New file

 I decided to create a file of the matches of known cousins just to aid in placing some of these matches that I have; with so much data it just simplifies the lookups that are needed to place some sets of matches where the only match is a common area without any extra matches to aid in placement. That file ended up being 332 lines although there are repeats but it has simplified assigning matches with limited knowledge about the individual. This file was for Blake and I will do files for each of the other three grandparents' matches but no rush on that although Pincombe will be next but generally I can place Pincombe as I have probably three times as many known Pincombe cousins as known Blake. My grandfather loved to talk about his cousins but he was born in 1875 and the cousins that are testing were born mostly from the 1920s on although there are fewer of the 1920s and 1930s these days. So that means the people that he mentioned were mostly born before 1900 as he moved to Eastleigh from Upper Clatford in the late 1890s to work on the Railway as a Blacksmith. Hence I do not know my cousins that well in England or elsewhere although I do correspond with a number of them on occasion. My closest known cousins are 2nd cousins (and they are all known to me by name) since we do not have any first cousins and there are just seven siblings although sometimes people claim my parents as their parents. Probably seven children were enough for them!

Most of my day was spent on the matches for Chromosome 1 although I also used the rowing machine and I ran for 20 minutes as well as my regular 5 min walk every hour and my other smaller exercise periods that compliment my sitting at a desk for eight hours a day broken up by these exercise periods. Somehow I think that my days will always be like this and I find a great deal of contentment in my work although I am a person who can adjust to change very rapidly - lucky that way I guess.  

Lovely dinner of salmon last night with freshly boiled potatoes, broccoli and a little fresh salad. The same tonight as there was enough for two meals. I noticed that I am back to just $75 per week for groceries - not sure why but I do not buy a lot of extras and make everything pretty much from scratch. I finally found a bottle of red wine vinegar for my salads so that was nice. 

Continuing today with the matches for Chromosome 1. I have a couple that are perplexing and I suspect they have both Blake and Buller in their background. I will continue sorting them out today and it was part of the inclination to build this new file set which worked very well actually as I did a quick run through to the end of the matches looking at the named ones to ensure they had been labelled as Blake. All correct amazingly as I do find changes on occasion. I downloaded a great many of those matches way back a decade ago and really didn't look at them a lot because I knew they were in that common area on Chromosome 1. 

Next Chromosome 23 to sort through and eliminate any very small matches. It is a fairly straight forward chromosome now that I have so many known matches there. When I first discovered that one of my brothers had received Buller intact from my maternal grandmother and not blended with the X chromosome my mother received from her father which was the X chromosome that his mother passed to him so Gray/Routledge family it mystified me for a bit that it would be without crossovers as the other brother had several Pincombe/Buller crossovers.  But the Buller singleton did mean that he and I matched on most of the Chromosome 23 matches since I received the first 60% as Buller and 40% Pincombe for the other half but Gray/Routledge family are the matches for this designated Pincombe since my maternal grandfather only receives an X chromosome from his mother Grace (Gray) Pincombe. Fascinating stuff all this DNA. 

Time to make tea and work on my solitaire puzzles.