I Suck At Nana's

on saturday, i spent the entire day at nana's house. unfortunately, i suck at nana's. technically, nana is not even my nana. she is karen's grandmother. as i have never ever known my grandparents, i refer to karen's grandmother as my nana.

anyway, my main duties at nana was to provide technical support and any other unrelated tasks. karen, my favorite sister-in-law (janine), and karen's cousin from lowell (karlene) have been scanning old pictures from nana's house. (as a side note... there is a lot to like about lowell... that is my shameless plug for the day.)

nana has numerous albums of old pictures. as her house is being prepared to be sold on the market, karen, karlene and janine have taken it upon themselves to start scanning the old pictures because those pictures have been requested by numerous other relatives. so in an effort to share the vast albums of pictures with all the relatives, they have undertaken the duty... which, in my opinion, has been a thankless duty for the three of them. if only the other relatives realized how much work and time was involved in the process... they would also appreciate their efforts more.

of course, i guess i'll stop there with my opinion lest i start a family squabble. since nana entered the nursing home, there has been a lot of "rigamarole"... in part because there are too many cooks in the kitchen expressing their own opinions about what should be done and all of that. it's a shame really, but it's really none of my business.

all i can do is support karen and her family, which is fine because i have always been more of the "actions speak louder than words" type. so i do what i can... visit her in the nursing home... attend memorial masses for her husband, karen's grandfather, etc. i know technically i'm not even really nana's grandchild, but she has always treated me as such... so it's the least i could do.

anyway, saturday i was at nana's to provide technical support because last week there was apparently an incident because the pictures were not saving correctly. i don't really know what the problem was because i was not there to diagnose it. but to prevent it from happening again, i was there in the event something bad should go wrong again. luckily, nothing went wrong.

(pictured below is karen and karlene.)


in addition to being at nana's on saturday, i also got to conquer my fear: papa gino's in quincy. just kidding. for anyone who knows me... i lovingly refer to my ex-girlfriend as "the scourge of evil". it just so happened that the scourge of evil worked at papa gino's in quincy when we were together. (it's also how the scourge of evil met the other guy.) in my bout of insanity following the breakup, i had avoided papa gino's at all cost. in fact, i convinced all of my friends to avoid driving by that area whenever i was with them... which was quite tough to do because papa gino's is centrally located in quincy. ah... the good times!

so what does papa gino's have to do with saturday? well, i was actually sent to pick up lunch at... papa gino's on saturday by myself. i haven't been in papa gino's in quite some time... especially by myself. interestingly enough, everything looks the same. the only memory that i recall of even being inside papa gino's was when i gave karen a little stuffed animal when we were like 14 or so. (she subsequently dropped the stuffed animal on the floor... proof that we can't have nice things now...)

anyway, it was interesting to be in papa gino's. speaking of papa gino's, a former classmate i knew (john) used to work at papa gino's. it so happens that he is now a full time real estate agent. the reason i bring that up is because john actually visited nana's on saturday to offer suggestions and whatnot about listing the house.

it was great seeing john again. john was always a genuinely nice guy. i think the last time i saw him was at the funeral service for my friend (greg). interestingly enough, i also found out that john could have been janine's first boyfriend had janine broken her father's rule about dating before the age of 16. she didn't break the rule. but who knew?

all in all, it was an interesting time at nana's.