I was way too out of my gourd to really tell the tale of where I've been and what I've been up to lately.
My brother moved out of the house. That was an interesting experience. It actually went down nicer than the last time he moved out, and we didn't even have to call the cops.
I don't know if I'm some kind of secret master manipulator, but all I did was just listen to him and hang out with him, and he came to the idea on his own. Everything worked out for the best. Being nice does get results, sometimes.
Anyway, after that, there was this Florida trip. My good friend, the man who made me best man at his wedding, got me a plane ticket and hosted me at his place for two weeks. It was good and bad. Things didn't go the way we wanted them to go sometimes, and there were screaming kids to deal with, and I had to watch some Disney movies and eat more junk food than I'm comfortable admitting, but it was alright.
The part that sucked the most was finding out that my grandma had been sick and in the hospital, and was coming home for hospice care. I had to find out from my brother because everyone else kept it a secret. They didn't want to ruin my good time with bad news. Later that night, I heard from my Mom that grandma was dead. She'd died in her sleep.
I still don't know how I feel about that. I miss her, but more than anything, I feel relieved. I'm not sure if that makes me a bad person.
Anyway, I know I went to Florida at exactly the wrong time of the year. Heat index was like 110 one day and I decided to go for a walk. Twenty minutes later I felt like a vampire caught outside after sunrise. I made a beeline back to the house, drank the equivalent of a small stream, and tried to summon frost golems with the air conditioner.
I took a lot of retarded pictures. No pictures of people, just weird stuff on the way. Weird stuff at Goodwill, even. I could probably craft some interesting fictional story out of the pictures somehow.
Anyway, this picture should sum up everything that's right and wrong about Florida at the same time: