Grand Blanc. It's a hell of a town! There is nothing extraordinary about Grand Blanc as a place, but the citizens are amazing. There is nothing special about my parents, except that they've always been cool. I couldn't see it for a long time, but more than anyone else's parents, they've let us do as we please. We come, we go, we dye our hair, we get tattoos, we have no idea what we're going to do with our lives, and they're relatively cool with it. Not that they are saints. God knows there's something wrong with a father who sits his children down to have a talk with them about A-'s on a report card, and Mom is frustratingly dedicated to the June Cleaver way of life, but we could have done far worse. Dad was sporatically intolerable this past weekend, and Mom was ever hovering, but mostly they just let me keep David company as he recuperated from having his wisdom teeth removed. Above all else, and I know that in my self-righteousness I too often tend to forget, they are my parents. Who I am is largely a result of them, or who they are and what they've done. They are a mirror. Or maybe just a black box, an indirect indicator of where things "went wrong." They are me and I am them. This doesn't mean I won't still do a jig on the old man's grave, but I know I'll miss him, too.

Steeze is back, but only for a couple weeks; so, it feels more like the annual BTW Christmas Flurry of Activity (ha ha, get it? flurry? Christmas? snow? it's a pun!) rather than another Summer of Steeze.