Breakfast with exes, writing at Helios, a disturbing phone call, and writing at home…

I met Donna (ex-wife) and Vince (ex-brother-in-law) at Brigs in North Raleigh for breakfast.

It was a good visit, with good food. And speaking of food, Donna gave me some home-grown produce upon departure — mostly cucumbers and banana peppers from her garden.


From there, I went to Helios, where I spent the afternoon.

I converted my Corporate Memories story from Microsoft Word to HTML for my blog, and it was more tedious than I want it to be. That “Word-to-HTML” translation function needs some work.

I did some people-watching there for a while, and at one point saw two guys at a table in the corner on-and-off just rubbing each other’s legs and arms. They were not sexual touches at all, but loving ones not at all unlike you’d see a guy do to his girlfriend or vice versa.

I thought first about how refreshing it was to see something like that in a downtown coffee shop in Raleigh, NC, and then thought about what kind of impact that might have made on me if I had seen such a scene while I was still married — and in the closet with the door slammed shut. I wonder if I would have come back every day to such a place to see if I could see it again.


At somewhere around 4:30 or 5:00, my brother called me on my cell phone, which is extremely rare, and he went off on a rampage about my parents. This was regarding issues that have been ongoing between him and them for more years than I care to, or want to, remember.

Bottom line was that he told me that he, along with his ex-wife, were going to go over there sometime soon and confront them about things that they are (supposedly) saying to their grandchildren (his children), that are getting back to him, and was “offering” me the opportunity to come home and be present “as a buffer” in the situation.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ve been hearing both sides of this story for 10 or 15 years now. It’s high time you talk to each other.” (Which they haven’t done in at least 15 years.)


I left Helios shortly after that, and of course couldn’t stop thinking about all of that conflama, and ended up composing a five-page letter to my brother later in the evening.

I devised my Friday and Saturday blog entries.

Before bed, I did the USA Today Crossword Puzzle online.

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