So it’s been a little more than a month since my mother’s passing. It’s been a crazy month. It’s almost a full time job managing and figuring out her estate. I’m finally meeting with a lawyer on Monday to hopefully get a grasp on what all needs to be done.

After going through a few of my Mom’s things, I’m starting to understand her a little better. She wrote a letter about her childhood that helped me understand why she was a die hard Republican. It started in college when her brother went to war in Vietnam. Her friends were all protesting the war, but she couldn’t because her brother was there. She couldn’t separate the war from the troops. She couldn’t support the troops while being against the war at the same time.

She is also against all social programs basically because her family didn’t need them. She was the youngest child, so by the time she was born, her family was pretty well off. She didn’t really know what it was like to struggle. She figured anybody that is willing to work hard, should have no problem supporting their family.

So pretty much those two issues guided her to choose her “team”, and she followed the Republican party line from then on.

Politics were one thing I never discussed with my Mom. I’m jealous of the people that can have open, honest, and smart conversations with their parents. My Mom was pretty stubborn. There was no changing her mind about anything, and I hated that. Any conversation with her was always “I’m right and you’re wrong, end of discussion”.

I shouldn’t focus on the negative though. Overall my Mother was great. She raised me and my brother by herself, and for the most part we got everything we wanted. In the last few years we were able to take quite a few vacations together as a family. I will be forever grateful of all the vacation memories. It’s really going to be hard to not talk about the fun times with my Mom anymore.

So one thing I regret is not talking to my Mom more. My Mom was hard for me to talk to. She was very opinionated, and I disagreed with her on just about everything. Almost every conversation ended up leading to politics, or some pseudoscience that she believed in. I wish I could have talked to her about my beliefs, but it would have only led to useless arguments. I still remember the last argument we had about the Washington Redskins team name. She just hated anything to do with “political correctness”. I told her that if the name was Indians, you could have an argument there, but Redskins is clearly derogatory. The team is a privately owned company and they have every right to have a derogatory name, but to deny that it’s derogatory is just ignoring reality. I’ll forever remember that argument. We didn’t argue often, but that’s mostly because I bit my tongue a lot.

My Mom was a teacher and education was important to her, but she was kind of narrow minded. She was pretty much brainwashed by Fox News. I have nothing against being conservative, but not believing in scientific facts drives me crazy. Like most conservatives, She denied global warming and evolution. To make matters worse, She was also anti-vax and anti-GMO. You know how pro-science I am. These issues drove me crazy.

One thing I am so glad I had a chance to do though was to share my telescope with her. Last summer I brought my telescope with when we rented a lake cabin. She was amazed to see Saturn. She couldn’t believe how much it looked like the pictures. It was so great to share my love of astronomy with her. She even mentioned it to her brothers and sisters because they all told me.

I always thought I was completely different from my Mom because we disagreed on so many topics, but after going through her stuff, we had much more in common than I realized.

So this past weekend was my second 20 year high school reunion this year. This one was for my central Minnesota school that I only spent three years at. I grew up in northern Minnesota and went to school there through my freshman year of high school, then moved to central Minnesota and spent my final three years of high school there. While I had a great time in high school there, I didn’t meet any lifelong friends. It was hard for me to fit in with kids that have been friends since elementary school, in just three years. I didn’t really have my “group”. I hung out with everybody. I bashed heads with the jocks on the football field, played music with the band geeks, and tried to pretend I was smart and hung out with the smart kids taking the hardest classes I could.

I never thought I would be one of those guys that didn’t want to go to their reunions. I went to my 10 year reunion, and it was awkward. Everybody looked familiar, but I could barely remember names. After 10 years we were totally different people, and really didn’t have much in common. I loved high school, and would do anything to go back to those times, but reunions don’t do it. If I still lived in the same town I probably would have stopped by, but it wasn’t worth the time to travel. I’m sure my reunions would be better if I would have gotten closer with people, but for now, being Facebook friends is good enough for me.

Over the weekend we were out of town, but my in-laws stayed at our house. My father-in-law must have driven my truck. Normally I wouldn’t have cared, but he smoked in it. Smoking is so disgusting. I am around it so little now that it really bothers me. I can smell it on my hands now after using my steering wheel. So gross.

I don’t get why someone would pay thousands of dollars a year to smell, not to mention the health affects. I know smokers don’t realize that they smell, but they do. If you smoke, you fucking stink and I don’t want to be around you. And please don’t just throw you cigarette butt anywhere. Seeing nasty cigarette butt everywhere is another pet peeve of mine.

It’s always weird when odd-ball things come up multiple times a day. Today that happened to me with Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropy. First I was watching TWiT and Leo mentioned the Carnegie Libraries. If you didn’t know, Andrew Carnegie donated money to help build over 2500 libraries across the US in the early 1900s. It seems like almost every decent sized town got one. Sadly many of them have been torn down. Moorhead had one, and Fargo had two, but none of them still exist.

Then I got an email about my 20 year class reunion (how did that happen). One of the activities is a tour of the newly remodeled Carnegie Library. When I lived there I didn’t realize that I walked by a building that was built in 1914 by money donated by Andrew Carnegie every day on my way to school. To me it was just an old office building across the street from the current library. Some time after I moved away I learned that it was an old Carnegie Library. I’m glad that they decided to remodel it rather than tear it down.

Then while I was listening to the latest Planetary Radio Podcast, they were talking about the Mount Wilson Observatory, and what do you know, Andrew Carnegie donated money to help build it too.

So there you have it. Three referenced to Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropy before noon. It’s weird how that happens.

This video brought back a lot of memories. 1990 was a big year in my childhood. It was the year my family and I moved. I was a sophomore in high school and had to leave all my friends and start over. I made new friends, but nothing like my friends from my old home town. To this day, the best friends I have now I’ve known since 1st grade.

The music of 1990 was horrible too. That’s probably part of the reason why I learned to hate mainstream music. It got better latter into the 90s, but 1990 sucked. Best new artist Milli Vanilli? WTF?

via laughingsquid

Hello blog. It seems like forever since I last posted. I’ve just been enjoying some time away from the keyboard. Enjoying the couple nice days we are having before the mosquitoes take over. Enjoying some good books in my hammock, and got our garden planted. It’s been seven years since we have had a garden. We had one at our old house, but didn’t really have a good spot at this one until I tore out a little rock garden that was looking a little rough. I also built a permanent fence around the garden.

I think it looks much better than a chicken wire fence.

Now we just need some heat so things start to grow.

I got my new glasses from Warby Parker today. They might take a bit to get use to, but I’m liking them so far. I also thought it was time to change my Twitter icon. It’s probably been five years since I last changed it.