Dear Cute Little Ninja, we are about to embark upon our 9th winter together. Are we ready? 💜
What did I do today? Besides not too much, I signed on to Ancestry.com. That is, I signed *back* on to Ancestry. I vaguely remember setting up a login a few years ago, then getting cold feet. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because I would have to pay actual money to actually do much of anything. Oh, not that an Ancestry.com subscription would break my bank any more than not buying the cheap eggs from Kroger but I’m sure I knew that I wouldn’t actively pursue it at that time so why pay for it.
Connecting with a 3rd cousin and some interesting stuff that may come out of that connection have tipped me over the edge. I now have a paid account and am willing to share my family tree with anyone who wants to connect. At the moment my tree is a very small rudimentary one. I spent a good amount of time fumbling around and had to delete several extra instances of my parents as parents (and grandparents) to themselves before I even had a clue to what I was doing 🐽.
I don’t know what I will do with this. One the one hand, I have kind of a natural bent for things like genealogy. I am a systems analyst with database experience and family trees are basically databases. But, like most databases I have encountered in my life (back to when I was 7 or whatever and logged bobby pins and pencils and things from my desk drawer onto lined notebook paper), family trees are messy and I’m not sure I have the persistence to deal with anything extensive at this time.
And I don’t really have time. Another round of Man Cleaning happened today and when I mentioned that I wasn’t really much help, The Pensioner said something like, “It’s your day off!” Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Jeebus! Yes, I bring income into the household via an outside job. It’s so nice to be appreciated for that. I MEAN THAT SINCERELY. So many women in other parts of the world everywhere are prohibited from “working outside the home” even if it would benefit the family finances. We don’t really need my income but it is pretty darn nice to have it and I don’t EVER look gift horses in the mouth and that’s about as far as I will go with that for now.
Sorry to get off on a tangent! At least for now, I am Genealogist Lite. I have no plans to do a saliva test, at least not in the near future. I suspect that test will tell me I’m a Viking in disguise. I have no problem with that at all. Just. I don’t think I have words.
Oh yeah, the Ninja. We had some snow showers today. None of it stuck anywhere. It’s not quiiiiite that cold yet and there wasn’t all that much snow. The Ninja and I are going into our 9th winter together. We gassed her up today and somehow ended up out at Dexter’s Pub for a bowl of chili and…
November 19th, 2017 at 8:25 pm
Please do the saliva because the results can be surprising! And it unlocks a lot of other information about relatives. 🙂 Plus, I want to hear all about it!! I am a Genealogist lite also, although I have had some major successes in my research. (mainly to stave off boredom–living alone, ya know?)
November 20th, 2017 at 4:30 pm
I’m on and off the genealogy hunt, mainly because I think I have a degree of attention deficit disorder. But when I’m engaged, I’m completely absorbed, and it really CAN be a time suck. It can also be frustrating because I’ll get fixated on a particular line (I REALLY WANT TO FIND THOSE IRISH ANCESTORS) and I’ll come up with brick walls. I really do encourage you to do the DNA test, though. I was delighted to discover how naughty some of my relatives were back in the day! Grandad conceived a child in his teens! (And it’s possible he was never aware of it). But, Dad had a half-brother he never knew about.
Piecing together the stories is fascinating. And yes, with your analytical mind I suspect you’d be really good at this. (I have a hard time staying away from rabbit trails).