Surprise snowfall overnight

I missed the weather report that said snow and woke up today hearing the laneway being cleared by the company and realizing my black box was not far enough away although it was on the grass next door as I am hoping to get it emptied this week. Went out and moved it and cleaned out the snow and added some more so that it is about 3/4s full now. When the newspaper was delivered we didn't have any problem filling it but that is a long time ago. 

Just the sidewalks to clear and they will be around later to do that. This is southwestern Ontario snow as I call it; moist and great for making snowmen not our usual dry snow that does pack well on a hot sunny day but otherwise is pretty light and devoid of a lot of moisture. The trees all have a dusting of snow and look quite beautiful through the window of my workroom. Winter is lovely; I do love winter the best but a lot of the reason is all that solitude and time to work. Edward did not enjoy the solitude as much as I did and was out and about doing all his projects with me accompanying when he asked. He was so involved in so many things especially when he retired. For him, I think, being retired was sleeping in which he loved to do. That and just all that time to do anything that he wanted to do and his genealogical endeavours paid off big time for him in terms of unknown family to him but so well known to the world - Roger Williams, Hannah (Peak) Bowne, even the Royal Governor of Massachusetts and so many others. 

It was incredible that so much was lost. He found it amazing that I knew all of my ancestral stories but my first ancestor did not arrive here until 1818 and it was Thomas Routledge and his wife Elizabeth (Routledge) Routledge with their eight children, son in law and several grand children. They were joined in 1832 (still proving) by Robert Gray who married their daughter Mary Elizabeth Ann Routledge in 1835 at St Paul's now St Paul's Cathedral in London, Ontario. Unknown to each other but they did come from neighbouring counties sort of (Routledge from Bewcastle, Cumberland and Gray from Holme on the Wolds, East Riding of Yorkshire). Their daughter Grace Gray (my first born Canadian ancestor)  married the next new arrival in my family line namely William Robert Pincombe from Molland, Devon who was one of the children of John Pincombe (Bishops Nympton, Devon) and Elizabeth (Rew) Pincombe (Bratton near Minehead, Somerset). The only surviving child of Grace and William Robert was my grandfather John Routledge Pincombe and my second born Canadian ancestor. John married Ellen Rosina (Buller) Pincombe (Birmingham, Warwickshire) who had arrived in Canada in 1908 and their daughter Helen Louise (Pincombe) Blake was my third born Canadian ancestor. My father arrived in 1913 with his parents Samuel George Blake (Upper Clatford, Hampshire) and Edith Bessie (Taylor) Blake  (aka Ada Bessie Cotteril (Rawlings) Blake). So I am fourth generation Canadian on my mother's side and first generation Canadian on my father's side. Since I was born before 1 Jan 1947 I was initially a British Subject but grandfathered to Canadian Citizen as I was born here in Ontario, Canada and hence forever more a Canadian citizen no longer a British Subject. I did find that fascinating as a child. Probably many times a year as a child those emigration stories were talked about and all the names were familiar to me. 

But life was different for Edward's families in those days in the 1600s/1700s and a lot of time was just spent surviving I suspect so that the stories simply did not pass down through the families. Well educated many of Edward's ancestors were but they had to turn to the plow to grow food for their very existence and that was hard tiring work so that at the end of the day there just perhaps wasn't time to talk about life as it had been. The Dissenters paid a huge price for their dissent for sure but the gain was huge and my husband would have been celebrated by his ancestors I am sure as he made the kind of accomplishments made generations earlier by his ancestors in learning. His first ancestors arrived from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam now New York in the early 1600s so his first footpaths on this Western Hemisphere were his Dutch and French (Huguenot - it appears that dissenters attract each other) ancestors followed quickly by his German (Palatines and in a way they too were dissenters) and Swedish ancestors with his small number in actual fact of English ancestors (all dissenters initially) arriving between the 1630s and the 1660s primarily and to Massachusetts for the most part. Edward certainly had his own opinions and the genes were definitely there for that. 

A trip down memory lane does work very well to get the brain moving in the morning. It reminds me why I am doing all of this work - my mother wanted to write a book about her Pincombe family and my grandfather a book about his Blake family and so here I am in 2026 writing the books. My memory serves me well very often and both of these individuals (my mother and my paternal grandfather) repeated themselves many many times. In a family of seven children that is not surprising that repetition would be a pretty constant item on the menu. 

For myself I look back and I think why would they choose only Pincombe or Blake and of course it was the name that they were born with and so their thoughts centered on that surname. My mother also remembered the surnames of her grandparents and great grandparents but also included in that mass of data were family lore which I still investigate when paperwork becomes available that I have not seen but family lore does not always lead you to the correct place but then these stories were repeated to her and sometimes the repetition doesn't always follow exactly the same line of thought I have discovered. The intent though is interesting and I do like to not miss any possible leads when I am missing information. So I search those brain cells of mine for any tidbits that sit there dormant for sixty or seventy years and pull them out and look at them. I have a very lucky memory it appears as just little bits of conversation (tagged in a way by the manner in which my brain works where particular words cause a flood of memory). Yesterday I started writing once again in the Pincombe book and will continue with that today along with working on my lovely new file as I input the new information, if I do as I am being very selective. Mostly I am looking for anything that could upset the apple cart which is important for me to find that now rather than later!

Tea all drank and time to do the solitaire puzzles to really wake up that brain. The laneway is cleared and now the snow shovellers have come and gone and the path out is clear once again although I am not going anywhere. It is Saturday and I prefer not to be on the roads on the weekend. I stick to school times for my outings as there is very little traffic especially walking traffic!

 

 

Silver in Women's Hockey is beautiful; we won it

I am thrilled that we won silver; our whole Olympic Team is doing great. I actually hate it when people act as if it is a loss. We gained a silver on the score board. That's it. Gold is always nice but silver is not a failure; I do dislike the way people see the Olympics as a win or loss - it is an achievement just to be there. Congratulations to all. 

I have always loved the Olympics until it became another TV show like a soap opera. Its a game some are won some are lost but it is being played by humans and these things just happen. Cheers for all the members of the team; you are doing great. Wanting to get a medal is great; wondrous and good for the mental health. Getting a medal is more a feature of how life flows sometimes. I thought it was interesting when a comment was made about one member of the Canadian team whose parents had both been in the Olympics. It is just such a wonderful accomplishment to put all that time in your life into being at one  Olympic game or two maybe or more - the parents are certainly the drivers in that for sure because they get them to the practice and they are there cheering them constantly at every event and the players learn rules of life. 

Myself I have just always loved running but I did not want to be part of stop watches or controlling how I ran or any of that. I just love to run and it is unlikely that I am of that type of runner anyway. So these are special people prepared to put up with coaches who just want you to win for sure and sometimes not achieving what you really wanted. 

I did complete all the matches and moved on to looking at the newest matches in the databases. There are not a lot as I have become much pickier. My interest is not fading in DNA just do not want to continue a lifestyle where I am constantly collecting data that is borderline or difficult to prove or appears to be somewhat strange. Other than that I will continue to look but my cause moves forward and I will be back to writing shortly. I have already developed in my mind the next chapter of the Pincombe book and then the genealogical chart will begin and indeed I already have a beginning of that in my Legacy file. This book will be published as written because all of the data that I need I have; just have to transcribe some of it out of Latin. A slow process but actually a quite enjoyable one surprisingly. I do so like a challenge and latin is certainly a challenge especially because it was written in some cases 800 plus years ago. It will be published under a Creative Common License as  the Siderfin books were and are free on my website. 

Another work day and shall see how much I accomplish. My new file is set up to work with the great grandparent data and that will begin shortly. We will see what AI can do for my file. I am starting to create the scenarios that I want to look at.  

Drinking my tea and time to move on to the solitaire puzzles.  

Is there change in the air?

 Moving to a new stage of my old age as I pass some management on to those better able to do that. the youth of our country is innovative and resourceful and now to really move ahead they need to look at the jobs that are to come and train for them so that they are ready when the jobs appear. AI will come soon enough especially to a country like Canada because we have what AI needs - vast amounts of available electricity, ability to create the infrastructure to contain such intelligence and the will to do it. AI will make life run smoother in some ways but there will be blips in the path because AI will need a lot of training so it is very important that one become very efficient at what they do in order to best teach AI the methodology that must be used in order to get the superior results. 

There is talk that our population is starting to peak and that the numbers of people will begin to decrease in this world. There are a lot of us here for sure. The Russians keep sending their young men to the fields of war which Russia created and the body bags keep going back to Russia. So Russia may experience a very sudden decline in population of their own making. Will women want to have babies that are being sent to war; I doubt it. They didn't in 1917 and the whole country did something about it. Peace waits on that. 

On the news this morning there was a video of Khan Younis in Gaza. How sad to see the tent city there where the children have to live. The children did nothing wrong; they didn't invade another country but it is always the children who pay for the deeds of the elders. I feel sad for the children of Gaza; I have from the beginning and desired that they could come here to Canada where they would be safe but it needed the people of Islam to come forward and take them in but it did not happen and so we had to watch day after day as children were killed and maimed in a war they did not invent. Children need to be with people that are of their own kind; it is only fair. Although adoptions across such creeds and races do work; I have seen some that work very well but in this case the children would have been coming from a war stricken country and they just needed that comfort of their own people until they could return to the arms of their families. 

