March is now 2/3 rds past. This year has moved very quickly as it is nearly 1/4 gone with spring around the corner. Spring is a great time in Canada although tends towards mud season but none the less greatly enjoyed after the long cold dark winter. Yesterday another busy day with shopping for groceries and continuing the extraction of matches from My Heritage. I also had a look at 23 and Me and have a couple more large matches which I could quickly place into their appropriate grandparent line and given the shared matches can pretty much see where we are matching on each chromosome. The details given are scant at the moment; no idea if we will return to the old setup. That is the problem with mercantile medicine really. There is the somewhat weak idea that genes control how we fare from a medical viewpoint; the actual is that genes do play a role in our life but our lifestyle is far more important than the genetic compliment we receive.
When one considers my mother in law with her chronic diabetes for probably 2/3rds of her life (gestational diabetes) and asthma one would not have predicted that she would live to be 94 years of age in 2000 but she did by careful attention to her diet. So judging people by their genes is perhaps a mistaken way to look at how one doles out medical support to people in a country where mercantile medicine reigns supreme (being a widow with two small children to raise her ability to pay for her medical care was certainly not there initially until we went to the Canada Health Act in the 1960s). The worst case scenario in any society is an undetected plague amongst those who can not afford regular medical care although as cases accumulate rapidly one does pay attention for sure even in a mercantile medical system (COVID-19 is still fresh in our memories I am sure). I would describe our medical system in Canada as primarily government run (supported by taxes) and providing care for everyone who has a legal right to be here and even those who do not if an emergency arises on a provincial basis which is the cheapest way to provide medicine I do believe (the Feds simply hand over the money to the provinces after income tax time proportionately (Ontario pays the most tax and we get less back provincially than other provinces with a tax load less than what is needed to support the provincial responsibilities (health care and education amongst others). Ontario has an extra health care tax that is paid by tax payers (all of this is passed back to us by the feds I think) which is incrementally increased the more money you earn which we have had in place for twenty years give or take (I see the ability to have medical care to be a protection like fire protection etc. and we pay through our taxes for both/all). The biggest problem was the cut and reduce Conservative government in Ontario in the late 90s which did rather make me think far more about my tendency to always vote Conservative as it was a family thing and so I became an outlier voting for the party that would do the most good at that time (working in the hospital I could definitely see what needed to be done for sure). Our present Conservative Premier does not get into that sort of thing realizing that medicine needs money to work and he is into his third term now. Perhaps a bit too reactive but he cares deeply for the people of his province and they love him for it; even hands out his personal telephone number amazingly (one would think of him as like a governor of a state but we have premiers and provinces/territories).
But lawsuits after someone hacked 23 and Me almost tanked 23 and Me but they are surviving and reworking themselves. How ignorant that really was. I think that is terrorism! Personally I do not have anything that is insidious with my worst genetic item being a single gene for Fructose Intolerance (you need both to have a really strong effect or any). As it turns out I do not have a sweet tooth so never suffered from that at all. Perhaps one gains the none preference for sweet with the Fructose Intolerance gene, who knows but genetic research is certainly hindered by mercantile medicine as it just can not be done in a rigorous way when mercantile medicine rules the day.
However, 23 and Me was and remains a really good testing site. I still need to have a look at FT DNA for autosomal results and Living DNA. Ancestry pretty much up to date although there are half a dozen new testers in the kits of myself and my three siblings tested there. I will likely do those by the end of March. I have decided that March will be devoted to the phasing project and then a return to the Blake/Pencombe books after the Blake Newsletter is published the first of April. I will begin with Blake and continuing contemplating the le Blak family of Normandy coming to England likely after 30 May 1274 when he received his Patent to set up a market in England. I would like to learn more about this family in Normandy and will perhaps begin there once again. My french has quickly come back up to scratch in terms of reading - my pronunciation still is lacking but I will work at it on Duolingo. Will start watching the weather in French to help with that.
Snow is melting rapidly although it is minus 5 degrees celsius today at 7:00 a.m and feels like minus 19 degrees celsius. Not too much melting at the moment but going up to plus 6 degrees celsius so perhaps a little later. It will be icy though where the water has accumulated. The joys of mud season in Canada! It is a real thing although generally belongs to spring.
Have done a lot of Sudoku puzzles lately; mind gets a good rest doing them for sure. Just the slow methodical plotting of a path to quickly reach the goal of all nine squares correctly filled in with their specific digit. I am into the Challenging Puzzles now. I used to go from back to front (the hardest puzzles first following my grandfather's theory on how to approach work - always do the hardest items first and then you can really enjoy the less difficult ones as they fall neatly into place because you have worked out all the quirks of the difficult side).
Drinking tea and solitaire puzzles to do and then breakfast.
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