Another busy day

 Yesterday was another busy day and good accomplishment on what I had planned to do. Worked on the matches and have completed both mine and one sibling and onto the next sibling who is the most opposite to me. Although I may show up in his matches; I often do not but the others do but some of his matches are totally singular because he inherited so strongly from the Pincombe and Blake/Knight leaving out the Buller and the Rawlings family pretty much although he did inherit perhaps 10% of each or less- must work that out. But the result is a beautiful array of matches. I will work at that today. I haven't marked the matches of my two other siblings yet to see if there is anything that hasn't already been covered. But my list of unsorted matches is closing up on 200 now. It will be a busy time sorting them into their various chromosomes and painting them and charting them. Most of the testing companies are American so I continue with my subscriptions to them but I do tend to think of them as universal and the head office for Ancestry is in Ireland I think. Plus My Heritage is in Israel and Living DNA is in the United Kingdom. Find My Past (not a testing company) but my most used genealogical website is owned by the Dutch now although continues to be based in the United Kingdom. We really are a united world for the most part but probably it continues being primarily European in my exposure given my 100% British/Scot ancestry with some Huguenot French from the 1400s coming to Somerset and perhaps some Irish although I think mostly it is Planters from Scotland during the Commonwealth era. But I do have some actual Irish ancestry from the Republic of Ireland. The Scandinavian/German ancestry is a mystery although I suspect the Gray family in the East Riding of Yorkshire is my Scandinavian line - they were very fair tall people with blue eyes. I actually have a blue eye ring which appears to be larger since my cataract surgery which is sort of amazing as my eyes were generally considered to be brown (hazel really). But that blue eye ring looks back at me every day since the surgery. Strange really but I think one would still say they are brown eyes. 

I had planned to return to the United States with my daughter for six weeks as she works there (did apply to the universities here but was only successful in getting a job in the United States nearly 20 years ago now which has been a wonderful experience of working in her field and training up young people in her skill sets which are vast actually) and it just seemed like a great idea to do that. She is into AI these days. My health is very good and I always carry international health insurance so was quite looking forward to that actually. She came home to bring me back which made it really easy for this old woman traveling so as not to be a burden on the system in either country. But we made the decision that I should probably stay here out of the way. I wonder sometimes if my outspokenness will hurt her though. She shares my feeling that Israel needs to be supported in their desire to create a safe homeland for themselves and especially for their children. Through my life in the 50s when I was a child Israeli children were murdered in their school yards and really that hasn't changed at all. Israeli children should also be able to go to sleep at night without fear - Hamas caused all of this death and destruction and should get out of Gaza and especially release the hostages. She has been very happy to help all of her students to become the creative and knowledgeable people that they have become and continues to feel that way. But I am sad not to return with her actually - I do love Wisconsin cheeses and milk especially but ours is good here too! 

We had a lovely walk which ended up being about 7 kilometres, another great thing about Wisconsin is all the excellent walking along Lake Michigan - it is a beautiful place. I do love to walk but age is creeping up on me rapidly. I will be 80 in the Fall although that is still quite a long way away. Looking out my work room window the trees have no sign of budding but lots of birds have returned now that the snow is melting. Our feathered friends have been in the south and returning north probably with bird flu but we will see about that. I boil all of my eggs for ten minutes and only eat them that way and cook the chicken to its stated temperature or slightly above that. My stew is generally ten degrees above that suggested amount. I seldom eat red meat preferring chicken or fish.

I still like the idea if we lose our American car plants of checking with the Chinese to see if they would like to build their EVs here using Canadian staff and material and no tariff then. One of these days we will buy a new car and perhaps sooner if the American car plants are removed as servicing my present six year old car may become a problem. It only has 30,000 kilometres on it so a lot of life in it yet especially as it sits in the garage from fall until into the spring only going out occasionally. A tank of gas lasts forever. We will see how this tariff war goes. We remain resolute friends of the peoples of the United States (for me, my many second cousins and further back); we have been friends for over 200 years. Strange that my feelings about the Free Trade in the latter part of the 1980s was somewhat hesitant given the much larger population and corporations to the south of us have come to fruition now two generations later (our small industry mostly bought up/out competed and now we need to rebuild those industries across Canada once again). But our inter provincial tariffs will soon be gone and our trade will go east to west and west to east through the provinces and territories. Our family farms are very important to us and although there are potential high tariffs they are seldom imposed as the countries selling niche dairy products to us never come close to the percentage that we have given them in Free Trade Deals  (and it is wonderful to have all of these special cheeses that come to us from the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe). I still see Free Trade primarily as the sharing of items that countries do not have. The dream of Confederation in 1867 was a desire to make Canada be a beautiful place where we could all live together in peace having been granted the permission of the First Nations to live here. We colonials made mistakes but I feel that we are moving together finally now and that we are a wonderful country offering a good life to all who live within our borders (this is a rugged country though and we must continue to help our First Nations especially on far flung reserves to have a better life). Our need for new housing is huge and will certainly take up the slack in softwood lumber sales. Our need to home refinement of our oil and gas for sale across Canada and to the world really got a kickstart with the President of the United States saying they didn't need our oil or gas so we are free to pursue other buyers plus saving the cost of refining it in the United States and selling it back to us at three times what we sold it for. I can feel the Canadian energy all around me actually as we move forward to shape this new future that we are embarking on. The political parties are all on the same page with Canada's forward movement. It will be an interesting election for sure once the writ is dropped and the date chosen. Plus a welcome to the United States if they decide to accept the offer to become part of the British Commonwealth. We are a great brotherhood of nations I think but, as always, I am of that 100% British descent and three of my grandparents were born and lived in England to adulthood and beyond along with my father born there and came here at the age of nine years with his parents. My families still living in England (and that is a huge percentage of them) are now descendant of peoples from all over the world (at least the Commonwealth that is!).

Tea all drank and must play my Solitare puzzles (my brain work first thing in the morning). Another American subscription but I do enjoy it and they do try to make it look Canadian. But I guess when I add up all my American subscriptions they do not even amount to $1000 Canadian in a year (actually $701.32 American dollars (half of my budget for entertainment (in my case that is my pseudonym for my research!)). Whereas I do spend about 30x that amount on Canadian items just living my life here in Canada of which 1/3rd of that is federal, provincial and municipal taxes and then there is the upkeep of the house. So cheers for Canada my country of birth and where I have spent most of my nearly 80 years (eight trips to British Isles/Europe, hundreds of trips to the United States and the rest traveling here in Canada or living here although I grew up in southwestern Ontario moving here when I was 30 years of age).