 Yesterday was a somewhat tumultuous one but it lead to a new way to do things and I look forward to that as it will take a bit to come to fruition but I will be happier with the changes I know that. I maybe did five matches yesterday but did  manage to do my 12,000 steps after all without actually doing any special exercise aside from cleaning the top floor which is completed and another week of cleaning under the belt so to speak. There are some things that are beyond me and I know it and so I do not attempt them. My life ahead of me is considerably shorter than what I have passed through thus far. In order to be as effective a human being as I am able (and that is God's wish for all of us) I need to make changes that smooth out the path ahead. I have these aims that I want to achieve in these years and I do need help on occasion and this was one of those occasions. Thank you to my family for their guidance. 

 Today I will work on the matches and should complete them as there are only nine left; hard to believe. I will also check the other databases for the new matches that have come in and see if they are useful in my quest. It will be easy to set them in if that is the case. 

Today will be a running day (30 minutes before lunch) and then a weightlifting day this afternoon (mid way) and we will see if I do anything else other than walking. This morning's exercises went quite smoothly and the cardio load was 40, 1 hour was spent and 3204 steps with 375 calories. So about usual and I know I repeated several of the counts of 100 steps as I forgot to stick out my thumb to remind I had already done the first hundred of the two hundred on occasion. The statistics are interesting that you obtain on the Fit Bit with 5% at peak, 24% is vigorous, 47% is moderate and 20% is light. The average heart rate was 101 beats per minute. A good way to start the day it does appear. I read a bit ago that one's exercise periods should be 45 to 60 minutes long. So I moved to that with this early  morning exercise and I think it works well but one should of course check with a doctor if you are just beginning exercise especially if you are my age. But I have been running since I was a very young child when I finally stood up and walked free of furniture when I was eighteen months and it was when my first glasses were put on my face. I quess instead of a lot of fuzz I could actually see - no ideas on that. But at twelve when I went to high school the gym teacher really encouraged running and so I took it up and have run most of my life ever since. I was a better long distance runner than a short distance at that age and I would say it remains as I have good endurance that keeps me running for the full thirty minutes. I could run longer but I think 30 minutes of running followed by 15 minutes of walking is good exercise although one notes that even greater variety is touted as beneficial like run 10 walk 10 or whatever combination but I prefer the continual running followed by a slowdown walk. Perhaps as I age I will change in that regard. Somehow I can not imagine myself running at 90 but I guess one never knows what life will present. 

I see though that the Fit Bit is back to its desire to keep lifting my cardio target - it needs to remember that I am 80 and only maintaining. A fault I think in some ways of the programming but it sees how I manage on cleaning days and thinks that I can continue that sort of high pace which is not likely. I am always somewhat tired on Thursday and have to push myself just a little to do the exercises that I do. So will I make the low and high targets today. I probably will make it to the low target of 188 cardio load but it is not likely that I will make it to the 251 cardio load that is the top of the range. But getting to 188 we will see. I have 40, running will be around 80 to 90 and then weightlifting around 40 to 50. Plus the walking is around 10 to 15 so I just make it to the 188 and a tiny bit above but not likely to 251 even with the walking every hour on the hour. But it takes time to train a Fit Bit one thinks and probably it doesn't recognize the fact that I am 80 and that means something; if I was 50 or less I could see that the level of activity as suggested is more doable. 

Yesterday working on the few matches that I did do was revealing as a couple of them were known to me and clarified the particular great grandparent simply because we share a 2x great grandparent. Always an interesting experience this autosomal DNA. 

Tea drank and must do my solitaire puzzles. Then breakfast and back to work on the matches.  

 

 

 

 

 

Final cleaning day

 Half of a week cleaning and half of a week working but it seems to flow well. Awake in the night first time for a while actually. Sorting through the idea of moving and when it will be feasible. Highly desirable but the timing still not quite right. I would have one less day of work if I sold and moved into a one floor house and it is tempting to do that sooner rather than later. No ideas on that though as the logical time to move is in four years so we will see how that flows. 

Today is the top floor and then the cleaning is done for another week. Olympics moving along and soon it will be playoffs in a number of items. It is nice to see so many of our young people involved in the Olympics although I have barely watched it this year. Life has been busy amazingly for an 80 year old. 

I also want to finish off the last  fifteen matches and then that task is completed although the work just begins where the great grandparents are concerned. But I still need to look at the databases for the various companies and see if there is any new useful information. That will take the rest of the week probably along with working on the 4300 line Excel file. All backed up and I will create a new file to actually work with the data leaving the original on the file where I created it which includes all of the chromosomes one by one  beside the large chart including the chart that was used to determine the crossover points looking at the Living DNA data but not necessarily relying on it for the final decision - I used 23 and Me, FT DNA, Gedmatch (primarily Ancestry data), and My Heritage along with the Living DNA data. 

Falling asleep once again so will complete my blog in a couple of hours. 

 And so I return and exercises all completed and this hour on arising works very well it appears with a cardio load of 40, 55 minutes in length, 3000 steps and 292 calories. I have had my snack and will soon make my breakfast. 

Cleaning the top floor so I shall soon pick everything up and eat my breakfast and then begin after a short rest. It takes about 45 minutes to vacuum everything and then perhaps the same for dusting and then I need to scrub the bathroom and I will be finished and it is usually about three hours as I tend to underestimate the amount of time that I will spend. 

I will try to complete the remaining matches as it is not that many and than set up my file system for the work to come on this created excel file which is less than 5000 lines. There are a number of sorting routines that I will do and then examine the results with regard to the known people and the matches to all those known people. It should be interesting and the gain will be a breakdown of the great grandparents into their two lines (as everyone has two lines). 

I do not think in Canada that we are anti-American but definitely we are pro-Canadian and struggling to bring our economy into a state where there is no dependency except the usual that one attains by trade. We certainly enjoy being part of the North American Trade Agreement for all these years - I do not really think anyone would disagree with that fact (although in retrospect having our native industries decimated by competition/buying out and closing was a bad decision) but circumstance has made it necessary (we must do our best to make ourselves economically independent). That is the aim so one is seeing pro-Canadian and to a great extent we are all looking towards making Canada tariff proof. 

There are a few people in Canada who have ventured into another country looking for aid to form a country and I probably wouldn't use strong words but definitely mis-advised. Canada bought and paid for Rupert's Land and that is how the huge mass of land came to be part of Canada. We even ceded a number of areas to the United States since they lay on their side of the border but we did pay for that land and it was ceded freely with all the treaty obligations (and it is worth a lot of money now for sure). 

Alberta itself would be worth a huge amount of money and Canada would need to be recompensed.The rights of the First Nations come first that is the deal in the purchase of Rupert's Land. I believe the First Nations in Northern Quebec preferred to be part of Nunavut in such a situation when a referendum was discussed there and I doubt that has changed. That is a huge amount of Quebec. You live with what you came in with and Alberta did not exist until Canada created Alberta. Anyway that is my understanding.  

Why anyone would want to leave this prosperous country is quite beyond me to be honest (the opportunities for youth and they are coming and there will be far more in this near future for all of her people). The cost would be enormous unless you leave only with what you brought to Confederation (this concerns only Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia as they all existed but in many cases their land area was much smaller (that applies to Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba not sure about British Columbia would need to look that up) prior to Confederation (some joining later than 1867). In this case Alberta and Saskatchewan did not exist at all until they were created in 1905 with the Treaty Rights enshrined in their forming. But then I see the ownership of land as immemorial back into time unless you purchase it with all the rights of ownership (and for the most part that is not possible in huge areas of Canada as it belongs to the First Nations who kindly share it with us and are unlikely to sell it outright). 

The International Courts did decide in favour of the First Nations and I agree with them. I also think that there is a limit to this sort of logic but it is deep into the past as our knowledge of countries did develop later than say 8000 years ago although some countries did exist and have the paperwork to prove it whether it was etched on stone or written on some sort of material. Interesting this logic really but allowing any other logic leads to what we see in Eastern Europe right now and thank you to NATO for standing up to it. During the Ice Age no one was in Russia likely and Ukraina was the name of the Ice Refuge in that part of the country so a much older name for sure. 

However we have entered into this time of war ushered in by Putin and his supporters in Russia who have led the ugly illegal cruel despicable attack on Ukraine and it continues to this day (it amazes me that the people of Russia continue to allow Putin to constantly force their children into a war that is killing so many of them). Where are the Russians who said no to the Tsar (history records he was murdered for that very crime) and refused to continue a war that was killing their people? One wonders; there is no benefit to the Russians in this at all and one prays that there never will be. 

 Work to be done and breakfast is next after the Solitaire Puzzles.  

 

And another Tuesday also a working day

Yesterday the basement cleaning went very well and was accomplished in good time. I even had a 25 minute run before lunch. This is just running around my indoor track so to speak (I have created it with so much furniture gone now). I can see why people did not always have so much furniture in years gone by - the space is wonderful. I did grow up in a house that was post-bankrupt when money was tight but my father had time to read to us which was lovely (that was after my grandfather died I think). I used to read to my grandfather and he loved that. I can not really remember if he read to me perhaps he did but the memory is lost to time. But  he loved it when I read to him. But mostly he liked to talk and tell me all about Upper Clatford (and other places in England that he had been in but mostly he talked about Upper Clatford and not Eastleigh where my father was born). Sometimes he talked about Eastleigh but not a lot. 

I have completed the R's now in the matches and into the S's and there are perhaps 34 matches left to do. I am just guessing because I did not count them and there is just one page of matches to go so about right. It may take the two days though that are ahead of me for cleaning. Today is the main floor and I will not run today. It is more work to do the main floor because I do the vacuuming, the scrubbing and the dusting. It takes about three hours or slightly more in total. But it is finished when it is finished. 

