I got back early this afternoon, but I’ve been trying to catch up on email and get a feel for what’s going on in the world (and trolling my way through the blog roll; up to the Friday Lileks now—wonder what brand of tiny evil cigar he favors as I’m partial to Macanudo Minatures myself).

Centered around my grandfather’s services, the weekend turned into something of a family reunion, with people coming in who I’d never met before, including my great uncle (my grandfather’s younger brother).  I think my grandfather would have been pleased by it.

I also learned some more about the family, including the revelation that I have several more cousins than I originally knew about.  I asked one of my aunts, who is researching the family tree about it when I saw that the obituary listed 27 grandchildren when I was only aware of 20.  It turns out that one of my uncles (who is something of the “prodigal son”, he’s currently in Kuwait working for an oil company) had a family while he was living in Mexico (which accounts for some, but not all of the additional 7).

My aunt is talking about having another family reunion to try to bring all these people together again, since it’s been quite a while since there’s been one for my grandfather’s side of the family (the one I went to in June was for my grandmother’s family and their descendants).  I hope this comes through, since I’ve got a lot to learn, having been pretty much separated from them since I was about 7.