snap some pictures and video, followed by a short tour of my childhood neighborhood and exposing her to what actual, high-quality, authentic Buffalo chicken wings[4] taste like.
[1] An uncle who goes by "Redneck Al" unironically; he's a rural New York Conservative, which puts him somewhere just left of Texas Moderate, which has made the repartee between he and D amusing.
[2] This is a social interaction that, at a family gathering, is not unusual for my clan, but a novel and alien experience for her, with a more genteel Southern upbringing, but she's holding her own, which is no surprise.
[3] Crankyass Canadian customs officials exist; the guy who did the car questioning took all of a minute, after waiting 45 to reach the checkpoint, to send us inside to talk to a desk agent... who pointedly ignored the two dozen folks waiting for a good twenty minutes, and took one look at my paperwork, asked how long it'd been since I'd been in the country (oh, about fourteen years... CS had never been to Canuckistan) before sending us on hour way, only an hour late to lunch.
[4] Duff's, at their original location at Sheridan and Millersport, which my mom was smart enough to call ahead and order, rather than brave the 45 minute line outside just to get a table.
cassandrasimplx a chance to meet them via something other than Skype. Family picnic on the 4th was a chance to see folks I haven't in a while, though, honestly, extended family get-togethers aren't really my thing. Parents and siblings and the neice, mostly, with some aunts and uncles and cousins and a cousin's new offspring were also present.Taking a Texas native and exposing them to what passes for high summer in Buffalo is as amusing as you'd expect: she's in a hoodie while I'm sweating my ass off in just a pair of shorts after doing some yardwork to re-bury a drainpipe in the clay-soil-I-do-not-miss-one-fucking-bit.
It's been generally lovely, even if we do spend a good hour arguing politics[2] with my conservative and/or redneck[1] relatives while the news is on. Geeked out with my ironworking SCAdian uncle (telling stories of various D&D campaigns, natch), and took a trip to the Falls[3] to meet up with AJ Aalto, finally. We got off to a rollicking start - she flippd me off, punched me in the stomach, and I picked up her car. :-) Then we got lunch and introduced CS to Tim Horton's coffee before AJ had to bail to family obligations and I cruised up and down the river road to give CS a chance to take in the view and snap some pictures and video, followed by a short tour of my childhood neighborhood and exposing her to what actual, high-quality, authentic Buffalo chicken wings[4] taste like.
[1] An uncle who goes by "Redneck Al" unironically; he's a rural New York Conservative, which puts him somewhere just left of Texas Moderate, which has made the repartee between he and D amusing.
[2] This is a social interaction that, at a family gathering, is not unusual for my clan, but a novel and alien experience for her, with a more genteel Southern upbringing, but she's holding her own, which is no surprise.
[3] Crankyass Canadian customs officials exist; the guy who did the car questioning took all of a minute, after waiting 45 to reach the checkpoint, to send us inside to talk to a desk agent... who pointedly ignored the two dozen folks waiting for a good twenty minutes, and took one look at my paperwork, asked how long it'd been since I'd been in the country (oh, about fourteen years... CS had never been to Canuckistan) before sending us on hour way, only an hour late to lunch.
[4] Duff's, at their original location at Sheridan and Millersport, which my mom was smart enough to call ahead and order, rather than brave the 45 minute line outside just to get a table.