My fingers are itching to get at the file now to sort it to suit myself and see how many great grandparents I can successfully pull out of it. I know that Gray and Knight are fairly clear and if it isn't Gray or Knight then it is Pincombe or Blake but it has to be definitive to make that call. The Buller is sticking out not too badly as well and again the same justification if it isn't Buller then it is Taylor. Rawlings I have quite a few matches and if it isn't Rawlings then it is my Grandmother's father said to be George Cotterill but I remain on the sidelines on that one. I will simply have separated out that individual where it is possible and await a good match to really determine that. It may not be in my lifetime. 

The Olympics is going very well with lots of winners. I like that actually when many countries win a medal. It is a powerful message for the athlete to take home to the people in their country (any medal is a powerful message).  Sixth four percent of the medals have been awarded so still quite a bit to go. Twenty six countries have won at least one medal. A lot of cheering when the athletes come home even if they did not win they competed and that is the most important part I think. I used to sit and watch for the entire time period but life is busy and I do want to get the books written and so I just check in every once in a while when I am doing my ten to fifteen minute walk every hour. The FitBit buzzes me to tell me if I have not yet done my 250 steps for the hour and up I get and do the 250 for that hour and the 250 for the next hour except I notice generally that I have been sitting a long time and so up I get and often I do do the 250 at the beginning of the hour! Exercise is wonderful especially for the young but the old benefit too. As I look around me I think anyone under 55 is still young  really. Then I see 56 to 75/79 as middle age and old is definitely hitting 80. Somehow you feel the difference. Perhaps it is the necessity of redoing the driver's license although it was just the eye test after all that brings the age of 80 home to you. 

 The Buller family is huge I am discovering and a lot of that hugeness is actually in a cousin family not my Buller line. One might say that the Welch family is huge (Henry Christopher Buller married Ann Welch and she had a twin sister who like her sister Ann had a very large family (between them twenty four children)). The number of grandchildren was huge and it continued through the generations as I have so many cousins who match me on this Buller line of mine and for them it is a different surname but we all share the Welch (but William Welch and Sarah Cheatle (our most recent common ancestor were my 3x great grandparents and so are not in that level where I am separating out the eight members (namely the great grandparents of whom there are eight). The Taylor line (Edwin Denner Buller married Ellen Taylor) is considerably smaller which is a surprise although it appears to have this huge Irish branch so still working on that but it is likely the Irish portion that is found in all of my siblings including myself. The only confusing part in that is my portion tends to be from the Irish Republic (Eire) and their portion from Northern Ireland. All in how you inherit the DNA and I am the most different from all of them - if there is a place to differ than I do although I also have the usual amount shared although it is on the lower side rather than being strongly related to each other. 

Time moves onward and my tea cup is empty and I need to do my Solitaire Puzzles. Had a great time playing Sudoku last evening with I think four of five games. Sometimes I do that. I love the thought process; it completely occupies the brain as you look from square to square and length to length to find that one item that will unlock all of those numbers and there you with a complete nine square Sudoku neatly arranged and finished. No flashing of light but I still miss doing my sixteen games of Spider every week. I did it from its inception as a new challenge until I stopped. I hope to return to it one day when my eyes have adjusted to sparkling. One never knows. Breakfast and then cleaning follows. Generally I begin around nine o'clock.  

I had a request for Rathbun/Rathburn information the other day from one of Edward's likely cousins in the United States but we did not go to the graveyards in Pennsylvania (that was planned but did not happen as COVID did) and I could not answer her question. It is sad to write that Edward has passed away; that sadness remains as I did really want him to be 90 like he wanted to be. It is not a morbid sadness he would not want that but rather a genuine sense that he had missed out on turning 90.  I wrote and thanked her for her kindness in her note back when I let her know that Edward had passed and I did not have an answer. 

 

Monday and it is cleaning day and it is the basement

 Soon I will start the Robot cleaning the rug. I always check to make sure it sat on the charger properly all week so that it will run its normal 1.3 hours on the rugs. I would never vacuum the rugs for 1.3 hours but the robot does it and the path is random and I do not think it misses even a tiny bit of dust by the time it docks itself. It takes about the same amount of time every week. Then I clean out the trap and it has about the same amount of dust - more in the winter than in the summer. Then wash the floors that do not have rugs, wash the stairs down to the basement and dust all the furniture and the task is done for another week.It used to take me four or five hours to clean the basement as Edward had so much stuff and it is pretty much all donated now as I have little or no use for tools. The books and furniture he accumulated down there is also all donated years ago; he did that himself but still there was a lot there. The house is getting emptier and emptier but it needs to as I will eventually move to a much smaller house and one floor hopefully. 

Yesterday was a very interesting sermon and I was perhaps even more keenly interested following the tragedy in British Columbia (prayers continuing). One does come closer to one's religion when tragedy strikes. 

Here it is Monday and the sun is rising in the east as I look out my workroom window. Very faint in colour which is always a good sign as a brilliant red sunrise is a warning to those on the seas as I learned as a child. I do have a lot of these old stories that are from the British Isles since everyone of my ancestors in the last five hundred years appears to be from the British Isles. 

My ancient yDNA line carried by my brothers and my ancient mtDNA line carried by our female line tell me that both of these were ancient to the Isles (although both will go extinct in my own personal family line there are many many cousin DNA holders out there all matching us and the lines will go on and on). But in between these two types of DNA  there is a great deal of autosomal DNA shared with cousins passed down to all of us from our mutual most recent common ancestors and with five companies testing I have this overview that I keep in mind coming from all of them that somewhere back in the past I have European (primarily German and French (I do know I have Huguenot who came to the Isles in the late 1400s)), some Scandinavian (likely Viking in my Gray-Routledge line) and some Eastern European probably because my mtDNA wintered at Ukraina during the Last Ice Age or later maybe there are a lot of centuries prior to my known family line of the last five hundred years plus in some lines and I do have a few lost lines although not too lost as they are likely from those small villages and no records before the Parish Registers for some of them.  

I still marvel at how quickly I changed from having no interest in genealogy to a rampant interest (mostly following the introduction of DNA information but also my cousin did need the profile for my Pincombe family and, as it turned out, I was the best person to provide that document now published and available for usage by researchers). 

My husband was both shocked, overwhelmed but grateful to my cousin for pushing me to do this Profile. From that point forward we did even more traveling (as my husband was retired) down into the New England States, New York and even into Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin following the trails of his Kipp family mostly who had gone west in the late 1700s from Northeast Town, New York and also north into Ontario in the early 1800s (his line) and some of his line then went from Ontario back into Michigan further west and he corresponded with many of those cousins. But now I was a more enthusiastic follower of genealogy which he truly loved working at. 

Many trips to NEHGS in Boston and the knowledge just flowed. I myself found a number of books on the Blake family of the United States there. This was where I first encountered Horatio Somerby Gates and his fraudulent work and a memory blazed forward as I sat looking at some of the material. I finally understood what my grandfather and father were talking about where Nicholas Blake was concerned. 

Fascinating really how life comes together from the deep past to the present. My grandfather was talking about Americans looking for information on Nicholas Blake and descendants in Andover, Hampshire, England and that the story about Nicholas was incorrect that they were following. Fascinating really. 

Anyway tea all drank and must do my solitaire puzzles.  

Sunday is always anticipated and this one will be full of prayers

 Prayers continuing for the murdered children and adults in British Columbia but also for the recovery of those still in hospital suffering from gunshot wounds. Time has stood still just a little here whilst we think about the loss of eight beautiful people and the wounded some continuing to fight for their very life in the hospitals. God be with them and I would pray that God will keep the murdered little ones wrapped in His loving arms. Their lives ripped away from them so cruelly. 

Church today online as always and last weeks hymns were quite beautiful actually. I always wonder what hymns will be sung perhaps because I was in the choir as a child and loved singing. I did sing "The Lord is my Shepherd" one time but I do not remember why or exactly when other than it was not winter. I was absolutely petrified but when I got up to sing I was fine and I sang it to God I remember that. I never did it again but it was a gift my grandmother said that I had for God. My youngest daughter was around eight I think when she sang a solo at Edward's United Church; much younger than I was. She was nervous and asked me to sit right up at the front so that she could look at me and not be nervous. Actually she did very well and I think she hardly glanced at me. That was a while ago now but it was something my husband and my daughters did together. Sometimes they would say I should join the choir but I said I am not really United Church I am an Anglican and I just do not really want to do that and they understood even at their young age. I  just enjoyed watching all of them sing - Edward and his daughters. They are so much like him and they greatly adored him as he adored them. 

It was something special for him to have the girls be so like him although he would occasionally say I think they look like you too but the reality is that they look like Edward's family not mine (when one tested her atDNA for him as a surprise one Christmas he was thrilled as he didn't have anyone close to him that tested). My oldest daughter looks so very much like Edward's mother now although it wasn't noticeable when she was younger so much but then I did not know Edward's family until we were married. We came from different places in Ontario (I know virtually nothing about Edward's families other than the research that I helped him to do as I never lived in that area) and so I would not have noticed anything in particular but certainly now when my daughter is coming to the age that my mother in law was when I first met her I can see the strong similarity. A picture of Edward's great grandmother as a child that I saw years and years after we were married (I think perhaps I first saw it after Edward's mother died and he brought a lot of her keepsakes back when we went to the funeral). This picture is of Hannah Catherine Parlee (descendant of French Huguenots who went to Staten Island in the early 1700s) at the age of fourteen it says on a paper copy Edward made from the tintype and she is the exact image of my eldest daughter at the age of fourteen. Amazing really but the logic is there because the X chromosome that was passed to Edward from his mother goes to his daughter unchanged and this was his mother's grandmother. She received an X chromosome from her mother Margaret Evelyn Allen that came from her mother Hannah Catherine Parlee. Edward inherited more than 50% of his X chromosome from his mother as Allen so interesting how the genes flow. 

