Personal: Update re: my brother

Hearsay has it that sometimes towards the end of the year, someone showed or referenced my Oct LJ ranty post about family matters to my brother and his wife. I heard that they were upset through my parents (mom emailed me 14 Dec), and while I was over there for Christmas I had a long talk and argument about that and related issues with my dad. He and my mother are very concerned about there being a rift in the family, and wanted me to talk to my brother and apologise. This is difficult to say the least as my mistake (fully acknowledged in previous post to have been not following through on my word to come to an event) is not what they are upset about, which are my (mostly political) opinions. Interestingly or not, my dad is better equipped to discuss livejournaling than you might think, being a professor of Journalism and Mass Comms.

So, when my brother texted me on New Year's night I knew it was significant, and I text'd back, quickly, and then called him. He let it ring a while, but he did answer and we talked. He's very upset, but we talked about shared things, old memories, and critiques of our collective parents childrearing. I talked up the road a ways, and we'd mostly covered everything a time or two when I got where I was going, and I got off the phone a few minutes after getting in the house. One secret he revealed on the phone is that the gift card I had hand carried to my mom's was razored open when she posted it to them, but he said my mom had taken care of it. Some discussion of gift card vendors followed (Target, Babys R Us, at worst Wal-Mart).

After we'd been off the phone a few minutes but before I'd put my crap away, my phone buzzed, text from him. He said that what I wrote made him so upset that he had an asthma attack and a giant blood sugar spike and went to hospital. I responded in SMS: 'Yeesh'.

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Soup

After an offhand remark at QT about tomato soup New Year's morning, I wanted some yesterday, but held off until tonight.

I whisked together two cans of condensed Campbell's and skim milk and left it on medium a while while I started in on email.

You might imagine where this is going, but be not afraid. Although the soup did clump a bit while I was mailing and fussing with RT and setting up tonight's work, I was able to whisk in back into shape when I came back downstairs.

With the latop perched in the kitchen, I will say that cream based soups are probably not a good idea for when I am multitasking. Still, it's yummy, and time for a second bowl, I think.