Happy New Year was the refrain yesterday everywhere it appeared. God gave us this beautiful world and ours here in Canada is deep in snow and it is minus 17 degrees celsius today but the World's longest skating rink is open here in Ottawa. It will be busy today I am sure in spite of the wind chill which is minus 29 degrees celsius. One of the great entertainments in Ottawa is that skating rink and on the weekends it is particularly busy.
I worked on Chromosome 11 yesterday and it will have a few challenges but may yield interesting results for Taylor and Cotterill as there are long lengths of chromosome without a known cousin and a number of the matches are from Ancestry. We also went grocery shopping so already for New Years today. New Year's Eve we generally make a Fish Soup/Stew that consists generally of four kinds of fish cut into nice chunks then cooked quickly at a high temperature in olive oil with garlic for one minute. Then add vegetable broth, some water and spices along with diced tomatoes and cook for 30 minutes and once at the boil add fresh parsley then simmer for the remaining time. Prepare croutons with olive oil in the oven sufficient to line the soup bowl and then a big scoop of the fish soup/stew and it is lovely along with a cheese tray/crackers and fruit tray. Lovely dinner for New Years Eve and generally we do the same each year or something very similar.
Today I will continue on Chromosome 11 and there are 76 matches in total and I have completed 19. With 18 known cousins from each of the four grandparent lines I am finding that the work is flowing quickly again for this chromosome. It is more time that flies by much too quickly.
As the new year dawns and I can see that in the east this morning, God is watching in the Heavens wondering when mankind will find a way to live by His rules - love your neighbour as yourself. Greed ranks high as one of the great sins of the Christian Church and most incursions into other people's property is for greed - to steal from people. It is sad really that even now in 2026 we can not find peace in our world.
Tea is ready and I shall work on my solitaire puzzles to start the day having completed my entire set of exercises which takes about 50 minutes in total. It is a good set of exercises which results in about 1500 steps (between exercises) and is 28 Zone Minutes with a cardio load of 13 on my new Fitbit which is lower than the Charge 5 which tended to record it around 45 so we will see how that transpires over the next few months as I suspect there is a learning curve in a new FitBit. This one is a Charge 6. Calories burned listed as 321 calories which is about right from the earlier FitBit result.
