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Wedding
My little brother is getting married!
He’s turning 50 next Friday. He’s had a number of relationships over the years but none have worked out until now. He more recently starting dating a woman who grew up around the corner from us. She’s a few years younger than us so I didn’t know here although I did know of her family. I suppose I may have met her when young too.
Anyway, she’s living in the house where she grew up and they started dating and got serious and announced their engagement a couple of weeks ago.
My first thought when I saw this is I hope they give enough advance notice so I can try to come to the wedding. As it is, the fiancé is organising a surprise birthday party for my brother, and I was invited. I think this may have been just before they got engaged. I was feeling a bit iffy about going…part of me wanted to go but then I didn’t go when my other brother turned 50 last year. Once the engagement came up my thought was I need to save one of my rare trips for their wedding so the birthday was definitely off the cards. But then I realised this will be her second wedding and maybe they won’t do anything special. Well, it turns out they are having something but it will be small but I am definitely invited. And it’s at the beginning of November so I now need to see if this can be done.
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DNA revisited
The company that handled my dna autosomal testing updated it’s program last month and my ancestral picture looks a bit different. I think it still mostly fits with what I know of my family history but I understand it changed a lot for many others.
There were two notable changes for me. One is actually really small because it now shows a trace of Native American origin. According to the information provided they included trace origins at the request of customers. Also, this still doesn’t make it definite I have any connections but it reopens the possibility of the family story of Cherokee heritage just a tiny bit. I think it would be kind of cool if that was the case…Although I also realise that any connections I have might have less than appealing history about them should I ever find out about it.
The slightly more useful information shows Shephardic origins of about 6%. I don’t know much about it but it’s related to Jewish heritage. Most of this connection seems related to the Iberian peninsula which is the most surprising part of it. Also odd was the way this part was considered greater than any Western European origins. But none of the matches that came up for me (1147 so far) show earliest ancestors there so maybe it’s not really what it seems. I can only assume that my German heritage is listed under Eastern Europe even though most of those ancestors came from the Black Forest area. I think some of the other Jewish heritage may come through my Polish origins.
I finally uploaded a GEDcom file of information compiled by my mother into my family tree on the website for the dna testing. It took a while to figure some of it out but I eventually got there. There were some mistakes along the way, some of which I was able to correct. Then there were deaths in the family that have occurred since that was done that need to be updated. I was able to get some of that corrected but I couldn’t find the death date for my grandmother. I know she died in late November 2011 but I am not sure of the exact date so I will have to query my mother on that. Or maybe I should look to see if I posted about it here.
Anyway, I was interested to see all the names in the history. Most of the family really goes back to England and Ireland, especially for my mother’s side. And on my dad’s side I noticed the migration of generations west from their initial immigration into Philadelphia in the 19th century. Seems they just drifted ever westward in Pennsylvania over the years and settled in the town where my father was born.
I need to check on some of the information with my mom though because my cousins did an extensive family history on my maternal grandmother’s family and only one sibling of that grandmother is actually listed on the family tree. I know my cousin covered all the sibilings and it was a big family…I think maybe twelve children and I think most or all survived childhood. There should be a hard copy of that somewhere in papers my dad has. I might ask him to scan them and send them to me. I assume he has them since it’s his family but maybe my mom has it instead since she was working on the family tree.
And one interesting coincidence came up too. I noted someone with the last name of Brezinski or something like that and in the next day I saw an article about Kelly Ann Conway being on tv on a show with someone with that last name. It’s not a name I would normally come across with any regularity and yet it was there within a day. That name goes back many generations so connections with that family would be quite distant but it was really funny that it happened.
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Certified
I’ve been working as a carer for well over ten years now. For most of those years it was a very casual job where I just signed a form from the disability services and got paid in cash. For what was three hours a week, I guess it was okay. Then the provider of funds changed to the NDIS (national disability insurance scheme) and it’s all formalised with proper pay, benefits, etc. Not to mention the pay has increased considerably from the previous arrangement.
