Week 2213 — Minimalism Steps, More Genealogy, Thanksgaming Eve
More Genealogy
I continued to be obsessed with Genealogy this week, almost as bad as World of Warcraft in the dark days before I quit. I walk in to the house, do the bare minimum of what needs to be done to keep my life afloat and start researching. I even got sucked in to 23andMe and found some interesting and strong matches with my grandparents. One person was both a second cousin once removed, of my grandfather AND a first cousin once removed, of my grandmother. I finally learned how you’re supposed to document confirmed DNA relationships in wikiTree so I could use those results to confirm parental relationship going all the way back to great-greats.
It ends up being an obsessive hobby because underneath every rock you turn over, there’s a new rock with something interesting or possibly even upsetting to discover underneath.
I scanned a bunch of really old family photos from the era of my great grand parents so I could add some depth to the profiles. I found them when I was scanning stuff form my grandpa’s memorial service this past summer. They’re all glued in to this hard cover book, to protect them I suppose. The book itself is this really interesting artifact, which gets missed when I’m sharing the individual photos.
Then those photos led me to revisit a bunch of photos that had been delivered to me after a Clark or Goodchild reunion. They are really early pictures of my moms parents and she has no clue where they were. They’re building a house that no one seems to know existed. (To be fair, I haven’t asked that many people.)
Thanksgaming Begins
… but now I need to take a break from the genealogy because this is my annual Thanksgaming week. In a perfect year I’d have taken the whole week of Thanksgiving off, freed myself from every possible obligation and spent the entire time in comfy clothes sipping hot beverages and playing video games. I have waffled about what game to dedicate myself to. Nothing new was inspiring me. I had settled in to revisiting Don’t Starve which I am apparently incapable of getting bored with, though I have occasionally rage quit it after a particularly unfair death. The sealnado in shipwrecked gets me EVERY DAMN TIME, and when I’ve prepared for it and it still gets me, it’s maddening. And I have not come close to unlocking all the characters or unlocking the fancier crafting items in Don’t Starve. It doesn’t matter that I’m not good at the game. I love it.
Sealnado, also known as the Twister, spawns during the Hurricane Season. It cannot be put to sleep with a Pan Flute and is immune to fire.
I also thought I might revisit Rim World. It is equally madding when your little colonists start to get depressed and stop making sweaters in the quantity they need to stay warm through the winter… or start killing each other.
But Brian sent me a link for a new game from Klei (the folk who make Don’t Starve). It’s called Oxygen Not Included and is a space colony building game. It looks like it might be across between Don’t Starve, Rim World, and Prison Architect, so I bought it immediately. It’s still in beta but I started playing Don’t Starve when it was still in beta so I bet it will be fine.
Goodbye Books
I finally took all those books to the Good Will. They’d been sitting in a pile for a few weeks. It’s not that I didn’t love many of them but it was time to set them free into the world to be readopted or recycled. The kid at the Good Will who helped me unload my car was impressed with the weird variety of interests in our collection.
Cemetery Project
On my way to drop the books off I decided to start the process of documenting the Pioneer Cemetery in Phelps for WikiTree. It was a way to continue my genealogy obsessiveness but actually be outdoors. Later I discovered I am listed as a manager of the WikiTree New York State Cemeteries project. That must have happened a few years ago when I joined the cemetery project. I haven’t been all that active since the, but now I’m back at it. I probably photographed 15% of the gravestones in the Pioneer Cemetery and I’m still trying to figure out how best to organize the page. If anyone likes wandering in cemeteries and trying to learn about the dead… let me know. It’s kind of lonely out there. Maybe Brian will be in to wandering around in cemeteries in the cold when he comes home.
Latest New Podcast — Doughboys
The only new podcast I’ve added to my playlist this week was the Doughboys. It’s two guys who sample, discuss, and rate chain and fast food restaurants with a guest. The ones I’ve listened to have been pretty entertaining. They are long but it’s not the kind of show where zoning out for a minute or two means you lose the thread. So far I can recommend:
