Up early, likely too much on my plate at the moment. It is difficult being 77 in some ways especially if there are any loose ends to solve and complete. The one room in a retirement community is appealing for sure on days like this where I have to finish the cleaning and then try and work a little on organizing Edward's files into families - they do cross over into each other but I need to separate them to give them to cousins hopefully as I do not want to keep any originals as it would be a shame to have them lost (it is a huge challenge for me though as I do not know that many members of his extended family although the last year we traveled all over Ontario meeting cousins for the first time - Edward knew I would try to manage everything but I must admit I am getting old and it is not easy). Speaking about retirement homes one could move about with such a setup so that I could access records that I want to look at for my one name studies in Blake and Pincombe by living three months near repositories that would help me - I could travel all about England perhaps one or two three month intervals at a time separated by a return to a retirement home here in between such work efforts to consolidate my work and create my journal issues based on what I find. It could be quite exciting actually. My interest in genealogy is pretty low though except when I need to build a tree to look at DNA results - it is true that they are intertwined but I am not really interested in creating all of that in my lines (I do do trees for the ancient lines of my one name studies though and I am into doing the 1500s right now for Pincombe - there is a lot of data that I am accumulating with that end in mind but I do not think of that so much as genealogy as historical research); my sister has done a great job on the family tree and I can look at that to see if I find any names for sure. The DNA though does catch my interest and always has since the days of Watson and Crick and the modeling of DNA. As we moved along in researching DNA through the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s and then discovered that we could PCR samples and come up with an ability to separate that small amount of DNA that is uniquely one person so that we could then run comparisons that was great news for someone like me who had an interest in my parent's surnames but not much interest in genealogy from the viewpoint of actually creating a huge family tree. My tree remains small and only grew because I did our son in law's family tree (mostly for his paternal grandmother (lovely woman; it was wonderful knowing her actually) as we chatted several times about it and I agreed to do further research on her lines) which reached back into early colonial French Canada - amazing how quickly one can put together a tree using the priest's records in Quebec - sometimes a few hiccups but mostly a straight line back and the priest recorded the parish that individuals came from in France on the earliest record so a real boon to research.
Anyway I am sure that all will be resolved one of these days. In the meantime I will wait for an email as I have sent the Ottawa Police case number to RCMP. I so hoped that when Ed asked me to contact RCMP and they sent me on to the Ottawa Police to pick up his long guns and ammunition that they would all go but only three went that day which left one. Having lived with Edward's long guns all our married life it was actually nice to have the ones with ammunition gone. I always worried when we were away that someone might break in and find all of it. Guns are very dangerous in the wrong hands for sure and it is hard to hide long guns effectively. Edward used to hunt with his brother and others in his small town where he grew up and he still hunted after we were married but probably had not hunted in over 45 years when he surrendered his guns to the Ottawa Police along with ammunition. It was so nice to have that all gone. The last gun was an antique that belonged to his great grandfather actually - a muzzle loader. Henry Link was the owner and I do not know how far back before him or whether he was the original owner (it really should be in a museum). It was a beautiful gun though with a lovely cherry wooden handle and barrel and all the accoutrements that went with it although the powder horn was quite empty. Still a dangerous weapon like the other long guns though; at that time I was going to be away for two weeks a little later in the summer and just really wanted that gun to be surrendered. There has to be an easier way to get this all coordinated so that once notified of the death of a licence holder (I had all the paperwork ready to submit when I first called RCMP and was sent on to the Ottawa Police with the comment that everything would be taken care of when the gun was surrendered) and the guns are surrendered the licence should just be cancelled if the individual is deceased and one is done with that. It is definitely hard enough to be a widow without having to relive the loss of my husband with each new email for him into his inbox and having to figure out what I have to do with it especially if it refers to a website for which I do not have a login (and Ed's list is 300 to 400 distinct logins long). I suspect this email address was created in the time when Ed was still doing his emails and he didn't notice that he needed to set it up so probably has its original password to be changed or I did not understand it when it came to his inbox - why ever would I want to set up an Individual Web Service with the RCMP! Never heard of it before actually. Looked it up and the sign in for IWS lets you do the following: renew your firearms licence; check your application status; register firearms; verify a buyer's licence for a non-restricted firearms transfer; apply for an authorization to transport firearms, and/or update your information. So I am right this is likely a reminder to renew his firearms licence. I did call (the wait was one hour for an agent so a busy line) and the first information was incorrect or I misunderstood it I was rather aggrieved at the time for sure. I tried to give the paperwork to the police office who picked up the muzzle loader but he said it wasn't needed.
I am realizing that likely it was COVID restrictions - we were just starting to get our first COVID shot when my husband passed away. That was why he said not to send in to paperwork but to give it to the police. I do not have a long gun licence so I needed to surrender the muzzle loader to the local police as soon as possible which I did although getting that done was not easy. I sent them an email with the document and they wrote back to say I had to call but it took me ages to get through and I had so many other things to do that it was July before I finally got the muzzle loader surrendered and the police man who came did not want the paper work either - said he didn't need it. I completely missed that in retrospect but will admit that I had lost nearly 15 pounds in less than three months, was exhausted and really not at my best to put it mildly! So I have an answer; have mailed in the paperwork as directed (you can also fax it in but I do not have a fax machine anymore and going to one involves going on the highway and I do not do that alone!). I do hope that is the last item that needs to be done. I made all these lists of things to do but it was very hard sometimes to get things done during COVID.
Last day of cleaning and then a few research days so hope to get back to phasing my great grandparents DNA this week. There is a fair amount of preparation though that I must do to get back to that as there are the new matches to work into the database.
Snow is expected apparently. It is zero degrees and cloudy; sunrise will be in just under one hour as the night lengthens. I do like the longer nights as I can work easier on fine print when it is not so bright. Amazing really that I can still do the fine print but I am using my strong glasses to do that. One of these days I expect my cataracts will obstruct my sight but not yet apparently. In the meantime I shall work away on my DNA and then finally get back to my transcriptions.
On to the day, Breakfast awaits!
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