Anyway, it’s been three or more years now and I was only just asked quite recently whether I had a first aid certificate. No, I didn’t. A first aid course was arranged and at the end of last month I had my training.
It consisted of a day-long course at one of the St. John Ambulance locations. I’m not exactly an early riser so the biggest challenge was getting to sleep the night before. That didn’t really work out too well but I did get up and I got to the place on time. It was easier to reach than I expected although it still took nearly twenty minutes due to traffic.
We did the CPR component in the morning because one of the students was only there for that part of the training. I was a bit underprepared because I didn’t get some information on the online part of the course before we started and so I was going in blindly. I guess under those circumstances I picked it up quickly.
We ended up partnering with other students and practicing the CPR on dummies. There was an infant and an adult dummy. Plus we practiced using the defribillator which was something I had no idea about at all. It was all a bit overwhelming but I feel I got enough from it to be able to handle it should a need arise.
We had a break at lunch time and did various other scenarios during the afternoon. I was interested in the methods for handling choking. Here they don’t recommend the Heimlich manoeuvre because of the risk of damage to internal organs.
I was also interested in the handling of snake bites because that has changed so much over the years. The limb affected is effectively wrapped up snugly to slow venom from spreading through the body,
Other things like broken limbs and sprains were pretty similar to what I expected. I suppose that hasn’t had a need to change as much over time.
The teacher was quite engaging and made it sort of fun for us. I learned a lot and hope I can retain it. It’s supposed to be updated once a year and I can see why because there’s so much there that it’s easy to for you to forget, especially when you don’t have to make use of the information much.
Anyway, I am certified in first aid here in Australia and finally feel somewhat equipped to deal with an emergency.
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A new post
I just noticed it’s been over three months since my last post. I really seem to go in dribs and drabs at the best of times.
Life carries on at the Lorikeet household.
I am working more hours these days. The man I am a carer for got lots more funding this year and my two hour shift doubled to four. Plus I have taken over for the other carer on several occasions, and the pay is quite a bit more for weekend days and even more on holidays. Anyway, I’ll be adding an extra eight hours over two more days in a couple of weeks to cover for the other carer who is unable to continue with that work load at the moment. This is to continue until November although there is always a chance I will keep some of those hours. It’s not quite as many hours as I’d like but it’s still so much more than the measly two I’ve been doing.
Also, I did stints at two campuses of counting people in rooms for a utilisation survey in March/April. Each last a week of fours hours daily. The first week was quite easy, thanks to my much fitter body. The second week was pretty exhausting since it covered a lot more ground. I think I was walking something like 10 kms a day for that job.
I am still doing pretty well with my exercise regime. I did fall off the wagon on doing more strength training but I am getting cardio workouts several times a week right now. My biggest challenge has been eating habits. Around Easter I started going heavy on carbs and I could tell a difference with overload. I have settled back down from that but still find I’m eating too much junk so need to work that little bit more on improving eating habits.
We recently started a new term at tai chi and the Scientist and I starting to learn tai chi sword. We’ve already learned two styles of fan and the regular tai chi set. I was a bit hesitant on this one for concerns over the weight of the sword but decided to give it a try. I’m having to do it right-handed because it’s tricky for the teacher to teach a lefty…I’m sure she would try if it’s impossible for me…so far I’m okay but the movements have only just shifted to using my right hand so it’s early days. Also the advanced group is learning Beijing 24 which is a competitive type of tai chi that has been standardised between various styles. It’s different so far but kind of neat to be learning something pretty different.
