Vegas, which I hate.

I have a lot of feelings about Las Vegas. All negative. So we don't even need to go into that whole thing. I'll just start right off into the bit about Grandpa's (Verne's) house.

Verne has moved from his home into a group home, on account of he is like 10 jillion years old. Everyone went to clean out his house. By the time I got there things were in a stage of moderate completion. Most of the rooms had been sorted into crap vs. keep and was in piles accordingly. I was kind of glad that I didn't have a whole lot of work to do because it left me more time to pass judgement on the members of the Vegas family that I find particularly bizarre. Or most toothless. Whatever.

The cool part was that we found stacks of love letters from Verne to Ruth (Grandma) and back, and they had little initials (like s.w.a.k only it wasn't s.w.a.k. We couldn't figure out what they meant) that they signed their letters with, and sometimes Ruth would kiss the letter or the envelope! I never knew they were romantic.

We found dozens of pictures from the 30's and 40's of them. Like this one of Verne taken in 1943:

Or this one labeled "Verne and his horse Buddy, 1938".

I had never seen anything like this of him! I even went through my Grandma's baby clothes. When she was born her mother was sick with the flu epidemic and died 3 days later, so to keep newborn Ruth warm they put her in a box in the oven. Seems like a questionable tactic, but I guess it worked fine. However, if oven-baking is what caused her "cankle" genes to be passed on so easily then I have a bone to pick with my great-great-grandparents. All 4 of the girls in my family, and many of my cousins have Ruth's cankles. I won't name which cousins have them, in case they haven't noticed it yet and are upset by my pointing it out, but that is one persistent genetic trait.

Though I mostly went for the chance to see my parents, I actually found it very enjoyable to learn more about my Dad's parents. Plus I scored some new dishes out of the deal, as well as a very fine label maker. So I say it was time well spent.

P.S. Obie was the hit of the party, of course. Not much help though. Fifi is a giant pain in the butt still, so I left her with Brandy, to whom we are eternally indebted for how much dog babysitting they've done for us. Final thing: Justin comes back from UT tomorrow. Longest. Trip. Ever.