Grand

Granny's name, well, that shouldn't be that difficult, I thought. So I threw in names, and an ancestry site comes up - as they do. And a question on a message board appeared with both maternal grandparent's names, and a question about the oldest son who drowned age 17. I left a note, but since it was first posted four years ago, I moved on. Today, got a response, a cousin, offspring of a first cousin,(is that a second cousin or a once removed cousin?) also looking for a photo of her great granddad. I replied that I had one and would look for it.

Took me all of five minutes, if that.


I never knew him, he died before I was born. The story told of him was that he died of drink, found several days later in a flophouse.



Guarded fellow, ain't he? No question he's kin, though.

Funny, I have no trouble with family as an abstract. I'm just no good dealing with them in the real world.

Oh, and she was Mary Alice. But I don't remember what configuration was original and what preferred in later age.


Participating in Your Wild Life projects. Real science, I'm enchanted. Cultured the house last month, sent it back to them. Got an email today about gathering further data.

We’ve hand-picked you from our list of enthusiastic citizen scientists to participate in an extension of the Wild Life of Our Homes project. We’d like your help studying the biomes of your home. You sampled the microbes of your home, and now we want to understand a little bit more about the temperature and humidity conditions inside and outside your home.

Here’s what we’ll need from you: We’ll ship two high-tech temperature and humidity sensors (we call them data-loggers) to you; one you’ll place inside your home in a place that won’t be disturbed (and out of the reach of curious dogs and toddlers) and the other you’ll place outside. The loggers will be automatically programmed to collect data every 60 minutes. After three months, you’ll ship both loggers back to us in a provided, stamped envelope. We’ll then download the data, re-program the data-loggers, and ship them back to you to deploy for another three month round of data collection. Then after those three months are up, you’ll ship the loggers back to us.

What do we hope to learn? We have SO many questions! How does the environment of your house match up with natural, outdoor environments? Is your living room more like a desert or a temperate forest? How much of a difference is there really between indoor and outdoor environments? Additionally, by looking at the conditions outside your home, we’ll have fine scale information that we can then compare to the info collected by your local weatherman or climate station.

We’ve selected just one participant from each state so we’re hoping you’re willing to help us out. The loggers are expensive little pieces of equipment so we want to make sure you’re in before we mail them off.

Well, I know why I was chosen. I sent the tests back with the same meticulous, professional, care as when I send specimens from surgery.