Zompist Bboard Again

I'm planning a trip back to the US for Christmas, as I typically do: looking forward to kitten time, among other things. Especially in the past few years, my father has been pushing me more and more to visit him in south Tex-ass, which is quite a trek from North Carolina, where my mother lives and where "home" is (21 hours by car; about 3-5 hours' flying, and flight prices are almost as high as some of my coworkers like to be). The good thing is that, this year, a good friend in California (San Diego) invited me to visit, and given how horrendous the cross-country flights can be, it seems fairly reasonable to have a short stop-over in Texas on the way back from CA to NC, which I think shouldn't be too much of an issue for planning.

One of the reasons for my apprehension for visiting is my father's then-wife cancelled my visit the last time I tried to visit two days before I was due to fly, so $360 went down the drain. My mother rightly pointed that out, and it's still lingering in my mind and is a major reason for me being very apprehensive about the whole thing. This now-ex-wife is out of the equation, but there's a new fiancée... and she's not the flavor of the month I saw on my visit to Anarchy in the UK this April, so I have no idea what's going on, what to expect, how long of a visit to plan for, or if I should have an escape door in case things go south. I at least didn't want to throw anyone into the Thames on my visit to London, so there's that, but... yeah.

I've also gotten invited to my father's upcoming wedding in Texas in June. I'm actually even enthused about attending this event compared to the visit this winter, and the weather's not the only reason (though it is a major factor): the fact I'd be likely going on my own (without my brother) makes me very unnerved...

(1) Outlook (which I've used for my personal e-mail in various iterations since 2004, starting with Hotmail) has gotten progressively more and more unusable, particularly with these "updates" they keep deploying for the web interface without any prior notice or warning! (Buttons move, buttons don't work, buttons disappear, glitchy and aggressive pop-ups, an influx of spam, toolbars that serve no useful function...) Bonus points is that I keep complaining that things don't work, but I've not heard any response from Microsquish Microsoft about the past six months' worth of complaints. And I've complained every day. As a result, I've taken the move finally to move my personal e-mail stuff to Gmail because it's really gotten out of hand for Outlook, but I can't do that with my work e-mail (as far as I know; "security" reasons). It's a strange feeling to be leaving a program I've been using in some manner or another for close to two decades, though...

(2) Last week, when my father called me at the usual inopportune times during my workday, he mentioned that the marriage he'd been planning to #3 in June got moved ahead. As in, he got married last week. I feel a bit strange that it just happened like that, though at least I didn't find out through my aunt on Facebook before he told me. They're also planning a trip to Europe in early fall for her birthday/a belated honeymoon, and I really have no idea what to expect from the upcoming trip, not least of all because I've never met her in person. This is also not the same person I met less than a year ago while I was in London, so...