 Later after Church I shall work on the matches and I have just a few Ls left (eight actually) and then on to the Ms and there are nineteen of them. I am progressing and about half way now through this set of 250 matches which has reduced to 239 as I have rejected eleven of them. A few interesting insights from this work yesterday that have permitted me to do a little more separating out of Blake and Knight. The Pincombe and Gray in this chromosome are a bit more stubborn to separate but I think once I start with my sorting that these will slide into place as I look at all the chromosomes since I am not flitting back and forth between the chromosomes. 

A beautiful sunny day and it is minus 17 degrees celsius and we got our first Gold at the Olympics and we are in fourteenth place worldwide (the placement is by the number of gold medals).  Norway is dominating the Winter Olympics and in first place. Italy is in second place and very often the home country does do very well when the Olympics are in their own country. The United States is in third place and they generally do very very well in the Olympics whether it be summer or winter Olympics. There are still lots more to win for sure. I am always rooting for Canada and we are doing great; we have a huge team and so much enthusiasm. 

Tea all drank and time to do my solitaire puzzles.  

 

 

There is so much sadness in BC

 Prayers continuing for all those still recovering from gun shot wounds and prayers for the souls of the lost children and adults. May God hold them close to Him wrapped in His loving arms. I watched our government leaders all at the Memorial yesterday on the television. Such a sad time in our nation. 

I could not settle down to work yesterday so I did an academic study questionnaire that I have been in for about six years as it was ready for me to submit once again (every two years). It is an interesting study and I hope it finds value in the future. I couldn't settle down to it the last couple of days but today I did do that. As I answered some of the questions I found myself thinking about a small town now missing all of those young children where everyone knows everyone else. It is not something that I experienced growing up in a large city but listening to the people talking about the children you realize how tightly knit a small community can be. 

I did work on the matches once again and completed the J's. I am about half way through now and some new information did appear which was helpful. The intent is to (and probably I shouldn't use phase because it isn't truly the same as phasing grandparents) break down the grandparent's parents into their contribution to the five siblings DNA and it is working not too badly overall. There will still be a lot of work to do but I will use AI now that the files are organized in a way that I will return what I want and not miscellaneous information that was on the particular files. It is still there but not in the path of the searches. As you use AI you must give it detailed instructions in order to get back the information that you want. 

Another Saturday and it is a lovely day. This is a weightlifting day again and YOGA along with my early morning exercises and running for thirty minutes. I believe that the Fit Bit and I are now more or less in synch with regard to recording my daily exercises. I am getting a good estimate of the amount of cardio for the day although I generally exceed it but it does take a bit to establish a routine for the Fit Bit with these newer Fit Bits. Each one I acquire is a little more complicated than the last. The first one was just basically a step counter with a few extras so it has come a long way. The benefit to owning a FitBit is actually recording your exercise path day after day. When you are older you do forget some items although memory generally brings them back the FitBit is a record keeper and a good one. 

 Today I work on the K's and perhaps the L' s as not that many Ks. Perhaps I will have a sneak preview at what is new in the databases; we will see. Another beautiful quiet uninterrupted day for me working away. I do love Saturdays; it used to be cleaning day when I went back to work outside the  home. Although I loved proofreading at home the scientific literature it was nice to be out in the real world working - the work at first the Medical School for two years and then into the now Ottawa Hospital for a further ten years and then Health Canada for a year and a half I think were very very interesting. In my younger days I had wanted to go to be a doctor in Africa (being a doctor in Canada did not interest me) but I got married at 20 and my husband was not interested in going to Africa he preferred to stay in Canada and did pass up a job in Washington although he did have his regrets in later years on that one as he became so interested in the histories of his families who were primarily early American colonists from The Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden and the British Isles. His earliest were from the Netherlands to New Amsterdam now New York City. It amazed me that my husband did not know his immigration stories; they simply had not been passed down. As he searched and discovered people like Roger Williams his 10th great grandfather and so many others; I was amazed that all of this had been lost during subsequent immigrations north into Canada from New England beginning in 1800 into Ontario and continuing right up into the early 1830s. Land was free and his people mostly came into Niagara where some stayed for a bit and also into Oxford County. All forgotten. When we went to NEHGS for a weekend retreat he worked with Gary Boyd Roberts on  his tree and that was one comment that I heard Gary saying to Edward that many of the descendants of the New Englanders did lose their immigration stories over time. It was a long time I guess as it is now more than 400 years since the Mayflower dipped its anchor into the harbour at Provincetown, Cape Cod where the Pilgrim Monument stands. A site we visited quite a few times. All of his ancestors from England/Scotland (there were not actually that many at the time as most were from Europe) were Dissenters and some of them famous dissenters. It didn't surprise me actually as Edward had strong opinions. He was very Protestant in his views. It wasn't something that we talked about a lot being Catholic in my views but I did promise that I would go to his Church when we had children and we used to go to his Church before children. I generally went to my own as well usually without him as sometimes I would drive over and go to Church with my father at our home church. But the Cathedral was also close by and I would go there although I knew absolutely no one but that has always suited me. I like to go and pray and sing in my Church and I am not an outgoing person (introvert fits me well) but I also didn't mind going to Edward's United Church as I had gone to the United Church with my Grandmother and my Uncle (my mother's brother) and his wife my aunt when I was a child. It wasn't far from their house and we walked there just as we did from my house to our home church. But now I attend my Anglican Church online and at 80 it works very well for me. 

It was beautiful listening to the wonderful words from our Prime Minister at the vigil last evening. They were perfect and as mourner in chief he continues to do a wonderful job in our country. We will struggle and we will move ahead and get everything done but it is very pleasant to have him at the helm at this time in our history. He has a dream for Canada just like the Confederation Fathers and it is of a country that welcomes people (although you must ask to come here and always that has been the case although we did take in thousands of draft dodgers from the United States back fifty years ago now) but our First Nations do have their rights where the land is concerned and we respect that; it is part of our culture and we will defend that right. Listening to Wab Kinew talking about the work forward in Manitoba to bring our economy to absolute success were wonderous. I do very much admire that man; he is a perfect leader for Manitoba in this time of crisis and I suspect at any time really; he has a good head on  his shoulders for sure. His family heritage of thousands of years in this Hemisphere stands him in good stead as a leader in the past, for now and for the future of this country. Tecumseh walked with Brock as the leaders of what was to become Canada and we are now very much in pace with that. The Governor General (of Inuit Heritage) Mary Simon was also at the vigil representing the King of England and the people of Canada and King Charles III expressed his deep sorrow at the loss of all those bright young children and the adults in this sad time in our nation. 

Tea drank and it is 7:00 a.m. and minus six degrees celsius; we are having a warm spell although I think we may still have more cold - the Polar Vortex does it own thing for sure. We have lots of snow though for spring runoff to refresh the dry earth from the drought of last summer. Time for solitaire puzzles and I am now a Champion in the Sudoku puzzles. I still miss doing all my Spider though and will return one of these days. My eyes will eventually get used to the flashing I hope. My eyes continue to amaze me having spent most of my life with basically very little depth of vision and my sight was not really that good as I can now drive without glasses which is truly amazing although I wear sunglasses but still I can actually read the street signs which is stupendous as my children have grown and I do not have them to tell me the names of the streets as we pass them.  

 

 

 

The sadness remains

Sad watching the news today which I just finished doing. The little girl who was shot in the head and the neck remains in critical condition. How cruel for the parents to have raised their daughter to the age of twelve years and seen her be so successful to now have her so injured. Prayers continuing for the souls of the murdered and for all the other injured people from that dreadful day that will go down in history as we remember in particular those little murdered ones just into their teenage years. We quickly forget those who harm us but the ones lost because of that one act we never forget - in our hearts for ever.  Leaders of the parties (Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, Leader of the Green Party, and the others are invited and I do not know where that is at) are going to a vigil in memory of the lost in Tumbler Ridge, BC and praying for the injured. Dear God please keep the little murdered ones especially close wrapped in your loving arms. 

On with the day remembering the loss. I must say that I do find it annoying to have anyone ring my phone that I haven't asked to call  me or arranged to call me. These rude ignorant spammers probably trying to steal people's money should actually get a job and work and stop their ignorance of ringing a telephone randomly with a fake name. My pet peeve of the day. Basically I do not know anyone in the world that I want to talk to on my phone when I haven't arranged it in one way or another. That way is called email and my delete finger works very well. I do occasionally answer the phone when it is a number I recall attached to a name I recognize. But generally I leave it to go to voice mail. It is exhausting doing phone calls perhaps a hangover from my breakdown; no ideas on that. Everything is so much easier when it is written down. It is interesting that we seldom or never hear the names of dictators (except when mentioned with disgust) or tyrants or murderers who care nothing for their people once they have met their fate. If we do it is remembering them with hatred and disgust which they deserve for their sins.  

Good accomplishment yesterday and I am well into the Js now but still more than half to do. I also did the Hunter Gatherer thing and got food.  I had to buy a big plastic jug of white vinegar as I was all out. I am trying to keep these big jugs down though and it looks like vinegar, bleach and floor cleaner are the three left.

A big pile of brochures from restaurants, stores etc was in my mail box yesterday. They will go to the paper waste next week. I dream about having everything paper on line.  This is Collection Day and it is the recyclables. I have very little to put out once again but do try to do it weekly to keep that cleared away since I freeze the recycled food waste in my freezer until I put it out to the street. Keeps any odour down and the animals do not appear to try and get into the container. 

