Probably I actually miss working, that daily getting up punctually at 6:00 a.m. and getting ready for the day ahead. Even in those days it involved my doing a 30 minute workout first and then breakfast and out the door for the walk to the highway and the bus and off to work. Nowadays that would be the train. However, I turned my retirement into a work life for me as I pursue my knowledge of my family's DNA with the results of four of my six siblings. It is a lovely relaxing kind of work that I greatly enjoy. It is interspersed by difficulties not of my creation as it turns out although likely I can be responsible for some difficulties - I am not a martyr! And so the cleaning days of the week begin and also I want to accomplish the transferal of the new matches into my system (and I am now down to 20 matches having acquired a few more yesterday increasing rather than decreasing the total by the end of the day) although I did manage overall to do 10 matches into the system. It was just a very busy day full of exercise including a good 2.5 km walk in the cold and snow - lovely fresh white snow.
Church on You-Tube was wonderful as always and the addition of another hymn much appreciated in this Advent Season. If I was alone I would watch all the services that are televised on You-Tube that I can fit into the day. Sometimes I go to other You-Tube Church services generally Roman Catholic as I find them so very familiar to my own.
It was interesting to see that other people have found the same problems with the Harry and Megan show - it is very anti-British which is surprising given Harry being British and many generations worth of British now. Coming from a family where my grandparents (raised to adulthood and beyond in England) lived with or near us and having actual American cousins that my mother talked about I got to see the difference between Brits and Yanks to be colloquial. I am more comfortable with Brits because I am used to their life style much more formal and having my autism tendencies that is very comfortable for me. I like to be on the outside looking in before I venture in which I do not always do; really preferring the hermit life style. Canadians sit in between these two giants (the UK and the USA) and that was another problem with the Harry and Megan show which was displaying the British Isles as being " so small." Not sure why Harry would be part of that; Britain has played on the world stage for many centuries and the British Empire now Commonwealth has existed for nearly 500 years. The Royal Family of Britain is over a thousand years old itself and has changed and grown with the times. I believe I will watch the next edition of the Harry and Megan show and probably twice so that I do not get mislead by my age and the speed of action. I did find the different issues jumped around a lot and some of the material was a bit strange but gradually people are coming forward to properly identify some of the sequences as to their actual reason for having been filmed and then inserted out of context into the series. I guess it will pay their mortgage and that is probably the overall intent. But it would be more appropriate from a British standpoint if I should dare to look at it that way being actually Canadian not to trash your family to pay the bills. There must be another way really; it is like a replay of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. I did though like the idea of a prequel to The Crown talking about the reigns of Kings Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, and George VI. It would certainly be interesting and likely a real hit as well. Britain may be an island nation small in size but their impact on the world has been and continues to be huge and in this century and the last. A lot of that has been the Royal Family supporting the picture of Britain in the world. It is hard work to live in that "Fish Bowl" and be at the constant demand of the public but they do it very well.
So the day is planned. Cleaning the top floor and once again the vacuum is already up here so no lugging the vacuum up two flights of stairs! Perhaps one is wiser in one's old age. Getting those last twenty matches into the system so that I can begin work on the phasing but first reworking the new matches into the current grandparent phasing diagrams for the five siblings. Then on to phasing the great grandparents which actually feels doable these days. What fun it is actually and getting to actually be a hermit even better - it certainly makes it much easier to slowly let Edward go from my life (although never forgotten) as he would always be dragging me off to one meeting or another or off shopping (another thing of which I am not really a big fan). Then there is always reading; I love to read and there is so much at our fingertips these days whether online or in actual print. My last book " The Black Death" was such a treat. I may reread it and make some notes this time as some of the material in it is handy for my one name studies. Amazingly Blake can be looked at in England basically from the early 1200s on although that surname is not in this book. But some of the places are home to founding Blake families. My Pincombe I am still stuck in the 1300s at the earliest - perhaps the surname developed in this time frame from the place name "Pencombe" in Herefordshire. Still determining that and so the center of my research endeavours - my parent's surnames - moves forward. Occasionally I toy with the idea of doing a PhD in History from a viewpoint of DNA and population study but it is unlikely as that too drags me out of my reclusive lifestyle plus I am 77 and a half nearly so should leave such interesting pursuits to younger people.
But first is breakfast; my favourite meal of the day and dawn is breaking in a beautiful yellow glow on the horizon. We have our snow cover back again and perhaps this will stay as we are into December now.
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