I got a couple of months of Ancestry subscription to help me peruse my parent's DNA results and to work on the whole 'who is my mom's great-grandmother' thing (talked about here). I still don't know, but I did discover my mom's great-grandfather had a wife none of us knew about before the one we did know about. That side of the family is all from the Eastern Townships of Quebec, which is very close to the border of Vermont and so they often popped down there to get married and I found a record of him and a woman from 1893. It's definitely him, right name, right parents names, close to right age (no one knew how old they were then, as far as I can see), right place of birth (the town still has only 500 people in it, so there's very little chance of it being a name coincidence thing). However, I cannot find any records of the wife beyond the marriage one. Her name does not appear elsewhere, her parents' names do not appear elsewhere, there's no record of her death, I have nothing to go on. I suspect the records are typed from handwritten ones and the spelling is funny on them through a combination of bad transcription and the original person writing down the information trying to sort out French names/accents and using phonetics. I can tell it's my grandfather because I know the names, but without any info on the bride, I can't guess how they might have changed it. All I know is that he married this woman in 1893 and by 1906 he'd married the lady who raised my mom's grandfather. AND, I cannot find him on the 1900 US census or the 1901 Canada census, despite going page by page through the regions I know he lived in.

And let me tell you about trying to find this family on the census! Not only do they not know when they were born, they willy-nilly went by different names and I have yet to see two censuses where the same spelling of the last name was used. It ends in et (making an 'eh' sound). I have seen: -er, -ette, -et, -eau, -ear, and -ier. One of the censuses has none of them using their birth names, but I was able to spot them through knowing their middle names and nicknames. Except for my mom's great-grandfather, who was named Henri but written down twice as Andrew, on two different censuses. None of his names are Andrew, or close to Andrew, or contain the same sounds as Andrew. One sister went by four different variations of her name through her life. And I suspect one sister is written down by her sister's name on one census, but I can't prove it.

All of this is frustrating, but also oddly fun, and keeping me busy. I'm continuing to chill and rest and try to recuperate. My dad's doing a lot better now and my mom has a surgery date for her hip, so hopefully by July or so, at least a couple of us will be on the mend!

Here I am to prove my existence once again. Still feeling kind of yucky, healthwise, but maybe a little better. My dad's had some health issues now, in addition to my woes and my mum needing another hip replacement, so Ascii is the healthiest member of the family right now, but we're getting by.

In Ancestry news, my mom's DNA came back, and it was also about what we expected (except more Southern French than we knew about), but with the exciting news that her grandfather, who was illegitimate and adopted, is, in fact, the biological son of the man who adopted him, or at least a member of his immediate family (we found matches with people who were connected to both his adoptive father's mother's and father's lines). We had a lot of family legends around that, and I haven't been able to find anything to link him to a mother yet, but it's cool to have it confirmed he was biologically related to that line of people in some way. I also found out my grandparents were very, very distant cousins, which is interesting. The area of Quebec they came from is pretty small, so it's not surprising there was some crossing of lines there. My mother's side has over a thousand people matched with her DNA, so a lot more people on that side have taken the test, compared to my father's side, who only had about 400 results, I think.

And someone on my father's side of the family (his mother's cousin), got in touch with me and has given me so much information about my great-grandmother's family. Pictures, full biographies, documents, like, just tons of awesome stuff. And he solved a family mystery I've been working for YEARS without success, so that's great to have cleared up for me.

If I can just figure out how my other great-grandmother on that side got to Canada (she is on no boat records, despite the rest of her family being there) and clear up the whole 'birth mother' thing on the other side of the family, I will have solved all the mysteries.