A couple of interesting matches yesterday that fitted so neatly into the Knight family. There are so many Knight matches due to the endogamy in this family in my lines going back. I wonder about these ancient Blake matches (do not appear to be Knight in a couple of lengths) in the Colonial United States descendants but Nicholas likely married his first cousin Margaret (daughter of his uncle Thomas) giving those descendants a double set of Blake and then Richard Blake married Jone Blake (second cousins)    just two generations later again boosting the level of Blake in this line so it is conceivable that particularly common areas might just be amplified by this marriage of cousins frequency. I am suspicious that I would see any sharing with cousins more than seventh cousins apart but having so many in two particular areas is very suspicious especially when their trees are so deep going back into Colonial America where the chances of marrying a closer relative would be much higher. All of these Blake lines would be descendant of Robert Blake of Enham who left his will in 1521. There is a John Blake in earlier records in the Andover area prior to 1521 (1300s actually) so it is finding information to link this earlier line with Robert. Finding a John Blake in the 1300s was rather fascinating as the Doomsday Books do not have a surname for anyone in this area of Andover in the latter part of the 1000s. By 1200 there are records for Blake in England but they tend to be in the London area or into East Anglia. My suspicion is that the John Blake of the 1300s was the first to use the Blake surname and married a daughter of Richard le Blak which would account for the relationship between the Blake family in Speen, Berkshire and Andover, Hampshire in the mid 1500s when no close cousinship is mentioned (the English people tend to recognize 1st cousins as close and 2nd cousins as some what distant according to my cousin Ivan). 

Tea drank and time to do solitaire puzzles. Exercise went very well but it is actually my older daughter that has given me all these new exercise hints as she, like my younger daughter, is very into exercise. It is important to do lots of exercise especially given our tendency to sit about so much. Both are very busy though but I do chat with my older daughter every night for about an hour. It is kind of her to take so much time out of her day but as she is an academic only and we have a lot in common discussing our books and such that we are into and occasionally I do have an idea for her. My younger daughter is very busy and I do not clutter up her phone with my book writing.  

 

 

 

Prayers continuing

Prayers continuing for the souls of the children and adults in Tumbler Ridge BC murdered and prayers for all those fighting for their lives in the hospital as well as those recovering in the hospital and at home from gun shot wounds. God bless and keep close to Him the young children whose lives were taken from them just entering into their teenage years. How heart-wrenching to have such a loss for the families, the community, the province, the country and the world. 

Interesting work on 6000 year old DNA in North Africa

 Reading an interesting post on 6000 year old DNA which was primarily 80% North African and 20% Mesopotamian. It is conjectured that movement out of Africa began 60,000 years ago but the numbers would have been small groups of hunter gatherers probably but we are also looking at a time when agriculture began in Mesopotamia. Fascinating research being done with DNA. I often wonder if the collected samples of Western Hunter Gatherers in the British Isles would get published one day. That being my Blake family line it is rather interesting to me. That my grandfather when he talked about his family described them as having been in the Andover for ever quite fascinating. When one looks at the yDNA in the area from Andover over to Basingstoke the frequency of Western Hunter Gatherer yDNA in the families is apparent. Why they would settle in this area is interesting but on our couple of trips in the area the land is very fertile and somewhat flat with good streams flowing through so one could see the attraction to stop and settle there. If indeed they were one of the Lost Tribes of Israel then there would have been a lot of peace in that area I suspect after all they went through in the south. I still am amazed at how much he talked about is there in writeups and discussed by genealogists regarding the work of Horatio Gates Somerby and the fraudulent histories of families that he produced for his American clients Blake being amongst them. But now in 2026 looking back on my childhood before my grandfather died in 1953 (although my father also, on occasion, did chat about it) and that is a period of 73 years ago that I sat and listened to my grandfather talk about the past. His stories went so far back because his great grandfather Charles Butt was still alive when he was a child and Charles was born in 1800. He talked and he talked and amazingly as I think back his stories do come to me as he repeated them so many times. It is amazing to have a feel for that much history in terms of times past. 

Finished the cleaning yesterday and another work week ahead of me with four days to do research. I did almost complete the matches up to the end of the G's yesterday but I am still scratching the surface. There are a lot of matches. I spent some time looking at my spam just to see if I had missed anything the last couple of weeks but no; no missing messages in there. I actually do not get that much spam compared to the mail that comes into my mailbox.  

Today will be a busy one and the sun is streaming through the window at the moment. I love it when the hot sun in the winter beats down on the back of the house. You can feel the heat that it sends in but it is just minus 9 degrees celsius today at 8:00 a.m. so the deep freeze is gone for a bit but could return; one never knows. The Polar Vortex has a mind of its own. 

I actually have results now for two of the four great grandparent lines in the common area which is good news. It is this common area where as much as one third of the matches sit and I have eliminated a number of them because I did not collect quite enough information when I was downloading from 23 and Me. At the beginning I did not always note the close matches to that match and I can no longer access my two brother's accounts because they are deceased and I just haven't jumped through the hoops to get that set up. It is a process but I should have brought them into my account but didn't realize it at the time so a lesson learned for sure. But mostly I have other matches with siblings that offset that loss. 

I still have to look at all the testing companies as I have not collected any new material for about six months. I have glanced and nothing huge came in but still some of the matches will likely be interesting. I do want to get started on the genealogical charts for the two books though and hope to do that early in April is the plan. 

First set of exercises completed and I must have done a lot of extra walking as the cardio load was 51 and the time 1 hour and four minutes. I will do weight lifting at some point and running for thirty minutes. Back to that normal set of exercises for the rest of the week where the weight lifting is interchanged with rowing generally and hopefully some yoga. The days pass so very quickly. 

Drinking tea and time to do the solitaire puzzles. I am now an Ace in the Sudoku puzzle set up. I wonder what is next.  

And the basement is cleaning day three

Prayers for the souls of the people murdered in Tumbler Ridge, BC. Information still coming. 

 Yesterday the cleaning went very well and was accomplished mostly before lunch which was good as the Fit Bit is now starting to recognize the cleaning and I am receiving reasonable numbers for this work.The duration 3 hours and 12 minutes, the cardio load 92 and the calories burned 1169. My last old Fit Bit had  higher numbers which I never really felt were correct. I am satisfied that this fits the effort that I put in. So today the basement and the robot will begin its task shortly. 

I continue to contemplate how to update Canada Post to virtual mailboxes as I consider Canada Post to be a valuable service which at the moment needs a redo I think in order to take up more of the possible package deliveries in particular (more money being received by the Post Office) and to help offset the cost to the government mailing items to us where there is a cost (all hard copies would have to be paid for both the printing and the cost of delivery). I think it would result in Canada Post being able to support itself. Plus it guarantees package mail delivery all over Canada without exception.  As mentioned yesterday the beginnings of virtual mailboxes are already there with the postal code which is in two parts - the area code the first three items ( a letter a number followed by a letter) and then the location code (a number, a letter, a number) which brings it down to a group of households in an area. This just has to be subdivided into individual units and a particular code chosen by the unit owner can be used for this third category that actually lets you into the mailbox and can be changed regularly to prevent fraud with two factor authentication with your phone and email just for extra layers. That gives it enormous flexibility into the future. Fascinating really but it will take time to implement although we should speed things up so that they are not so slow really. We need to speed ourselves up. I would suggest that the electronic flyers that would be distributed by Canada Post into the virtual mailboxes would carry the same cost as the current distribution of paper flyers by Canada Post. This system will be expensive to setup but the main attributes of the system are consistent across all departments of the Government and everyone will benefit particularly on a mercantile basis and that will help to ensure the Post Office being in the black rather than the red. Enough on the Post Office; just my thoughts at this time for whatever reason; sometimes I am just annoyed about something and being the person I am I begin to think of good solutions. 

Working on Chromosome 1 and yesterday I managed to complete the D's. A few good insights that solved some great grandparent lines and I will continue with that today. It is really the common area (common to Europe and the British Isles (and by extension a lot of the people in the Western Hemisphere except for the First Nations)) that is the most difficult to separate into the great grandparent line very often. But there are still probably 200 matches to go or more. I will count them when there are fewer. 

I have now organized the recycling that has been added to our collecting to put out to the street. I put all the small plastic items into one of the bread bags, another bread bag will hold the large pieces of plastic and I use very few cans and the  number of large plastic containers has almost completely disappeared with the purchase of the boxes of liquid hand cleaner and soap that I bought from a company in Montreal. I replaced the cleaning solution with a paper product that comes in a recyclable cardboard box. The amazing thing is that there is only floss in the garbage and it will takes months and months to fill that plastic bag in the garbage container. Amazing really and a good move forward having a private company take over the recycling collection. 

I want to start on the enormous set of excel files for the photo books so that I have created just the family part of it and then I can begin setting up the photo books. The other way was not working for me as I just felt sad about taking apart the History of his Life that Edward created. It will still be there in the scanned files along with the original indexes. One day a descendant might just pull that up and have a look at it; one never knows. But it was something Edward did not want to happen that he would be forgotten as he always felt his father was. Definitely our daughters will never forget their father; they loved him dearly and still do. 

Time to do the solitaire puzzles and I have forgotten my tea so must go and do that.  

Second Day of Cleaning

 First day of cleaning went very well but it is on these three days that I have to really work to get to my 12,000 steps per day (just over 13,000 yesterday) - I seldom go beyond that on a cleaning day. I primarily concentrate on my books when not working and getting them done. Whenever life becomes conflicting it does appear that I hide behind my books. The books will be published with a Creative Common License and free on my website. The Blake will be a shorter volume than the actual one that I will produce but I still feel strongly that I will not be adequately proving to my mind anything prior to 1521 and will not include that portion in the published online book but it will be in the book that I place in the Guild of one-name Studies Library where I am a member. I will get some of the material transcribed (it is all in Latin) but I do not have all of it and so I must leave it to a scholar in the future who finds the story of the Blake Family of Andover intriguing. Perhaps another descendant of that family will do that. I have a busy couple of months ahead of me of work although I do not plan to publish before January 2028. Once I complete Chromosome 1 then I will be changing how I am working and back into planned days for either Blake or Pincombe. It will be exciting and I will enjoy it. 

I continued yesterday to contemplate the Cosmic Horizon and Heaven. I do believe God is in the Heavens and the discussion was most interesting that I read yesterday. I do not believe I have ever heard it expressed in quite that way before (past Lecturer at Harvard, Dr. Michael Guillen, The Economic Times). It was absolutely beautiful and thank you to him for sharing it with the world. I still remember the first time I saw a print of an atom; it was just a flat image on a paper but I loved the look of it. It so appealed to me and drew me into Chemistry at a young age (about twelve as I was headed off to High School). I read Chemistry for years before I studied it and still find  it fascinating. The atom is the secret; it is the basis of all that we see around us including ourselves. DNA is built from atoms and in the creation of a life at every level DNA responds to the material it receives from each parent accepting the best presented and rejecting the inferior. That doesn't mean as we all know that everyone is born perfect. I myself had strabismus all my life until I was 78 years of age and then like a miracle I could see into the depths like I never did before. I could see without glasses and even more astounding I passed my driver's test without glasses. I notice that now nearly two years later I do not reach for my glasses first thing in the morning that did take a while. But it is all the mystery of the atom how our life flows and will we ever know when the atom first appeared in this universe. Genesis is a simple story of the beginning but I think that the atom is all part of that story. The secret of the Cosmos never to be revealed whilst one is living. But we can dream about it.

Another good day of morning exercise at 58 minutes, cardio load of 51 and 339 calories plus 2615 steps which is about right for that set of exercises. I injured my back in a fall in my mid-teen years and I got up and walked again so never really investigated it (I was one of seven children after all) but I still have to be careful with my back as it is easily put into difficulty without the proper exercise. I did finally in my 60s get some help with my back and some good exercise recommendations. That is one of the many reasons that I do do exercises every day to keep my back very strong. 

Still none of my expected  mail and mostly what I do receive is all brochures (and that could be virtual as well saving one's time looking for it online). Canada Post is particularly good at delivering bulk mail. Perhaps not a big deal getting my piece of awaited mail as I can just call the company; I already paid my premium (this is insurance for my burial so do like to keep it up to date). But I do like to have the paperwork. I dream of a virtual mail box and we are setup already with the filing system for it with the postal code (the two parts of that postal code were particularly ingenious). I actually did work for the Postal Service in one of the District Offices back when I was having a problem with miscarriage from being on my feet all my working day and needed to rest so I went to work at the Post Office and with my COBOL language did manage to secure an interesting position but I was taken ill after my daughter was born and had to leave my position. Having the postal code would make a very straightforward setup and we could move to it quickly. I have had so many different kinds of jobs in my life all emanating from the various trainings that I have had in school, in the workplace and just on my own usually online learning once that entered into our lives.  I do not know if there would be initial savings as the added computer setup, the electricity, the use of AI (still in training stages and will be awhile before it would be ready without a lot of human input). But the advantage is so huge and I believe it would increase the income earned by the Post Office because it would be a do it all delivery service for government and mercantile as they choose providing everything particularly delivery of parcels which they are quite excellent at providing (parcels would grow of course because of items that the government delivers to us which were once letter mail - for actual hard copy delivered perhaps we would pay for that in the future); but for the consumer/tax payer/business being able to handle your mail anywhere in the world is a plus. We have a bit of that already as you can get the post office to scan your mail and send it to you. That is an interesting mid step but for privacy the virtual mailbox wins out absolutely. 

At the District Office of the Post Office in the middle of the large room there on the second floor where I worked were maybe a dozen desks of men who had served in the Second World War and had been injured in various ways and they formed a work pool that we could get to do particular tasks and one in particular was very keen on computers and I got him to prepare the huge piles of computer pages by marking particular items for me. He became extremely good at it and fast. I admired those young men in the height of their youth (well I suppose in their 40s and 50s then) pushing themselves day after day to work and to learn. They could  have just sat back and given up but they did not and I will forever remember them for their courage to keep going and continue doing what they could do to support themselves and their families.  

Worked on Chromosome 1 yesterday and I am into the D's so not a great deal done yesterday. But some good sorting of the common area with lots of Relative lists attached to the files now. AI can do all that work for me eventually. But for the moment I must prepare my files removing any randomness so that the AI will do the best job that I can tell it to do with minimum junk coming out. 

Tea all drank and solitaire puzzles to do. I have one neat trick that I use when my back is a problem and that is to kneel at the computer and type and play solitaire puzzles. It does seem to strengthen the back.  

 

 

Cleaning day One

An ever repeating sequence in my life is cleaning days. I do not mind cleaning it reminds me of my grandmother teaching me how to clean and I do try to follow her clear instructions. Life has changed though and now at 80 I do do things somewhat differently. She was a fascinating person though and my memories of her are very strong and clear in my mind. She managed though to say only certain things about her families leaving one to wonder many times. I wonder if she visited the area of Bermondsey where her great grandfather Christopher Buller had his Slop Shop on Tooley Street in Bermondsey. We were on the tour bus when I was looking out the window as we drove across the Thames from London and I just happened to glance up at the right time to see the street marker with Tooley Street upon it. Generally I can not read those signs but it was a large sign and the bus was right beside it and of course one is sitting up higher in a tour bus with huge windows. That was our first trip to London in 2008 (my husband and I). I had been in London in 2001 with my oldest daughter when we did my pilgrimage to Rome and then a side trip to London on our way home to Canada.  I had asked Edward first if he would like to come but he declined although he regretted that after our Tour of Europe as he saw little of Italy compared to what I had seen with my older daughter. He always wanted to go back and do a trip of just Italy. But once he went and enjoyed it he wanted to go much more often than I did. I wanted to see everything that I could see so it took a good six months to prepare for each trip and so it was generally every second year that we went. 

My grandmother did mention all of her grandparents - the Taylor grandparents were shoe makers/shop keepers and the Buller grandmother lived with her children except not their family. Henry Christopher Buller, her grandfather, had died twenty six years before she was born. My grandmother attended her grandmother's funeral not long before her father died actually and she had met her father's sisters at that time. Both of her parents had come from fairly large families. But Buller is one of my challenging lines which I will have a longer look at after the Pincombe and Blake books are completed. 

 I worked on Chromosome 1 yesterday and managed to get through to the C's. The number of matches is huge so it will be a while getting through this chromosome. However, some of the dust has settled on the common area as I was able to prepare a good list of matches for Buller and Blake as well as Pincombe (my Rawlings matches are very few actually overall but the ones that I do have are close so good coverage). 

The start of the work week is always interesting and today it is minus 24 degrees celsius with a wind chill of minus 35 to minus 40 degrees celsius. So a very cold day out there and I believe I will just look at the snow from a distance whilst I clean. The desire to go out in that is pretty weak. I did put the skis away until March when I might ski again - time and the snow will decide that. 

On the first chromosome at the beginning there are quite a few matches (as many as 40 actually but I did not collect all of them) that are early Colonial American and in the Blake/Knight line. I am still trying to find a match that will reveal which of the two. There is also a length on this same chromosome that is definitely Blake and both ancient and  modern so again I wonder are these the descendants of the Sedgewick family where Joanna Blake married Robert Sedgewicke  the 6th of Jan 1634 (old style) at Andover St Marys in Hampshire, England. Earlier in the history of Ancestry DNA I did collect five or six matches that were small but traced back to Sedgewicke (I do need to pull them up as I saved them when Ancestry removed the very small matches from their database). I will spend some time looking at these matches when I am doing the genealogy charts. Some really good lengths of Buller on this chromosome especially with my two Buller cousins testing recently (descendants of Clement Charles Caswell Buller (brother to my Edwin Denner Buller) and I already have two other descendants of siblings of my great grandfather Edwin Denner Buller so an interesting length of this chromosome is known to me along with two descendants of the Welch family which was the mother of Edwin Denner Buller. Not quite as large but in a significant place which has aided the investigation quite a bit from an earlier time. But the addition of the last two was memorable as it solved the problem on Chromosome 3 for sure. I do have eighteen known matches but this is a very long chromosome and there are spots (particularly the common area where more Known matches would be nice). Although time is providing answers that weren't there earlier. 

 Time is moving onward and I must finish off my tea and do my solitaire puzzles before breakfast and then cleaning. Exercises completed and a snack to fortify me until breakfast. Another beautiful day on God's world. An interesting discussion on the location of Heaven which I found very thought consuming. The scientist who discussed it is a physicist. I loved studying physics because so many of the early scholars were very religious and constantly brought science and religion together. I have always felt that the examination of the atom revealed God to us as it is so perfect and designed in a fundamental way that does make one believe very deeply in the presence of God in our world. Randomness doesn't cut it with me mostly because randomness is chaotic and destructive and the atom is perfect because it follows a logical course that is beneficial not destructive like plants and animals where the best combination of DNA is always chosen. 