Health-wise, I have been mostly okay but have a couple of issues. Some body hair loss was noticed recently and it’s quite obvious in one area so it seemed worth checking out. I don’t think the hair on my head is falling out more than usual although I could be wrong. Since it’s long, it always seems like I’m losing lots of hair. I had a whole bunch of blood tests run just over a week ago and a few came up abnormal although most weren’t terribly so. The worst affected is my iron levels. I don’t think I’ve had a normal transferrin sat level in nearly three years and the ferritin is also often below normal. The actual iron is more normal although right now it’s on the lowest possible normal it could be. Anyway, I’ve been offered an iron infusion to help that along (hopefully) and that’s scheduled on Friday and should take about an hour including the doctor visit. Hopefully this might get me back on track for the first time in a long while. The doctor I’m seeing suspects this might be the problem with the hair loss so it will be interesting to see if this helps things along in that area too.
The other tests that are in question are my vitamin D level (too low) and my parathyroid level (too high). Apparently the parathyroid level can be properly understood without a calcium test so I had that done today. The gp I’ve been seeing told me to take vitamin D tablets but I understand that it’s important to find out the reason for my parathyroid first…This doctor is young so I guess she has little experience in this area. I’m holding off on this until I know that my calcium isn’t high. My father has issues with his parathyroid and he has problems with his calcium being too high which poses lots of problems in treatment due to other medications he takes. I honestly have not heard much about parathyroid issues over the years, except for when my father had his. He has a tumor on his parathyroid that can’t be removed due to closeness to some major artery or something like that.
Which reminds me that a few weeks ago, I also had a blocked tear duct which got rather swollen all of a sudden and sent me off to see the doctor on a Saturday morning. That’s cleared up but it’s interesting because it’s a common issue in Sjögren’s syndrome and this is my first time experiencing it. Since that started, my eyes have been particularly dry so I am so glad to have artificial tears available.
I’ve been doing a lot more reading of actual books lately, mostly on my Kindle. I must admit I find physical books less appealing lately, especially at night when I need some light to read. I resisted the Kindle for a long time because I hate that it’s a proprietary format. But after trying other e-readers, I find it works better than others I’ve tried and, of course, it’s got a very established database of books. I find I am downloading lots of the free books and some of them are quite good. One of my latest books I finished was a light novel I found amongst a bunch of manga titles. I can’t recall if it was free or very low price…but it was a pretty long book and I really liked it.
Well that’s quite a long read and it’s kind of late so I will quit for now and hopefully remember other things I want to write about later on.
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Results are in
Back in November I ordered a couple of kits from Family Tree DNA for myself and the Scientist. They had a special going at the time which was hard to ignore and the kits arrived in early December, I think. We both followed the instructions then sent them back together (postage was cheaper that way-It would have been postpaid in the US though). After a few weeks I got a message confirming the receipt of the kits and then we waited for the results to come back.
Curiously, the Scientist got a message about his results a couple weeks ago. I never got one but when I checked there were results available. I don’t know for sure if I was really sent an email before but today I received one saying something about more results.
It seems that my family (going back five generations) is completely European in origin. Most of the origin seems to be central European and to a somewhat lesser degree British Isles. Not too surprising to me. My maternal grandfather’s surname was English so I assume that goes back to the UK. I think that may be the side of the family that has been traced back to Northern Ireland in the 19th century. My maternal grandmother’s name was Johnston so I am guessing this is possibly UK and central European. Then there my paternal grandmother who was from a German family and the paternal grandfather who was born to Polish parents, The Polish side is a lot less than I expected since it’s the most recent in immigration to the US (I think it was in the 1910s or there abouts). It seems I also have some Finnish and/or Latvian background and some southern Europe too. Those are both surprising to me and I’d be curious to know how far back that goes and which sides of the family are connected. I am still figuring out a lot of it so I hope to find more in the future.
What surprised me heaps was that there were 899 matches from other tests (I think this would include those imported from Ancestry dna an from 23 and me.)Â And when I checked today there was 913 matches since then. I wonder how many there will be in the future. Only one of the matches is a close family member. The name is familiar but I’m pretty sure there are more than one person with this name in that part of the family…I’m guessing most likely it’s a second cousin.
