New Year Milieu

Last year's resolution was to lose 10 pounds. I did so well with that I now need to lose 20.
So much for New Year's resolutions.

My brother and I decided to get a DNA test for me. I'm pretty sure he wanted to check that I was not some kind of alien species. Well, I am not from another world, but I was worried for a few weeks. Now he is going to get a DNA kit and see if we are really brothers. That's not what he tells me, but I'm pretty sure that's why he is doing it.

I bit the bullet again and signed up for 6 months of access to data about my family. I am seriously a mutt, totally European in nature, but a mutt nonetheless. I can find all of my great grandparents, but a couple of them get fuzzy beyond that. On the other hand there are some that I can follow back for hundreds and in one case over a thousand years. After a handful of generations we are all pretty well diluted, so I guess it doesn't really matter all that much. Going back far enough makes us all related to each other and all Africans. It makes bigotry hard to understand. It's easy to dislike assholes, but a blanket hatred of one group or another seems kind of moronic. We are all "them" and we are all "us".
Building a family tree is tedious, but a better use of time than endless hours of Facebook in my estimation. I know because I have been sucked into Facebook for way too long on occasion and I hate myself for it. I check it now and then and with practice I can leave it after a few minutes of checking on the family and some closer friends.

I digress. Some of the fun things I have found out doing family research is that my father was born about 4 months after his parents were married. Talk about a premature birth! My mother died when I was three, although I was close to her mother and her brother. I didn't get to see much of them after I became an (alleged) adult because of distances, money, and priorities. It is something I have always regretted. That side of the family has held the biggest surprises and the most mystery.  There were a few surprises on the Viking side, as well.

They say, whoever "They" are, that you can't know where you're going if you don't know where you are from. Well, maybe in some ways, but I don't think it means much. Maybe it's just part of self- awareness.

In other news.

My morning commute to work is 2 miles down the gravel road to Highway 61, along Lake Superior for 8 miles, then 1 mile through the "city" (population 1152) to my workplace. The other morning in the first 10 miles I saw two cars coming the other direction and one about a mile ahead of me going the same way. Once I got to town the traffic picked up. I'll bet there were ten other vehicles moving on the road. At least the (yes, there is only one) traffic light was green and no one seemed to be going over 30mph. Next week will be different when the kids go back to school and all those school buses jam up the roads with their occasional stops to pick up kids who are too lazy to walk the 5 miles each way. Why, when I was a kid... It was so long ago I don't remember any more, but I am sure we had it worse.

The next day there was even less traffic.

Sometimes I will stop on the way in or out of town to enjoy the view or take a picture.

The ships have moved in closer to avoid the nastiness farther out on the lake. Click the pics to embiggen.

The waves hitting the cold air, rocks, and plants have been doing their sculpture thing again this winter. Even though it is relatively mild this year it is still cold enough.

The long New Year's weekend gave us time to enjoy the morning, even looking at the hay that needed to be put away. We waited until noon to put the hay in the barn, but enjoyed a leisurely few hours first along with the painted sky.