 

Continuing blog - I am verbose today

 The only time that I have gone to a neighbour's door for help in my life was my car was stuck. It wasn't stuck in terms of ice or anything but I was backing it out of the garage and I did not seem to be able to manage it for some odd reason. I must admit I was getting concerned about my eyes at that stage but they had said I didn't need cataract surgery yet, But it just seemed that I wasn't seeing as well as I had been. So I did knock/ring the bell on the door next door just the one time to get help with that and they did back my car out of the garage. Which I said thank you for their assistance. My husband knew them well and they helped each other out when they were away or we were. I really didn't know them at all until my husband passed and then I did start speaking to them as my life was very busy helping my daughter and my son in law stayed in my house for half of a week with our youngest grandson as he needed assistance with his Autism (a very expensive process) so I did ask them to take in the mail which they did when I wasn't there but it was a short period of time. But mostly I keep entirely to myself except when my family is with me or I am with them. My daughters and son in law and grandchildren take good care of me. 

I am finding though that the mail is very slow these days; some items I am expecting have not arrived. It seems really strange and it again makes me feel that virtual mailboxes would be so much better. All of these companies can produce electronic documents that the post office can distribute. It would be so much neater and no waste of paper. Even though my black bin was not emptied this week in two weeks it will barely have anymore than is in there now but with virtual I would have almost nothing and only need collecting every month or two. I simply do not use a lot of products. I never get parcels at the door as I do not buy anything except when family is here and we go shopping. But the Post Office would actually have a bigger business in parcel delivery if the mailboxes were virtual (especially in the country as well where everything could be delivered closer to home). Mind you I do not think the Post Office has to make money. It is a service to the public but it could be close to supporting itself with bulk mailing for business in a virtual way and delivery service for both government and mercantile. The number of in house workers and delivery van drivers would grow to offset the loss in jobs that a virtual system would entail. Running a virtual system requires management and workers along with AI.  

I am also trying to reduce the plastic waste and metal from cans. I seldom open a can so that isn't very much but when my daughter is here we do have more cans. Plastic is a slow process as there are meat containers but I am thinking of switching to a butcher that only uses butcher paper to wrap the meat and just go more often when I have someone with me. My daughter found this company that makes a product in a Canadian cardboard box with a thin plastic container that is larger than I used to buy and that reduces the plastic somewhat but still there. I guess we need to go to powders but still you need a container but if it is cardboard which we produce a lot of then that does reduce the waste of plastic. We switched to powder for clothes washing and that is in a tin container which recycles very well much better than plastic (such knowledge from my own days in Chemistry at University). I usually have very little in the blue container but it has increased since we recycle all of the plastic freezer bags now. 

I have had a large white plastic bag in my garbage for two weeks now and all it has in it is floss and it will take years to fill it with floss. The used kleenex is in a paper bag and goes out with the recycling along with the food waste which I put into used milk cartons (waxed cardboard) and freeze until the day of pickup. Again I only fill one of the 2 litre cartons once a week when I am on my own. When I have company I use the paper recycling bags not biodegradable plastic because we make the paper bags here in Canada. 

Interesting really where all of that is going. I am verbose today but that  happens when I am awake in the night contemplating how to solve whatever the current problem is. I may have a solution that I will work through over the next couple of days. I did find it inadequate to be told to just go to the store and set it up when I tried to set up a system online that I have used many times in the past but it took my money but did not set up the system I needed. I went through this call system that finally got me a person after two hours nearly the other day and was told that he couldn't do the work even though I had the charge number against my credit card for the government department. I find that weird really as everything is online and surely he could see that I had paid but not received the setup required. But maybe not. I didn't care for his solution which was to trek out to the store and set it up there. Why would I do that when I should be able to just easily set it up on line as I always have. But I do have a workaround in mind once my money comes back - no one is  made of money to waste randomly trying to set something up. Plus I did  not get a response to my filling in the forms where you mention the problem. 

Having to change your work direction happens in life as my own husband graduated as a PhD Chemist and went on to do a Postdoc in Chemical Engineering as he wanted to be a working scientist not just an educated one. But no jobs as it was the time of the draft dodgers and they came north and took all the  jobs for a bit and our PhD graduates taught high school (many in his PhD graduating class did that in that time period). So he did yet another degree masters in library science and got a job that he worked at happily for thirty years so I do not really have a lot of sympathy. Retrain and get a different job if your job disappears due to automation or political circumstance. Plus I do need a new vacuum cleaner and I want it to be all Canadian like they used to be; I will feel the same way if I am buying a fan or any other electrical device that is no longer made here and we import them from the companies in the United States that bought our companies out or simply out competed them and they closed during free trade. Those American companies in some cases made their products off shore eventually more cheaply in Asia and that is where some of them come from now first coming through the US to here. So retrain and lets get our industries back sooner rather than later. The shop vac works well but I would like a new Canadian vacuum cleaner and especially one that doesn't sound like a jet engine taking off. 

Well must get some work done before church and eat my breakfast. The day is moving onward. The exercise this morning was excellent and it was 56 minutes (4 minutes faster than usual), 49 cardio load and 326 calories, step count 3306 which is still a little high as I did lose count a couple of time.  Yesterday I walked nearly 17,000 steps. I get up and walk every hour for about ten to fifteen minutes which does bring that count up rapidly plus I ran for thirty minutes and did weight lifting for 22 minutes. 

 

 

Chromosome 1 progressing

Awake early and probably sleep again but decided to write my blog. Chromosome 1 went well and will continue with that later today. It is the longest chromosome and I inherited an all Blake/Knight chromosome from my father. Some of it is known and some of it I will see what I can find. 

Bought hand soap and detergent from a company in Montreal instead of the usual big plastic bottles of it. These come in a thin plastic dispenser inside of a cardboard box so decreasing the amount of plastic but still quite a bit of cardboard but the bonus there is that we make all those cardboard containers. Trying very hard to only buy Canadian but sometimes I do make mistakes like buying my Turbo Tax which I really like. But next year QFile will do the trick I am sure. The $27 for the Turbo Tax is well offset by what I paid for the huge containers of hand soap and detergent. I generally spend only on Canadian products in the stores but one has to read the labels very carefully as they are mentioning on the Television. Just thinking it is Canadian doesn't work. 

I did buy the shoveling for the remainder of the season from the company that does do my laneway but it didn't happen yesterday. We will see I may have to remind them as it isn't on the sign the person on the phone said but then it is set up until the 1st of April like the laneway. Generally I pay the extra to do the laneway in April just in case of heavy snows.  

 I do have a puzzle generally with Chromosome 1 as there is a set of matches in a common area which is either Blake or Buller or Rawlings or Pincombe. I have more or less got a list of matches so that I can separate them out readily but it doesn't always work and then I just assign them to the "too small" category file and do not use them. That file is going to be the largest I suspect in that this is a very common area for the British Isles and Northern Europe. 

Sunday and another service online from my Church. I do enjoy being able to attend in that way; it isn't exactly what God planned but at 80 years of age it works very well for me. The need to move is very strong in me I must admit. I do not want to wait too long but eventually this house will be too much for me even with the helpers that I purchase to assist me. I will have this company that does the laneways and porch/patio do the yards this year. That way there will be the cutting every second week I think which will make life easier. The exercise is good but sometimes it is also exhausting as it is a large yard. 

Sometimes when I look back at all of my years the amount of volunteer time that I have put in seems huge but all of that is also way back in the past. Although I did do some volunteer work with some healthcare projects during COVID and after and still do some. All online making life much easier - online is great really. But my girls are long grown and a lot of the volunteer work was with their groups or their schools.  

God is always with us in the wind and the rain, in the skies and the rich land around us. Thank you God for all that you have given to us. Help us to be better administrators of this land bringing peace to the world for all peoples so that everyone can live a good life in these lands. 

 Back to sleep and another day is dawning although not quite yet it is early at 3:40 a.m. 

H11 Newsletter on the website

 Accomplished yesterday and it is on the website awaiting approval from the support group. It is a time saver as it turns out. The process I used to use for the first newsletter of the year  for H11 took me about five or six hours of going through all the material but FT DNA's new mt tree is perfect and covers everything much better as it identifies the matches in common. So thank you to FT DNA for saving me some time as I move away from so much time on newsletters to working on my books. 

I continue to contemplate how nice it will be when I move from here. Yesterday the black recycling bin was not emptied by the collection people; possibly because I put it up on  top of the snowhill (as did others) and nothing was sticking out which seems a bit strange as I could see into it. It takes me a long time to fill the black bin. It will be so nice to be gone from all of that for sure. I am tired of dealing with people in my 80th year. I just want to work away on my books and have no one about me that isn't my family. Honesty for sure but then I have worked since I was twelve years old and except for a short period when my oldest was born and I was ill for a few years I have worked until I retired in 2008. A little sooner than I planned but I had tore my rotator cup and it needed rest and finally I decided just to retire. It was a good idea except my husband always had so many things he was doing and wanted me to help him and so I did but I managed to avoid getting involved beyond the event that he  needed help with or a trip that he and another fellow had put together and I would help with that but then quiet came for a while until Edward had something else he wanted to do. Me, I prefer just to stay at home and work on my projects. I am not a people person and even less so now that I am 80. My time that is for fun is spent with my family but they are very busy people and so I have all this lovely beautiful time to myself to work on my books. 

That recent event brought it to my notice how much the world is changing and all that waste of paper is too excessive delivering it door to door (it would take  me a month or two to accumulate a black box full of paper and as time passes it will take longer and longer. Have a stand somewhere in a mall where people can pick it up. I still  have stamps that I bought fifteen years ago (there are still three there) which tells you how much I use the Post Office. The Post office needs virtual mailboxes for people to receive their information (usually one is printing something and then putting it into an envelope and then mailing it but if one had access to a system that sent the item via the post office that would be perfect). Bulk mailing is done very well by the Post Office.  I would go for that as I do think the Post Office is an important part of government. I do see a value in the Post Office just not the current setup. That way one is always able to access their mail anywhere they  have an internet connection.  I agree with the opinion of the government that door to door delivery needs to disappear. 