This does clear up a false story that had circulated through my mother’s family for many years though. I don’t know when it started but I remember from when I was young that my great-great grandmother was half Cherokee. There’s also another story in the same family that we are related to Theodore Roosevelt. The jury is still out in the latter but since there is no Native American origin showing up, I feel pretty assure that story is false. I suspect the latter one is false too since I haven’t seen a connection made on the family history.
This does make me wonder how these stories came about. I wonder if it’s some sort of status thing…I can’t think how that would have been. I do remember thinking it was pretty cool to have connections to the Cherokee when I was younger. I was pretty disappointed a few years ago when my mom told me she suspected it might be a false story since no evidence had been found for it in the family traced so far. A friend of mine has had a similar story about Native American blood in her family history. She’s the one who alerted me to this service and she ordered a kit and sent it back not long after we did. I will be curious if she is able to confirm or rule out the connection with her test.
Will update if I get anything new of note from my results in the future.
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Stomach churning day
I’ve been dreading today but it’s finally here. It’s so easy now to appreciate how good Obama was as president when I know how everything is descending into hell at a rapid pace. I finally changed my Facebook avatar today to a totally black image, per the suggestion of the Scientist. It’s a simple reminder of how dark a day it is for the world. I’m not sure how long I will keep that up there but it might be a while. After all, it took over a year to remove the image of our cat who died in November 2015.
In the past I often avoided posting about too much political stuff on Facebook but I decided I was going to do exactly what some of my family and a very few of my friends have done. I am going to post constantly about things that man is doing and why I think it’s wrong. The main difference will be that I won’t be posting a bunch of crap…which is what I call most of the fake news that was share with me over the past years. And I’ve been trying to post lots of Obama positive articles because that’s how I feel. I know he wasn’t a perfect president but he was pretty good as most of them go. And he was and still is very classy in the face of all the garbage he faced. I suspect he’d have been better had he not faced the onslaught of right wing America/world.
Normally I would stay up to watch the inauguration but I will be giving it a miss this time around. There is no way I want to acknowledge Trump as president in any way, even after he is sworn in. I know it’s going to happen but I just can’t stomach it.
Anyway, I’m meeting the Scientist in the city after he finishes work and we are planning to head to Fremantle for the latter part of the afternoon to partly escape from reality and also to enjoy some yummy food. I’m mostly looking forward to going to Gabriels, a chocolateria of sorts which has some amazingly good ice cream made with their homemade chocolate.
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Christmas
Our Christmas went really well. It was a pretty low-key day with just family over during the evening. Normally we go to a breakfast that is hosted by family friends on Christmas Day but it was cancelled this year and we were home all day. Actually, that’s not entirely true because I went out to a shop at some local markets that was open to get a couple things needed for food preparation. The shop was pretty busy, probably because aside from another major shop and some food outlets, every other place around was closed.
While the annual breakfast is nice, It was also good to sleep in and not to be rushing off early in the day. I wanted to do this when the kids were younger but it kind of became an obligatory thing and so it has continued.
While the boys enjoyed their Christmas gifts, the Scientist and I worked on various tasks before family came over in the evening. The evening went really well with everyone enjoying the food. There was too much again and I can’t help thinking I might only make one veggie item next year instead of a salad and veggie item. I usually do veggie chickpea patties but changed to a different type this year. The new recipe was a lot easier and less time consuming and it came out well. I was going to look for the recipe but now I can’t recall it and it’s been so long I don’t know if I will find it again. I also made tabbouleh this time and it came out pretty well for a first try. Most of the works seems to be chopping up the herbs. The wheat bulgur is pretty quick and easy to cook. The Scientist prepared a turkey and also a roast beef because Lego Lover doesn’t like turkey.
