Not Necessarily Interesting News

Friday I got a call saying that my grandmother was frantic because she got a call from the funeral home that handled my uncle’s funeral 2 years ago. They didn’t say why they needed to talk to my former aunt just that they really needed to get a hold of her.

I called the funeral home for my grandmother to find out what was up as I was the last to talk to my former aunt about 6 months ago. After talking with the guy I asked him if they somehow had my uncle’s remains there. He told me he couldn’t tell me that. I then said ‘I’ll presume you have them there unless you tell me otherwise’. He again said he couldn’t confirm that but I could hear in his voice that I was right.

Huh? How’d they get the remains back? I tried calling my aunt. Phone disconnected. I tried calling her work. No longer employed there. I did some other ‘searching’ and it appears she just picked up and moved to Indiana. WTF? She said nothing to me and I thought we were friends.

Long story short. My father went to the home and managed to get the ashes from them. Turns out my aunt moved and when the new owners started moving in they found a box in a back closet with the funeral home’s number on it. They called the home and dropped off the remains. My father had to sign a release saying that we wouldn’t scatter the ashes in case she came back for them. I seriously fucking doubt she will.

I was stunned. She left town leaving my uncle’s, her former husband’s, remains sitting in a fucking closet. A back bedroom closet. Fuck her. What a damned, and I don’t use this word often but it applies, cunt. I thought we were friends. We tried to keep her as part of the family after he died but she distanced herself from us. Then she fucks us with this last slap to the face. She could have left them on a doorstep early in the morning if she didn’t want to talk to us.

Yes, we have his remains but can’t follow through with his wishes to scatter them at Lake Powell because of the way she left them behind. Not only that, we’ve lost nearly everything that was Roy. None of his photography, books, memories. Nothing. The only thing anybody got after he died was his camera that I borrowed that she never asked to get back. That’s it. A camera. I cherish it as it was his pride and joy and we spent some good times together taking pics with it. I assume that most of what defined my uncle is now sitting in a city dump somewhere and rotting. This pisses me off to no end.

J, wherever you are, if you read this: Fuck you.

It’s been a hectic and screwed up past few weeks. I guess I’ll catch up a little here.

Let’s see. We did a Boy Scout campout weekend before last. The week before that we went to Corpus Christi for the Blue Angels which my son loved immensly. I had the Defender throw a u-joint that required nearly a week for me to repair.

I’ll post pics and details from those soon. Read the next entry for the most screwed-up thing to happen lately.

I was going through our photos from our trip and remembered this.
We were driving through rural New Hampshire last week and I noticed this tree. It was a bit taller than the rest and didn’t look quite right. I’d heard about what I was seeing but had never seen one in the wild. We drove another 1/4 mile closer and were able to get nearer to the ‘tree’. That’s an interesting disguise they’ve got on that cell phone tower. It was the only one that we noticed in New Hampshire. The rest seemed to be your normal run-of-the-mill towers. Of course, we could have missed them in all their camo’ed glory.

Now I’ll go through my impressions of New Hampshire and New England in general.

The scenery was beautiful, even at the juncture between winter/spring, what the locals call ‘mud season’. Coming back to Texas after a week up there was a bit of a shock. We got used to the varying shades of gray and browns everywhere. White snow, gray sky, brown tree trunks, dark mud were what we got used to seeing. We got back and the green of a Texas spring nearly hurt our eyes the first day.

New Englanders are friendly once you get out into the countryside. Bostoners were rude and pushy and I couldn’t wait to get out of that town. We had a great time spending a few hours with the maple farming people outside Concord. Manchester, NH didn’t impress me and I don’t think I could live there. It’s just seemed like Austin North. Concord was kind of the same way. It was okay but seemed a little long in the tooth. Everything north of Concord was very nice. The same with the western part of the state. The area around Hanover/Lebanon, where Dartmouth is, seemed ideal. There semeed to be a small but thriving high-tech market there. There and in Keene, about 40 miles south, are where I’m concentrating my job search. Talking with a small business owner in Keene my wife said we were scouting a possible move and said we’d visited Portsmouth. He started laughing before she could finish the sentence. Even New Hampshrites know that Portsmouth is way overpriced. It’s beautiful but there’s no way anyone can afford to live there.

Housing. Not cheap. At least near the bigger towns, especially Portsmouth, Manchester, Nashua, and Concord. Keene and Lebanon were getting reasonable, especially if you’re willing to drive 20-30 minutes into town.

Cost of living. Taxes are low to non-existent, except property taxes. Those are high, very high. I guess it all comes out to a wash. Payrates seem a bit low, lower than around Austin for sure. That makes a move tough. To move, we need a house that costs about what ours does and a job that pays like mine currently. Living on one income can be a very close balancing act in these days of rising costs and even slower rising pay.

Recreation. More that you can imagine. Winter sports of every type. Skiing, snowboarding, cross country skiing, ice fishing, snowshoeing and more. Summer; hiking, mountain biking, boating, fishing, river running. and more. It’s got Texas beat to all hell and back in the recreation department. One of my biggest complaints about Texas is it’s lack of public land. Yeah, there’s state parks here and there but in how many places can you start at a trailhead and hike for two days without having to double back on yourself.

All told, we’ll do the move if I can find a good paying position in a company in one of the outlying areas of the state, ideally near Keene/Lebanon or north of the Notches. Those are few and far between but not impossible to find.