I have been using computers for 60 years now and our young people are so good at managing computers starting even younger than my 20 years of age at the time. Lately in a discussion with a Chatbox trying to solve a problem the AI that I talked to could not get beyond simple sentences that a child would use and so could not understand what I was saying. It finally gave me a telephone number that I sat for nearly an hour listening to the excuses before looking up a number that did give me a person after 25 minutes.  AI needs a lot of work still. 

However in spite of the mishaps, I did complete Chromosome 2 and I will move on to Chromosome 1 today. I was pleased with the overall result of this chromosome. I rejected  ten matches because they were too small; that is the most so far. The file is now 3627 lines and by the time I have completed Chromosome 1 I estimate that will be over 4000 lines easily. Then the real work begins. Although I still have to check the databases for new matches which I will do first. 

 My usual exercises yesterday replacing weight lifting with rowing. I do like rowing and we canoed all over Northern Ontario in our young days my husband and I. It was fantastic and I highly recommend it. The rowing is a sort of strength training along with just the good cardio that goes with it. So for 400 rows, 23 minutes, 135 calories and a cardio load of 43. Today's morning exercise was 1 hour, 403 cal, and cardio load of 49. My steps were 3203 a little longer than usual but I was contemplating my blog and lost count a few times so just added 100 more. 

The FitBit wants me to slow down but it needs to continue to refine itself to work with me in my normal exercise routine (it is just six weeks old now!). It is getting better and better. My step count was 16,002 steps yesterday. 

Just the Kipp Newsletter to look at today and I will think about it. I only mention Y-DNA in the newsletter. 

Forgot to make my tea so must do that and solitaire games to play.  

 

 

H11 Newsletter in progress

I did work on the H11 project yesterday and all ungrouped members are now grouped. It is not of any value to do the statistics I used to do in this issue of the newsletter. In each individual member's page is all the information that I used to provide in an anonymous way which is now available to each person except they can see the matches. Thank you to FT DNA for doing such a great job in this upgrade. I can not publish the new mitogroups because that information is personal. So a small writeup on that in the Newsletter. I still have to have a look at the recent messaging online about H11 and see if there is anything other than my newsletters. 

H11 is an old haplogroup subclade which wintered in Ukraina during the last Ice Age. Presumably given the tracking of some of the members of this group it would appear that there were several paths to the west through central Europe and into southern England and through the Scandinavian Peninsula and into Scotland where my ancestor appears on the Blood of the Isles Database created by Bryan Sykes. The H11 also trekked east and south east and south west. The Blood of the Isles Database is a limited look as few markers are mentioned but the ones that are end up, in my case, being significant and it is likely that both of my lines y-DNA and mt-DNA were in the British Isles 8,000 to 12,000 years ago as Western Hunter Gatherers. Both of these signatures go extinct when my generation is gone and when the grandchildren generation is gone (y-DNA in my generation and mt-DNA in the grandchildren generation). I think sometimes it is hard to believe given that I have six siblings but there you go. However there are still, in my estimation, around half a million to a million holders of this mt-DNA and an unknown number for the y-DNA (there were fourteen matches on the Chromo2 test). This being an expensive test probably did not get as many testers as it might have. But I do know that the y-DNA is all over the British Commonwealth but not so sure of the United States as no one has tested there that matches. I do not know of any male Blake of Andover going to the United States. It became a very small family in the mid 1700s and most holders were still in England. Time will tell though and if DNA studies continue to interest people more will be available in the future. 

 Today finish up the H11 Newsletter and work on the Kipp Newsletter. I also hope to get back to the matches and there are 22 to finish off Chromosome 2 and then on to the last one - Chromosome 1 with its 250+ matches. That will take a bit of time. 

My new exercise routine now a few weeks old is going very well and I think it was time for a change to that type of longer exercise. I also ran for thirty minutes and lifted weights for 20 minutes. It gives me a good cardio load for the day and exercise level. At 80 one has to keep up the exercises as you lose the muscle tone very quickly. The balance also has to be part of the whole exercise story and I was amazed at how adding two sets of exercises that my daughter mentioned to my routine kept me from falling down readily whilst skiing. 

Started filling in my income tax with basic details and I do believe I will move to one of the Canadian manufactured income tax form programs. I suppose I knew it was American but I guess I thought maybe it was also Canadian but it is totally American owned. But at $27 for the basic form it isn't a lot but I will move to possibly UFile as it looks interesting, has a lovely Canadian flag in the corner and is downloaded to the computer which I prefer. It is sad though as I really like Turbo Tax. We were all happy I think with the status quo but time changes and life moves on and so must we. I do like what Prime Minister Carney is doing. One mustn't think of the deficit at this point; we need to think of increasing jobs and Canadian content of everything. 

Today the opening of the new Consulate in Nuuk, Greenland and the Governor General is there along with Minister Anand  and we are well represented there by many Canadian Inuit cousins and friends to support this new Consulate and it will bring us even closer as peoples. It isn't far from Baffin Island to Greenland and new trade routes are opening up in the Hudson Bay and we can all work together to make our lives more productive. 

Drinking tea and on to the Solitaire Puzzles. Still enjoying the Sudoku very much and do get a good laugh out of the Superstar label.  I do miss the sixteen games of Spider to achieve the Diamond level in that particular Solitaire game and perhaps I will return once my  eyes adjust to this sparkling as it tends to give me a headache. So move on from that; there are other games and Sudoku is great as a memory and brain game for sure. 

 

 

 

H11 Newsletter is a complete redo of the site

 It will take me a while to do the H11 Newsletter as the mitogroups will necessitate a complete rework of the site. I am in the process of looking at that. The Kipp Newsletter only deals with the yDNA groups and will also have a look at that but again I am moving away from working on Kipp since I do not know the family and perhaps someone in the group will come forward and become involved. We will see how that goes; I will mention it in the next Newsletter.

Cleaning was slow as I decided to download my TurboTax which took me a bit to accomplish but everything  is working very very well. I do like using Turbo Tax to do my Income Tax. It is an American product but it will be difficult for me to change that unless I just do it. We will see in the future but this year it is TurboTax once again.

Cleaning completed although it was a dragged out session today as I kept on checking in on a couple of items.  That completes cleaning for the week except little everyday things. 

I did absolutely nothing on the matches as I decided to work on the Newsletters and will likely do that to a large extent today. Reworking the H11 viewing chart will be a large task with  517 members although some are only Family Finder and did not test their mitochondrial DNA at FT DNA (I am assuming that they did test it elsewhere which is why they are on the H11 site!). 

I will start out though with the matches as I am now down to  43 left to do (my guess of 40 was pretty close). Then there is just Chromosome 1 to add to the flat file and I am looking forward to that. This was a huge task as it turned out but I have now really looked at all of those matches after many years of not opening some of the files or just a brief glimpse. 

The bright sun out this morning does tell me that cold weather is coming since the clouds are not very prominent but then we are promised the Polar Vortex for a few days and it is  minus 16 degrees celsius at 7:44 a.m. EST. This is normal weather for us although we have had a mild winter or two in the last couple of years but a return to normal winter for Canada. Definitely we need all that snow to build up the water reserves on the land. 

The new consulate is being opening in Nuuk Greenland today by the Governor General. It is a nice feeling to realize that our Governor General is Inuit just as the people of Greenland have Inuit heritage. Long ago the Inuit people traveled across the Northern Pacific (estimated 5000 plus years ago) in some fashion we are still learning about that (our simple thought of an ice land bridge across the Bering Strait is being replaced by a very reasonable thought that the peoples moving across would have stayed close to the shore or on it but not necessarily go all the way north to the Bering Strait given that the winter would have provided lots of ice covered areas for travel. Our Inuit are very used to traveling about in Northern Canada during the winter and have built homes of ice for many thousands of years at stopping points. 

It is fascinating what DNA reveals to us about our heritage. I continue to marvel that my paternal grandfather talking about his family and saying they always lived in the Andover, Hampshire, England area (he always specified it like that as I was young and he wanted me to understand that this was a different place on this planet of ours). I am glad he did that and repeated it so many times (I loved to hear him talk and he could have said it every day and I would  have listened just as eagerly as I did as I loved being with him). But I am distracted my point in bringing up my grandfather was that the yDNA of our line is Western Hunter Gatherer and the particular haplogroup belongs to a lineage named the "Deer-Hunters" by Ethnoancestry. I tested my brother everywhere I could as he was so willing that I do so and the second brother I tested when he was willing just to have the two samples in the system. The Western Hunter Gatherers were said to be in England 8,000 to 12,000 years ago but I always wonder if they were there before the Ice Age and simply returned to the lands of their ancestors. The proof may lie way below the surface as there was a kilometre of ice on the British Isles at the height of the Ice Age.  

Tea all drank and must do my solitaire puzzles for the day. I was also doing a weekly challenge with Spider but had to give it up when my eyes discovered sparkling and it still overwhelms somewhat and tires them so I have stopped for a bit (I have done them every since that project was added to the site so do miss it on occasion but replaced with Sudoku) but perhaps I will return one day as I love doing Spider Solitaire Puzzles. The Sudoku has these levels gained as you are given points and I am now at Super Star having passed through a number of levels over the past couple of months. I take my time as I aim to have no errors and it is fun I must admit.