Old and New

Sara and I spent the weekend at my parents house in Florida for a family reunion. It was a side of the family I don't know. It was mostly relatives of my grandfather who died earlier this year. It was strange to sit in a room of people that you are related to and not know many of them.

I kept finding myself listening in on conversations about how the Interstate has ruined family visits and who alive and who died when. All in all sort of depressing conversation, but I guess that's the sort of thing people talk about when they get together with relatives they don't know that well.

It's still strange to go home to my parents house. I grew up there for 18 years of my life, yet it doesn't really feel like home anymore. That could be because they've painted, ripped out a wall and lots of other things, but still, it's strange going home.

I also got to notice how North Florida is much more tropical than it was when I lived there. I'm not talking about global warming, just the general trend of more people to plant tropical plants. I know this is a shock to people, but before people, the state of Florida was not covered in Palm trees. Native trees tend much more toward Live Oaks, which do stay green all year, so they are tropical, but they are never going to make a coconut.