Overdue
State of My Life, 19 May 2019
- I am mad for small succulents in the front windows of my office the sun parlour the bun parlour. According to my dealer, I haven't even hit the exotic stuff yet. All I know is that it was love at first sight for Anacampseros rufescens variegata, but after two garden shows and no luck, I've settled for Anacampseros telephiastrum variegata and am possibly even more pleased. And all during that search I thought I'd never get into haworthias, but now Silver Swirl is sitting right next to me.
- All of my designated "type at computer under an ibuprofen shield" time goes to genetic genealogy. Except for this stolen moment. (Work? iPad.) Most folks still have no idea of the power of their test despite all of the cold cases being solved using exactly the same type of data, tools, and techniques. PEOPLE: YOU CAN FIND OUT THAT NOT ONLY WAS YOUR GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER NOT WHO YOU THOUGHT, BUT YOU CAN FIND OUT WHO HE IS! And that's how I got two ancestors named Dennis. And a Jerusha! And poor Jerusha is marked as "insane" in the 1860 census. New stories emerge...
- For all of my love-frustration with Ancestry (and their stubborn refusal to give us the one bit of vital info that every other DNA company provides), I am enjoying their "tagging" feature for people in your family tree. I've been revisiting my ancestors, tagging them with expected things like state names and professions, but also with details like whether they were illiterate or lost a parent while young, or if they owned slaves, or if they were still having kids after the ages of 40, 50... After 25 years of following every ancestral line, it's easy (for me) to have overlooked or forgotten some things. Like, did I realise that my ancestor Nancy Ann Newton Alderman, who had 15 children, was widowed with twelve of those children being minors? (No, I'd only had eyes for my ancestor, her firstborn, and didn't pause to connect the dots and dates.)
- Wingspan is going to be my board game of the year for 2019 unless something extra-wonderful happens in the next seven months.
- Mike teaches board games for fun and profit now. (And still teaches English. And still do I. Or manners and queueing. It varies.)
- Using back-button focus on cameras. I'm kind of a convert?
- We have rose hips in the refrigerator; months from now, we may be growing roses from seed and learning the mysteries of grafting.
- Mike planted potatoes today. This is new for us. He chose Royal Blue, our go-to from the market, and I went with Prince of Orange.
- I spent much too much time playing Merge Dragons. I don't spend enough time admiring Maggie the Horse. Maggie was given to us when we opened a new account with Wells Fargo back in twenty-aught-something. She's soft with a slightly sparkly bridle, and all she does is watch me type. (Maybe I flatter myself. Maybe she's watching the Iron Fairy on the other side of the room.)
- I'm reading Andy Summers' autobiography... or am I? I find that if I don't read for a few days, I often move on to a new book. I don't know what to make of it, but I think it's just been too long since I finished a new book and was really jazzed. And too often it's just the premise I like, and I could take or leave the execution. Oh dear.
- I've been working on a new personal genealogy site... and after all of this time, it no longer has bio pages for each ancestor but instead links to them elsewhere. (Wikitree, Ancestry.) Seems weird, I know, but I no longer want to keep up the dry data in multiple places. My site will now be for DNA painting/mapping those ancestors, theorising, etc. I'm not even writing the HTML; I'm using one of those sitebuilding tool-a-ma-jigs. Who am I? What's going on? Where did all of these succulents come from?
State of My Life, 4 June 2019
Exams done. Rise of Queensdale finally done. Good Omens on the screen sadly done. Monster cold in progress. Bleeerrrgghhh. I should press "Publish" on this open tab.
