Back from the cottage

 Spent a couple of days at the cottage  and it was lovely - spent most of it kayaking and swimming. Home again and lots to do here for sure. I must get to work on the laneway border and other weeding plus sweeping the front patio and porch. The birds have been busy eating the raspberries, currants and gooseberries. I am sure they are enjoying that tremendously. 

Another busy day tomorrow and it is also Sunday so Church online.  

Prayers continuing for all the people who died in the floods in Texas and prayers continuing as they search for survivors.  

 

Hamas is at a crossroads

Hamas does not serve a useful purpose in the world at this time. They are a terrorist group with no respect for the Israeli peoples indeed they have stated they wish to destroy them. They are satanists and have held some of the original 250 plus hostages for more than 2.5 years including the deceased. They could at this time release all hostages and get out of Gaza. They do nothing for the people of Gaza and indeed use them as victims dead and alive in their ruthless  desire to eliminate the Israeli people. More people die everyday in Gaza because they do not release the hostages immediately and unconditionally. 

Continuing with the matches

On page 8 of the matches now and they are primarily 2 segments with a few 1 segment so will be doing the entire page it does appear although half or more will likely just be placed into the grandparent line or in some cases two grandparents lines as either or or simply insufficient data. As one reaches toward the end of this project in terms of extraction, impatience does enter in just a little but squashed it and moved on. Must be patient working my way through these last 50. Then the task of assigning them into the different files and there are  225 new files. Also back to the other testing companies to check out any new matches and then on to phasing of the grandparents once again but most importantly I hope to phase the great grandparents as a result of all the work at Living DNA since this population most represents my lines going back in that I am 100% English going back many many generations until I reach my Scot lines, my Huguenot lines, my unknown lines that appear to be Scandinavian/Germanic but they are way back with the Huguenot having a known date around 1480 and my Scot around 1400 before they came to England. Is there Irish in there or is it just English lines that went to Ireland and then came back again - all five of us show some Irish as a percentage and that includes at Living DNA. 

Shopping yesterday for essentials - batteries for the smoke detectors (will install them today), lights for the rangehood over the stove (one was burned out), watermelon lozenges (this dental appliance dries out my mouth), and some food. That completed it and we were done in about 2 hours. It always takes such a long time to do everything. Lots of rain this July so not a lot of kayaking or walking outside. Unusual not to be in a drought situation actually. 

Prayers continuing for all those who died in the floods in Texas (how sad so many children) and prayers continuing as the search for survivors continues (last noted was 170 people still missing in one county alone). Our American neighbours and cousins in my case have so many natural disasters during a year. Their lives have been very difficult this year. 

Yesterday we also took four boxes of CDs and one stack of records to Salvation Army. Hope they sell well for them - Edward would like that. They were his collections and I want to keep everything but I need to move. This house is too big for me and there are so many families looking for this price range of house and so the downsizing will continue once again until I am able to move. It has been a lovely family home for us and Edward never wanted to leave it really. He loved that huge garden but his need for a pacemaker way back in 2012 meant that he could no longer maintain it as he wanted to although the pacemaker did help but my lifestyle changed rapidly from one of writing to one of gardening. I am not good at it and do not get the joy out of it that he did but I do try to keep the lawns cut and the weeds down somewhat and let his flowers continue to bloom year after year. 

Tea drank and solitaire puzzles next to do. Another day of intermittent exercise and working on the matches extraction.  

One's pension

The majority of one's pension (unless you never worked) is money earned by you and invested by you. The only give away amount by the federal government is the OAS (and if you worked you have helped to produce this as well since when you worked you supported the Old Age Security (OAS) for the old in your generation). But in general it is money that is surplus to what you have earned and saved for retirement through your life. The TFSA (created by the Conservative Government in 2009 and this is a really good idea) is perhaps the best tool yet in the retirement toolkit and should be utilized if you are able from the age of 18 years on - instead of buying cigarettes and other junk put it into the TFSA for your enjoyment in retirement. You can invest inside of the TFSA and one of the really good ideas that Pierre Poilievre put forward was a bonus amount on top of the current $7000 per year that you can put into the TFSA if you invest in Canadian projects. Being able to put away $10,000 a year from the age of 18 to the age of 70 (and not counting the interest accrued) is $520,000 (the interest would potentially make this much much larger over a period of 52 years giving you a nest egg that is not taxed when you take it out). So we need to ensure that our pension money is directed towards Canadian projects to really make this growing Canada aspect work. This isn't for us, the old, this is for the future and a down payment on the success of all the grandchildren and great grandchildren who live here. 

Prayers continuing for those who died in the floods in Texas and prayers continuing for the missing still the count is at 160 with over 100 dead. How incredibly sad that so many of them are children. 

Cleaning all accomplished and the Fit Bit tells you so much about how you spent your day amazingly. For instance I definitely over did it cleaning and so my sleep was somewhat disturbed as too much exercise can do that but the compromise gives me three days of cleaning which is just too time consuming and so I continue knowing that the overwork will be noted in my restless sleep and move on. 

