Beer Laced Counseling

Favorite Cousin and His Family

We spent Saturday evening at the house of my favorite cousin.  His daughter is signing up for the Army and they wanted my “insider” view on some of the things they were hearing from the recruiter.  I sometimes forget how alien the military is to most Americans.  I think her mother, my cousin’s wife, had more concerns than the daughter.  I think she is using me as a weapon against the recruiter though.  She has been telling him that she was going to run everything by their cousin (me), a retired infantry colonel, before she would allow her daughter to sign up.  From everything they were telling me the recruiter was being very honest and straightforward.  Once dinner was over and the kids were able to escape the grilling by the adults we settled in around the table with my cousin, his wife, and a couple of their friends.  I truly enjoyed the evening, it’s the kind of evening I envisioned a lot of when I anticipated retirement in New England but have been very few and far between.  My cousin (we were like brothers in our youth) lives less than thirty miles away but we seldom see each other.  He’s been facing some serious health concerns over the last few years, including a heart attack and more recently a very severe lung disease.  Based on his ability to consume beer on Saturday I am assuming he is fully on the mend.  I pride myself on my ability to drink beer but he was truly pushing me to the limit on Saturday night.  Luckily my wife figured out early in the evening that she was going to be driving home.  Thank God for the ability of alka seltzer before bed time to mitigate the effects of a hangover.  Sunday was a little foggy both outside and in.  My wife’s ability to control the weather has apparently waned as it will be in the teens tonight.  We watched several movies over the weekend including the entire Bourne trilogy which my son gave to me in blu ray format for Christmas.  It was interesting to watch all three movies in a row – still a great series of movies. We later watched Contagion, which also has Matt Damon.  It was funny seeing him play a pudgy middle class dad after the buff Jason Bourne.  The kid can act.