So I’m finding this World Series to be quite amusing. Living in Giants country, and legally and morally obligated to root orange and black, of course we’re up against Kansas City. Why wouldn’t we? And much of my family – aunt, uncle and grandmother – lives in Kansas City, themselves rooting hard for the Royals. This year, of all years.
These days, most of my family is actually Kristi’s family. They’re always there for us, and often not a day goes by without seeing or talking with her parents. We’ve been watching the Series at their house. I can get only so excited about this match, because either way I win: one family gets to claim the championship, or the other one does. So I’m mostly rallying for a good, solid set of games. So far, so good.
The whole thing is kind of ironic because this year, my family is finally showing up in Modesto in numbers for Thanksgiving. My parents are in Florida, my brother currently lives in Oregon, and everyone else is in the Midwest. Chris has been here several times, but my in-laws have never met my parents (long story) or extended family, and so we’re looking forward to the holiday this year as Chris and the Kansas City relatives are coming to visit for a week.
We’ve discussed this before here, but our relationship with the KC relatives started about four or five years ago with my Uncle Leo and Aunt Marty decided to make it legal and get married, and we sent a gift and good wishes. They reached back, and then we reached back, and that’s how these things work: everyone who wants to keep the relationship going reaches out to hold up their end. That’s kind of how you know that it’s a relationship worth maintaining – everyone works equally to keep it alive and well. This process culminated a couple of years ago in Kristi and I going to KC to visit for my grandma’s birthday, and a good time was had by all. At the time I hadn’t seen any of them for well over 20 years.
One of the things I’m daily and completely grateful for in this day and age is how the Internet makes it so damned easy – and cheap – to maintain distant contact with the people you care about. Email, Facebook, blogs and all that. But more than anything else, Skype is the godsend. Easy and free long distance calling, with the additional value of real time video chat. Without paying a dime, my father in law can call his grandkids in Sacramento from his home office and have a real face-to-face visit. Likewise, I can sit on my living room couch and call my uncle’s den, and the five of us can visit via video just as smoothly and cleanly as if we were there. And again, doesn’t cost a damned cent for anyone involved – just a bit of energy, effort and time invested in reaching out, because you give a damn.
(I know that, to our under-30 readers, the concept of video chat is not earth shattering. But to those of us who grew up with ridiculous long distance costs and 1200 baud modems, it’s a revolutionary advancement. And to those of us who grew up in earlier generations, this stuff is freakin’ magic.)
I just find it mind blowing to be living in a world where the distance and cost obstacles to communication and relationships have not only shrunken, but have disappeared completely. The entire world is a quick and free local call away. And now, with high resolution and low latency video to boot. To us pre-Millenials, it’s like living in the very early days of electricity or radio. Or fire, for that matter.
So now the family is coming to visit for Thanksgiving, and it’s a Warren party of six at the Jepson house: Kristi, myself, my brother Chris, Uncle Leo and Aunt Marty, and Grandma. We’re looking forward to seeing them all again, and to introducing them to Kristi’s family (who can’t wait to meet them as well), and taking a drive out to Monterey to show off the beautiful California coast.
The weather is finally starting to cool off here and life in the West is pretty good. We’re keeping busy both at work and at home. We’ve repainted the living room and bathroom, still need to finish sanding down and repainting a few doorways. Client projects continue to entertain, vex and challenge us. The animals are all doing reasonably well, even though the oldest (Veruca, at somewhere around 20 years old) is starting to show the inevitable signs of significant old age. We look forward to the holidays and good times spent with caring family.
And as for the World Series, all I can say to my Kansas City family is: I gotta live with these people, guys. And over the last several years, including two Series victories so far, I’ve come to like the team. So while I’d like to see it be fairly close and therefore more exciting, I can’t rally for blue and white.
As Kristi points out, it’s too much like Dodger blue and white. And no one really likes LA.