Today continuing with the collection of matches for the final sibling and I continue on page 6 of the matches at Living DNA. I suspect that I will only do to page 7 as there are fewer matches for this sibling. A couple of interesting ones yesterday in the Blake line. There is a length on one chromosome that tends to be there for every Blake result in the Andover line. Interesting to see how far back it will go as there is a group of Americans who have tested on Living DNA with this particular length. As the knowledge of DNA grows individual lengths will become interesting and our understanding of the health and well-being of people will be greatly enhanced. DNA does not control how we live our life medically speaking but rather life-style but good genes from the beginning are also an asset so long as one has a good life-style which must include a good amount of exercise and maintaining a good weight for your age and size. 

I am dropping into 23 and Me most days to see if there will be any changes in how we can look at our results since I have access to my own and two of my brothers (I will never regret spending the money to test at so many places in particular my one brother who was my co-investigator in all of this). 

The 21st century will be exciting although at the moment it is totally clogged by financial happenings out of the control of most countries. In being benevolent following the Second World War some of our economies became warped one might say and lop-sided and we do need to restore ours to that system where we produce many things locally because external trade (although it can be a game changer for some people and even for some countries where their product level is high in valuable products) is not the most important item in a country but rather that it can produce what it needs in order to be the most productive for themselves - external trade is a bonus. 

 Tea drank and solitaire puzzles next on the list. Then breakfast. This day is beginning late for sure. 

On to cleaning day two

Yesterday cleaning day one all accomplished with one extra my daughter cleaned out the large closet where most of my husband's boxes are stored and so that is dust free once again. It is a large task and I am thankful that she took time out of her research to do that for me. I always mean to do it but she is stronger for sure. So the top floor all completed. 

Still in my mind this idea of moving and it is more concrete than it has been for quite a while. But still it will not be before spring likely; spring would be a nice time as that is when I am the most likely to overdo it in the garden although I noticed this year I didn't do that. I am just not a gardener but one side of the yard looks pretty much as Edward had kept it; the other side for some reason was badly eroded by the fence building and it was an area mostly used for gardening tomatoes, peppers and herbs so there was a lot of bare ground there anyway and weeds will always fill it. The spring flowers came up not quite as plentiful as they too suffered from the erosion but they did bloom; some of them. What will a new place look like? It will be smaller (one floor possibly, a bungalow) out of the city and with a small lot although woods would be fine. It will be near a waterway for kayaking. But primarily it will be smaller and hence I must continue to downsize although furniture wise I have downsized a great deal so it is the boxes and the 40 albums of pictures and more boxes. That is a process I will begin this summer as well. I will strip out all but the family pictures. I will collect up all the pictures of Edward's nieces and their families to send to them. That should reduce the size of the binders considerably and perhaps by as much as one half. I am actually aiming for ten binders of family pictures from the mid 1960s when we met to 2000 when the switch was made to digital and no more printing. So one binder for four years and since the early years have fewer pictures it will likely be one binder for every two to three years and then perhaps one binder from the mid 1960s to just before the mid 1970s when there are considerably fewer pictures.  So there is a plan in motion once again for downsizing. This house could be home to a nice sized family perhaps with the four bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms. Edward maintained it very well and I helped him with painting so it could be a move-in fairly quickly and just the basement perhaps to do work on. Edward never wanted to really finish the basement and it is roughed in so easy to move forward to doing more with that. The backyard is huge and nice for children although so many spend time on their computers now. I would have put a pool in and that would be a good choice to get children outside for sure! But other than that an easy move in I suspect. That is important I think. I hope to find the same once we get looking. All my stuff fits into my one room concept that I have pretty much maintained now since I retired. I am not attached to the dishes and everything that belonged to my mother or my grandmothers is in two glass fronted bookcases but there is still a lot of Edward's collections with the coffee mugs and his mother's dishes. But I already told my daughter they are hers and do not think about them. 

Yesterday I completed page five of the matches and will work on six today starting once again with 1 segment and working my way up - gradually as I work through these matches the four or five dwindle away and some are just tagged insufficient data or nothing at all. This sibling has fewer matches so the task may be completed sooner than I think. The singleton matches with five siblings are always a surprise but sometimes one or the other of us inherits a length of chromosome that no one else does. I generally collect those matches down to a slightly smaller level just out of interest. 

The rain was heavy again yesterday which is unusual for July but the ground will not mind; the sunflowers are growing quickly now and above the weeds. But the weeds have helped to keep the rabbit from eating up all the sunflowers. If we are still here next year we will fence it again while the sunflowers grow. 

Tea still a bit hot and will move on to solitaire puzzles. Then the cleaning can begin.  

Prayers for those lost in the floods in Texas, how sad to lose so many children. Prayers for the recovery effort. I have many Buller cousins in Texas (no longer with the surname but we share 2 and 3 x great grandparents).  

God moves around the world and looks at all of it and he must be weeping for those little ones. I still think that World War II was meant to be Armageddon but by the grace of God and our determination we came through that and so now we are on our own into an unplotted future perhaps. I have no idea but the winds of God still blow through the trees, through the cities and across the oceans. Our path must always be forward as Jesus taught us loving our neighbour as ourself (I think love is respect) and finding that uplifted plain of peace where there is no war and mankind lives to make the world a better place for all. God bless the world and all who live in it. Greed, envy, and hate must disappear from our world.