My American Cousin

As I wrote the title of this, I was suddenly reminded this was the title of the play Abraham Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated.  If you ever get a chance to see it, it really is quite a humorous play.  (and having said that, you will probably hate it)

Anyway, I actually have several American cousins, three female - only one of which I know well, and three male - again only one of which I know well.

Probably one of reasons I know the male one well is because we have often been thought to be twins - it is a little freaky at times I have to admit especially now that we are aging a bit.  When we were much younger I often got comments intended for him, and once my face slapped by an angry teenage girl on his behalf he had broken up with.  (she felt really bad when she heard my accent and realized he has a 'twin' !)  Of course, he is several years younger and seems to act, er, well rather blond at times.  He also has the same number of children, acquired the more traditional way, and many of the same interests I have.  So, we get along pretty well, albeit I see so little of him.  Although I do have to admit I have never been jeep-ing and he lives to crawl the hills.

Why bring him up after all of these years?  Well, he spent the past weekend at an antique show and reported back that sales were sort of okay dollar-wise, however nothing really expensive sold.

So from an economic viewpoint this is interesting.  We had what is reported to be a strong Christmas selling season and his show was not too bad several months later.  This would mean that people are having more discretionary income for the likes of collectibles.  Interesting (he said thinking off all of his collectibles in storage!).

Anyway, I thought you would enjoy hearing from the horse's mouth that at least in Washington, things are starting to swing around a bit.  Of course, the housing market is dead and I had to sell my house for quite a bit under county estimates of value.  Yeah, I could have had a great trip to Tahiti for many months on that amount of loss......  Oh well.