Looking Back

Kelli and I flew to Houston for the day Saturday. The flight down was fine until the landing....the pilot appeared to have forgotten to flare...ouch.

I rent a lot of cars. I made two reservations. One at Thrifty and one at Alamo. I prefer Alamo/National but the Thrifty website stated it was ON airport. I figured if that was true it would save a few minutes. Using my airline discounts for both put them both at $23 all in.

The Alamo site had compacts at $15 a day with $1 increments from Standard, Midsize and Fullsize. I figured the Nissan Versa pictured would be fine.

When we walked outside I saw vans for Alamo AND Thrifty. So Thrifty wasn't really onsite (I think it used to be). We went to Alamo. Once we arrived and I walked outside there was ONE compact car...a 2 door Toyota Yaris. Too small. After politely asking for another choice she "let" me have a midsize for free. The ONLY midsize was a Kia Spectra...which is really a compact. Earlier the agent offered me a midsize for an extra $14.95 a day. WTF?!?! I hate when the prices sky rocket at the counter. The prices should be the same range as the original quote. Annoying.

The drive out to my dads house was fine. We flew into Hobby airport (which is on the south east side of town) while my dads house is in northwest Houston.

We hung out for a bit and I worked on his computer before heading out for lunch. After lunch we went through some old photos.

Old photos being well....old...some had damage from age. I used photoshop the best I could to clean some of them up. They were all transferred to digital using the macro mode on my digital camera. Faster than scanning them in...but not as great quality.

The first photo was one I had not seen before. It was a photo of my mom when she was very young. I suspect in her 20's.

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Here is the photo before I retouched it.

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Below from left to right are my Aunt Babs, an Aunt I can't remember, My Great Grandmother Mama Erie (who I get my second middle name Milow from) and my mom.

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Below is my baby photo. When I was born, more than a few nurses swore I was "white".

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I was 10 pounds 13 ounces at birth. I walked out. When my mom told the nurses about me (while I was in the nursery) they corrected my mother by stating, "No mam, that baby is a white baby, I think you're mistaken". Really?

I darkened up quickly once I hit the sun. I still have a very apparent farmers tan.

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When my parents bought the house I grew up in...we were THE ONLY non-white people. Literally. In elementary school if someone said "The black kid did it"...they would say "Steve or Darren". Yeah. Here is a photo of my baseball team.

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They were happy to see me at first. They likely assumed I could play...because I was black. Well once they saw me swing....eh. I only played one year.

I tried golf as well. Only at Disneyworld. I coulda been Tiger! Check out those socks.

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My brother and I look nothing alike. He is much darker and taller. Below is my brother, my sister Lauren (who is half black and half white) and me. All of my sisters are 50/50 biracial and were adopted into my family.

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My buckwheat photo

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A Darren and Santa photo

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Of course this nice kid would one day end up drunk next to his car on his 21st birthday.....for a reason I can't remember.

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