bertine

I recently bought a brand new 2010 mazda6. I then crashed it when it had about 2000 miles on it. It now has a little over 3000 miles on it. Also, they did a really good job repairing it. I can't tell it was in an accident at all. I suppose that is because I was lucky on the accident I had and didn't hit anything important.

My mazda replaced a 2000 Saturn SL1 named Hoopty that had 135000 miles on it that once was hit by a bus while parked on the street and never drove the same after wards. Not that it was fun to drive before it was hit.

Before Hoopty I didn't own a car. I rode my bike everywhere and took the bus. It is funny to think that 10 years ago I was too cheap to buy a car. Then when I bought one I bought one that was cheap and just got me from point A to point B and now I have a car that can fit kids and is nice to drive.

I have three siblings. Jens, Serinia and Eric. My parents like old Scandinavian names but I am not sure why Eric doesn't have a K at the end of his name.

I am the oldest. Jens is 21 months younger than I am. He is married to Anne:


Jens went into the army right out of high school which is odd to think about. However, my parents told us they couldn't pay for all of us to go to college so they weren't going to pay for any of us. I got scholarships, the rest got the GI Bill. He used the GI Bill to become a kindergarten teacher in the Minneapolis school district. He is pretty much the ideal personality for a kindergarten teacher but I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't end up on the school board in 10 years because he is the sort that takes action.

Jens has an old house that he is slowly redoing and so sometimes he does things like this which I forgot about.

Serinia is my only sister and as I said my BFF. She also joined the army after high school but it didn't go that well for her. She joined the army, drove big trucks and was stationed in South Korea. She also met her friend/hetro life mate Erica. Things happened and she was medically discharged from the army a month early to keep her from being deployed to Iraq. This also means she is a disabled vet and receives disability from the VA which is good because she has a hard time keeping a job. She keeps trying, which is the important part.



A little over three years ago she moved to Joplin to help out her HLM Erica go through a divorce and Serinia has really gotten better in that time. I am hopeful that now she is back to decent VA system with a therapist that doesn't dismiss her.

The youngest sibling is Eric. He also joined the army out of high school then he joined the national guard when got out. He was deployed to Iraq for a year. He got out of the national guard last February and is not cutting his hair or beard for a year in celebration. Eric has been my roommate since he got out of the army 5 years ago but hopefully his house will be ready any time now. I am really hoping he will be out by spring.

If you want to know the nitty gitty of my belief system, I don't believe there is a god. However, I have no problem with anyone that believes that there is. Well... other than my mom but that is different and that argument comes up every once in awhile.

I went to church my entire childhood and I never really believed and I didn't know why. I studied the history of the church trying to figure out if I was missing something and then one day I realized I was. What I was missing was that I just didn't believe that there is a god out there. My world view clicked and I have been much happier since.

It is funny, I am always a little shocked and vaguely scandalized when someone mentions going to church. It is almost like being religious is the weird thing.

Other than that, I try not to be a jerk, I try to be kind and helpful and not stress myself out too much over things that should be fun.

I would be lame and say that gwangi is my best friend but you guys don't want to hear that. Anyways, it isn't completely true.

I would have to say my sister is my BFF. We get along, we do stupid things together, we laugh at dumb jokes, we make fun of each other and we guilt each other into "sister time".




I am very happy that she has moved home, I missed her while she was away.

My definition of love is pretty broad and I am pretty sure I overuse the word. I love my family. My parents and siblings are people I like to hang out with and enjoy their company. I love my friends and I think of them often even when I don't hang out with them as much as I want.

However, I have a feeling that the spirit of this day is about romantic love. Romantic love for me is someone that I can spend most of my free time with. Someone that supports me in life and who I support. Someone that I can share either the best day of my life, the worst day of my life and any day in between. Someone that returns these feelings, makes me laugh when I am happy and hugs me when I am having a bad day. Someone that I can take care of and share my life with.

I have found this person and that is why I am marrying him.

My parents are pretty awesome.

My mom grew up pretty poor in western Minnesota on the border of South Dakota. She didn't move to the cities until she was 16. They moved here because this is where my grandparents could find work. She had various office jobs though her 20s until she had children. She was a great stay at home mom, she always had some project going on and pretty much headed up remodeling the house through my childhood. She also would cook dinner for anyone that was at our house at dinner time even though we didn't have that much money ourselves.

My dad grew up in St Paul. He was both very middle class and very Catholic. He rebelled against both. He didn't like college so when he was drafted he went into the Army. After his two years were up he didn't go back. He spent the next 10 years working in steel factories until the 80s recession when he went back to school to become a surveyor. After this he would work insane hours in the summer but all winter long we knew he wouldn't miss anything that we had going on. He would coach my basketball teams which was very fun.

My parents aren't really afraid of any project. Even before the internet they would go to the library, check out a book and figure out how to do something. I love that they have passed this on to me because I know that almost anything is doable.


BTW, my parents are having some plumbing problems which my dad thinks has to do with sewer pipe connection with the street. Instead of hiring a plumber, which is what I was pushing them to do since my dad is weak and everyone is pretty stressed right now, my dad researched one of those cameras that plumbers have and bought one. It came on Friday and him and my brothers used it. My mom thinks this is very silly but she also is okay with this because it is the first thing he has been really into for 6 or 7 weeks. So, if any of you ever need a camera for a sewer line, I have access to one. Ha!

For those of you that don't know me by now, my name is Bertine. Yes, that is my actual given name. I am engaged to marry gwangi, his given name is Zach. I live in Minneapolis, MN with Zach and our three cats. I program websites for a living and I tend to be crabby about it often but that doesn't mean I don't love it. I get migraines pretty often and complain about them more than I should but there isn't much more about them that I can do. I have random hobbies, right now it is quilting. I have a MA in History which is not useful at all for anything now that Wikipedia is around, before Wikipedia people would call me to ask me about facts on the popes.

I try to be pretty open about myself. Feel free to ask me questions on anything if you have always wondered something.