Somebody read my Blog!!!

Well, duh, you may say that's what it's there for. I know and I'm delighted, I just wonder who my reader is. So whoever anonymous is, drop us a line and share your story. Because after all what are we but a lifetime of stories? You begin with a birth announcement in the local paper. Mr. and Mrs Smith of Anytown, girl, Oct. 31 19xx, Anytown General Hospital. And end, hopefully many years later as an Obituary. But what do we do in between? Are the stories of our lives lost to history, our daily life, the happy the sad the exciting the mundane;will anyone ever know? When we do genealogy, what do we find but birth death and maybe marriage dates? And when the wind rain and snow reduce our gravestone to the point unreadable will anyone care? Does our life become forgotten and detached seemingly unimportant when everyone who has ever known us has also died? What did the past leave us and what shall we leave the future?

Grooving to the Oldies

Today I mowed some of our grass. Not unusual, we have lots of grass that grows all summer long. I listen to my CD player while I mow to make it more interesting. I nearly always listen to the same CD; a compilation of early 70's music the 1st disc of a seven disc set my mother owns. Today however I departed from tradition and chose to listen to my Royal Guardsman CD. This got me thinking about how by hearing one of their songs on the radio I choose to only listen to that station and became a fan of oldies music. It was the 23rd of December, 1995. I was in the seventh grade, on Christmas break and my Dad decided that we couldn't go on another day without owning a blender (he wanted to make some kind of powdered weight loss drink). So we got in the car and on the radio came the Royal Guardsmen singing "Snoopy's Christmas" (I'm not sure if that's the actual name of the song but that's what I've always called it). This delighted me, I had sung this song for years in elementary school and knew all the words. When I got home I tuned my radio (which I never used before) to that station and there it stayed on an Oldies Station. 92.5 you were my love for 3 years. I still miss that oldies station, I loved the morning show DJ, Fred. Fast forward to 10th grade. Because the high school was far away I had to get up much earlier and catch the bus at 6:20 so I didn't often hear much of the morning show then. BUt one day February day we had a snow day, I was happy to lay in bed and listed to the radio until I fell beck asleep unfortunately when I turned it on I heard Mambo #9!!!!!! I waited a minute thinking that the dial had gotten moved a bit and just tried to figure out which way I need d to turn it to get my station back only to hear the weather man come one (the same weatherman I heard every day) report the weather on the new Z92.5 Today's music for all people!!! I started crying. I felt so incredibly betrayed by that station I wouldn't let my sister play it in the car. I eventually found a new oldies station with many good qualities including a great morning show DJ but I still missed Fred. I listed to this station for 5 years until I was a junior in college. And that February, my oldies station became Classic Rock. I was lost for a while listened to the oldies station from Pittsburgh WWSW. I finally found another local oldies station and have enjoyed it but a few months ago it changed it's call sign from oldies to Classic Hits and began playing occasionally weird 80's songs. I am once again without a good Oldies station, it seems they are disappearing. If anyone out there knows of a good one, please let me know.

Atracting the weirdos...

New we all know that there are weirdos out their on the internet, but this summer I have been contacted by 2 of them. Thats right me who has never had this happen in all of the nearly 10 previous years I've been online. First off I was contacted by a guy who is interested in sexology. I Think thats creepy. NExt I met a guy who wanted to know what certain parts of my looked like. ANd then tried to make me feel guity because it's not something I wished to discuss with him. So I guess as far as finding my dream guy on the internet goes I'm screwed. Anyhow heres to being terminally single.

Movie Review - The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

I don't go to the movies very often infact I could make a fairly complete list of every movie I've seen in the theater off the top of my head. Shall I? Ok Then, here goes....
Prancer
Home Alone 2
Alladin
Pocahontas
A Very Brady Sequel
That thing you do
The Next Karate Kid
Rugrats in Paris
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Scream 3
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
Hey Arnold
Rattatouille
Rumor Has It
Epic Movie
The Lake House
The Da Vinci Code
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

There may be a few others but I think that is a pretty complete list.

Anyhow back on topic: I went to see Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. It was OK. Not great. Maybe not quite as good as the original but OK. HAd I not devoured the books, I may have liked it a little better although if I hadn't read them I don't know if I would have understood the story as well as I did. The theather itself wasn't great. I could hear rumbling fromt he next theather over (maybe Batman was playing?) and it didn't have suround sound. IT was a long movie too, over 2 hours I think.

Olympics 2008

So here it is again, another Olympic year. The earliest Olympics I remember were the 1988 Winter Games. I was 4.5 years old. I remember watching the speed skating and imitating their technique of bending over as I skated around the kitchen on my Fisher-Price roller skates. I remember watching the gymnastics that summer and my parents telling me that they wouldn't be on again for four years. I remember thinking FOUR YEARS?!?!? I'll be practically a grown up then, going into the fourth grade. And four years later it was I'll be in Jr High then, practically a grown up. And then I'll be a senior, I'll be a grown up, and then it was I'll be 3/4 through college, I'll be a grown up. Well now its four years later and I guess I am a grown up because now I don't think wow in four years I'll be...., Now it's Oh Crap, where have the last four years gone and what have I done??? I Guess I did something, I graduated college, I went to grad school and earned a Masters, I got a job, I entered an art show, I found many new interests and obsessions, I guess I've done something but I don't feel like I've made a mark, done something significant. Will I make a mark in the next four years or will I just be here forever treading water.

Pizza Hut

My family went to Pizza Hut for dinner tonight. I have always loved their spaghetti so that's what I ordered. While waiting for our food to arrive we were watching the TV they have recently installed. It was tuned to the Animal Planet network. Apparently it is croc week or something because there was a show on about crocodiles eating other animals such as a zebra and some type of deer. Just what puts me in the mood for supper. NOT!!! I was quite grossed out by this find. So our food arrives and first thing I notice is that I've only received one slice of garlic bread, they used to give you two. Now I realize we should all be carb conscious and I know I probably eat too many of them but I love the garlic bread and was disappointed at only getting half as much. Then I tasted the spaghetti, Pizza hut has obviously changed its spaghetti sauce recipe because it is nowhere near as good as it used to be. I was really disappointed. I don't think I'll be going back for quite a while. I also looked up Pizza Huts website and sent them feedback about this. I'm interested to see how they respond.

Genealogy

At the library where I work there is a Local History / Genealogy room. I have always been interested in local history (my hometown, township and school district primarily) and was delighted when my boss began scheduling me to occasionally fill in when the regular genealogy people are off. As I was learning about some of the different tools available for researching family trees, I began to do some research on my family both because it was interesting and to familiarize myself with the various tools so that I could assist patrons in using them.
I began by searching my Dad's family. Because the family names on that side are fairly unique I figured it would be easy to determine if a person was an ancestor. Unfortunately my great grandparents on that side came over on the boat from the old country and nobody remembers exactly what country that was. I can find no information on my great grandmother at all. No obituary, census records, social security death index, nothing. So I moved on to Moms family hoping I would have better luck there. I began with the obituaries of my great-grandparents. From those I gather info that I was able to use to search the family tree back to a great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. I was extremely lucky in finding this. After beginning with those 2 obits I researched that branch of the family tree using basically 4 sources. One was a book of biographies of prominent area citizens published about 100 years ago, another was a cemetery book (literally a book of names on tombstones in a particularly cemetery that someone had copied) and 2 websites: ancestry.com (the library gets the free version, which can only be accessed at the library) and search.labs.familysearch.com .
Therefore- I think tracing your family tree requires patience, a little know how and lots of pure dumb luck.