Happy Halloween!
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Happy All Hallows Eve Eve!!!
Happy day before Halloween! Another cartoon, celebrating spookiness....this one is an old Mickey Mouse one, back from when he was cute. It also shows how old cartoons can easily contribute to lifelong fears of old houses, skeletons and spiders!!!!
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Happy Halloween, Part Deux!
Another great cartoon from the old days. To this day, I still picture hairpins flying in the air after certain people leave a room (sometimes it's even me!) :-D
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Happy Halloween!
In honor of Halloween, I thought I'd post this old Betty Boop cartoon on the subject. I miss the really old cartoon where everyone bounces all the time!
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Why don't you put her in charge?
So it's a nasty rainy saturday here in the northeast (again) and I've been doing chores and stuff around the house. On the TV is Aliens because I can't not watch that movie whenever it's on, I don't know why, I think it's a masterpiece.
I noticed my cat Greta was watching it. She seems to enjoy staring at the TV now and then.
The room is dark because it's such a cloudy dark day and I'm watching the flashing from the TV reflect on her and her eyes and suddenly I'm reminded of the scene from the first Alien where we don't see the bad stuff happening to the guy with the hat in the chains-hanging-from-ceiling-room, we just see the reflection in the cat's eyes that's witnessing it.
And I got all weirded out!!! Not that there's aliens in my house or anything, but...I turned on the lights. After all, they mostly come at night. Mostly. :-D
I noticed my cat Greta was watching it. She seems to enjoy staring at the TV now and then.
The room is dark because it's such a cloudy dark day and I'm watching the flashing from the TV reflect on her and her eyes and suddenly I'm reminded of the scene from the first Alien where we don't see the bad stuff happening to the guy with the hat in the chains-hanging-from-ceiling-room, we just see the reflection in the cat's eyes that's witnessing it.
And I got all weirded out!!! Not that there's aliens in my house or anything, but...I turned on the lights. After all, they mostly come at night. Mostly. :-D
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - A Family's Increase
I just love the ideas that pop up over at http://www.geneamusings.com/! So often, it makes me look at my research data with a fresh eye, which is something I definitely need! This week, the assignment is:
1) Pick one of your four great-grandparents - if possible, the one with the most descendants.
2) Create a descendants list for those great-grandparents either by hand or in your software program.
3) Tell us how many descendants, living or dead, are in each generation from those great-grandparents.
4) How many are still living? Of those, how many have you met and exchanged family information with? Are there any that you should make contact with ASAP? Please don't use last names of living people for this - respect their privacy.
5) Write about it in your own blog post, in comments to this post, or in comments or a Note on Facebook.
1) I chose my great-grandparents William Homer Mix and Cornelia Elizabeth Akins.
2) I did a descendant's list in Family Tree Maker.
3) Number of descendant's by generation:
a. Children: 10 (9 deceased, 1 living)
b. Grand-children: 37 (5 deceased, 32 living)
c. Great-grandchildren: 44 (all living)
d. Great-great-grandchildren: 17 (all living)
4) So William and Cornelia's increase is 108 people. 14 are deceased, so that leaves 94 remaining. I do know there's probably a lot more because there are a bunch of distant cousins that I don't have family information on. For all I know they are deceased as well. 50 of the 94 remaining are younger than me and probably not likely to have family information to pass on to me. So that leaves 44. Of those 44, I've met only 3!!!!!!! Those 44 are all cousins (2nd and beyond) that I've never met. So I now have something on my list to do!
I also have the problem of losing track of people after the 1930 census. The release of the 1940 information can't come soon enough.
I also now have a job of going back to the SSDI and searching for death dates for the Mix line, something I haven't gone back to in several years. I do belong to 2 newspaper archive sites, but unfortunately, neither of them have local newspapers from the Finger Lakes region of New York yet.
1) Pick one of your four great-grandparents - if possible, the one with the most descendants.
2) Create a descendants list for those great-grandparents either by hand or in your software program.
3) Tell us how many descendants, living or dead, are in each generation from those great-grandparents.
4) How many are still living? Of those, how many have you met and exchanged family information with? Are there any that you should make contact with ASAP? Please don't use last names of living people for this - respect their privacy.
5) Write about it in your own blog post, in comments to this post, or in comments or a Note on Facebook.
1) I chose my great-grandparents William Homer Mix and Cornelia Elizabeth Akins.
2) I did a descendant's list in Family Tree Maker.
3) Number of descendant's by generation:
a. Children: 10 (9 deceased, 1 living)
b. Grand-children: 37 (5 deceased, 32 living)
c. Great-grandchildren: 44 (all living)
d. Great-great-grandchildren: 17 (all living)
4) So William and Cornelia's increase is 108 people. 14 are deceased, so that leaves 94 remaining. I do know there's probably a lot more because there are a bunch of distant cousins that I don't have family information on. For all I know they are deceased as well. 50 of the 94 remaining are younger than me and probably not likely to have family information to pass on to me. So that leaves 44. Of those 44, I've met only 3!!!!!!! Those 44 are all cousins (2nd and beyond) that I've never met. So I now have something on my list to do!
I also have the problem of losing track of people after the 1930 census. The release of the 1940 information can't come soon enough.
I also now have a job of going back to the SSDI and searching for death dates for the Mix line, something I haven't gone back to in several years. I do belong to 2 newspaper archive sites, but unfortunately, neither of them have local newspapers from the Finger Lakes region of New York yet.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
My DNA tests confirm I'm from Earth
So my grandfather was indulgent enough to allow me to scrape the inside of his cheek for DNA several months ago. I think he thought it was a lot of hooey, but it was harmless enough. I waited with baited breath for my results and I have them!
And I have NO idea what any of it means! :-)
I had figured I was a smart enough person, I'd be able to figure it all out, but honestly, I know I have information there, and I just have no idea how to interpret it. I'm still very glad I have it and I'd do the swab and cough up the money for the results again in a second, I just wish I was a scientist who understood it all!
So what do I know now?
Well, when it comes to the Y-DNA, which I tend to refer to as "boy-DNA", I am told that my grandfather's DNA belongs to Y-DNA Haplogroup R1a1. WooHoo, a fact! I love facts. Apparently it confirmed positive for the sub-clade of M198, whatever that means.
I looked up haplogroup R1a1 on wikipedia and it explained that this is the y-chromosome found most frequently in central and eastern Europe, and in some areas of Central and south Asia.
This happily matches my grandfather's presumed heritage of his family coming to the US from Hungary (the area is in modern Romania). Further on that, his family had supposedly moved south to Hungary, probably in the late 1700s, early 1800s from the Alsace-Lorraine region. That is what my grandfather says he was always told. There was in fact, a large migration of Germans south into the Austro-Hungarian empire. The Hapsburgs had encouraged German emigration to unsettled areas of Southern Hungary in the 18th century.
So all that makes sense and matches family legend, which is very gratifying.
The company I used also looked in their database to see if the boy-dna matched anyone else in their database. I didn't get a significant number for a match, but more eastern european confirmation - their were non-significant matches to people in modern-day Bulgaria and Slovakia.
I did the 67-marker test, but did not have any matches with the same or similar surname. This was not surprising to me, my grandfather's surname is not widely occurring.
When it comes to girl-DNA (or mtDNA), I am told that my grandfather has the mtDNA haplogroup H, which is the most common mtDNA haplogroup for Europe.
There are lots of forums out there I know, for posting your DNA test results and finding others that match, I'm looking into those and figuring out which one's to bother with. I will let you know how it goes!
And I have NO idea what any of it means! :-)
I had figured I was a smart enough person, I'd be able to figure it all out, but honestly, I know I have information there, and I just have no idea how to interpret it. I'm still very glad I have it and I'd do the swab and cough up the money for the results again in a second, I just wish I was a scientist who understood it all!
So what do I know now?
Well, when it comes to the Y-DNA, which I tend to refer to as "boy-DNA", I am told that my grandfather's DNA belongs to Y-DNA Haplogroup R1a1. WooHoo, a fact! I love facts. Apparently it confirmed positive for the sub-clade of M198, whatever that means.
I looked up haplogroup R1a1 on wikipedia and it explained that this is the y-chromosome found most frequently in central and eastern Europe, and in some areas of Central and south Asia.
This happily matches my grandfather's presumed heritage of his family coming to the US from Hungary (the area is in modern Romania). Further on that, his family had supposedly moved south to Hungary, probably in the late 1700s, early 1800s from the Alsace-Lorraine region. That is what my grandfather says he was always told. There was in fact, a large migration of Germans south into the Austro-Hungarian empire. The Hapsburgs had encouraged German emigration to unsettled areas of Southern Hungary in the 18th century.
So all that makes sense and matches family legend, which is very gratifying.
The company I used also looked in their database to see if the boy-dna matched anyone else in their database. I didn't get a significant number for a match, but more eastern european confirmation - their were non-significant matches to people in modern-day Bulgaria and Slovakia.
I did the 67-marker test, but did not have any matches with the same or similar surname. This was not surprising to me, my grandfather's surname is not widely occurring.
When it comes to girl-DNA (or mtDNA), I am told that my grandfather has the mtDNA haplogroup H, which is the most common mtDNA haplogroup for Europe.
There are lots of forums out there I know, for posting your DNA test results and finding others that match, I'm looking into those and figuring out which one's to bother with. I will let you know how it goes!
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
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