We ate outside on the patio and had a nice relaxing time with the family for a long while afterwards. Then Game Fanatic had organised some party games to be played using his laptop and the tv. That turned out to be lots of fun and before we knew it, 9pm rolled around and everyone was still here and wanting to play a bit more. But soon afterwards things did wrap up and almost everyone left. It was at this point while saying goodbye to the Scientist’s brother that we realised we hadn’t done the birthday cake for this BIL. The Scientist and I did a quick sing of Happy birthday and then we cut the cake and sent him home with some. The rest was left here for us to eat. We’ve never forgotten before so it was pretty embarrassing and I think the Scientist felt the worst about it…just that we were all so wrapped up in the other parts it got overlooked. Anyway…
After that there was tag team clean up with the Scientist and I taking turns washing dishes until he finally went to bed. Almost everything was cleaned up so it looked pretty good in here. Then it was just time to relax a bit until the evening was over. And then it was done and dusted, as they say around here.
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All adults here
Lego Lover turned eighteen last month and the house is now filled with adults. Sure, maybe some of the adults are still quite dependent up the parents, but they are still legally adults. That’s kind of weird to think about because part of me still thinks of that baby and little boy when I think of him.
The birthday itself was pretty quiet. Lego Lover wasn’t interested in any sort of party so it was just us plus the Scientist’s mum, who dropped by early in the day. He got some of the presents he was hoping for and I went out and got another one for him on the day because the item in question was finally available. He asked for tandoori chicken for his birthday meal. Last year he’d asked for pizza from our local shop but he found it made him too full. The chicken came out well with some basmati rice. Later on we played some video games that were of interest and it was all good.
Later in the night, after his birthday was technically over, we had a rather emotional chat that touched on subjects that needed to be discussed. I won’t share that here but I will say it was good for us to share what we did. It was one of those times when it became clear what sort of things matter most to him…at least the ones that he isn’t already quite vocal about.
Anyway, Lego Lover is such an amazing young man and he continues to grow and become more interesting all the time. I must remember this when we are dealing with the harder stuff because it’s so easy to get lost in the tedious everyday issues.
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Problem solved
Back in August or maybe September, I bought an iPhone. I’d been waiting for prices to drop on old models when the new ones were announced so I grabbed the model I wanted when this happened. For the most part I’ve been really happy with the phone. I went back to Apple due to my past investment. (I wanted to stick with Windows but there has been less and less support in the past year so I decided to jump back sooner than later.)
There was one problem that happened right from the start when I transferred my data from the old iPhone to the new one. My music did not sync properly and some albums had tracks missing and some tracks played other songs, even for those few tracks I have from the iTunes store. I’d been trying to fix the problem for some time but had had no success. I finally did some real searching on it and found a fix and tried that but it didn’t work. In the midst of this I reset my desktop os due to ongoing problems which may or may not have contributed (I know now this didn’t have any connection). I also deleted all the music I’d been keeping on the hard drive. Over the years music directory had become quite a mess and I thought somewhere in there was yet another iTunes file that I had overlooked. Getting rid of all of it seemed a good idea no matter what. Well the reset didn’t make any difference and the deletion of songs didn’t effect any changes when I added music back again.
I went back to my searching and found so-called fixes on the Apple discussion boards. I again tried all the steps included and reset my phone one more time. This time it worked so I was able to stop pulling out my hair over this issue. Plus my music directory is nice and tidy now that everything is consistent. I still have a lot of music to add back to the directory and then to my phone but I can actually listen to full albums without a problem now.
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Back to the stewing
I must have put myself into protective mode back when I was stewing about Trump winning the election. I had reached a state of calm for a while but now that the inauguration is so close, I am just feeling ill. . I just hate the idea that he will be named president, even if he is removed from office.
In the past I would stay up to watch the inauguration but I really can’t stomach the idea so will completely miss it. Any coverage of the marches I will watch though. Too bad there isn’t anything organised in Perth like in Sydney and Melbourne because I would be part of that. I guess I will just be there in spirit instead.
I’ve made the decision to become more active in posting stuff about what Trump is doing (on Facebook). Already I am getting lots of flack from certain family members although I have refrained from joining in to any “discussions” since the only thing acceptable to those people is if I change my stance.