I'd like to introduce you to Mr and Mrs Duck, the lovely mallard couple who come every year at this time to...do duck things in the neighbourhood. Sometimes they bring duck friends. Every day, Mr Duck takes Mrs Duck on a little stroll around the town to gather food and is very sweet with her, like a husband in an old married couple escorting his wife around on a Sunday outing. I took a little video of them today:



In other news, my parents got AncestryDNA kits during their Family Day sale and my dad's results came in today. Nothing too surprising, pretty much entirely Ireland/Northern England/Scotland, which is what we already knew. But there was some Iberian Penisula in there, which is unexpected ('Black Irish'? Though Wiki tells me that's a myth), and 1% Finnish. Vikings, maybe? I dunno. The cooler part was looking at the DNA matches of other people on Ancestry, since my dad's family history is spotty, so it'll be good to have some other people to pool resources with. Still waiting on Mom's. For some reason, despite being mailed on the same day, hers was a week behind his in getting processed.

Couple of daemon memes. Because I can still meme and character development, even if the rest of me is broken.

( Mathurin LeBlanc + IsraCollapse )
( Margot Belleview + HallenCollapse )

Remember memes? Remember them? I am going to do one! A generic, non-writing related one, but one none the less. Stolen from tumblr.

5 things you can find in my room:
A bed
tap shoes
a Snowball microphone (for singing)
A stack of writing notebooks
My CPAP machine

5 things you’ll find in my bag:
Sanitary Pads
My wallet
a keychain of key chains without any keys on it
Clip on sunglasses for my old frames (note to self: buy new ones)
Candies for low blood sugar incidents

5 things that make me happy:
Singing
Listening to music
Getting a really good idea for a story
My dog
Having a bath

5 things that I’m currently into:
Knitting with Magic Loop (yay new knitting needles!)
Watching QI on AcornTV
Sleeping a lot
Watching people play video games on Youtube
Vulgarlang.com (it invents languages for you!)

Whew, it's been a long time without a post. Unfortunately, my battle with unexplained kidney stones goes onwards, so I've spent a lot of time in the tub and in bed instead of writing. Not that I need to be writing, I just like to be. But I'm still fiddling away with things, so hopefully, a story will come at some point, even if it's just original fic I'm playing around with.

In brighter news, I have lost a bunch of weight since I changed my diet back in July. All healthily and carefully and necessary. I have PCOS, which makes me prone to gaining weight and is benefitted by the loss of it. So, I'm working away and it's going well and hasn't been too hard or unenjoyable.

If anyone is interested, the Mediterranean diet was recommended by a few health officials to me and/or family members, and so far has been working great for us. It's not very strict and gives you lots of options. Even with my tomato allergy, I've found lots to eat that fit the bill.

And it cute news, we bought a new living room chair back in the Fall and Ascii has claimed it in the Name of Scotties, and it hilariously big for how small she is, but that does not stop her from being important on it: (click to embiggen)


Hope everyone else is functioning to their best abilities! Remember to be kind to yourselves! Everyone keeps reminding me of this, so I will pass along the message.

This entry was crossposted on Dreamwidth (https://awanderingbard.dreamwidth.org/298555.html). Replies are welcome in any location.

Welcome to 2018, followers of the Gregorian calendar! I spent my New Year's Eve fighting off kidney stones, but they passed just after midnight, so I'll take that as a good omen for the New Year. Because I'm optimistic like that.


2018 Fic-Round Up

The Vampire Outreach Service (Original, G) [8,333 words]
Cut Off At the Knees (Nero Wolfe, PG-13) [4,105 words]
Good Old Boys (Original, PG) [4,274 words]
The Importance of Names (Star Wars, PG) [1,325 words]
The Light of the Season (Once Upon a Time, G) [1,978 words]
Vampire's Best Friend (Original, PG) [1,991 words]
Magician, Heal Thyself (Merlin, PG) [1,949 words]

Total # of stories= 7
Total # of words= 23, 955

( MemeageCollapse )

Hope everyone has a lovely, happy, healthy and safe 2018! I know 2017 was a stressful year for many of us, here's to a better year for those who need one!

This entry was crossposted on Dreamwidth (https://awanderingbard.dreamwidth.org/298339.html). Replies are welcome in any location.

Dropping in to wish everyone who's celebrating/celebrated a very Merry Christmas and/or Chinese Food Day! I hope you had a lovely, stress-free day with family and/or friends, or just had some time to yourself to relax and recuperate.

We celebrated last night and it was really lovely, but today I am super tired from getting ready for it all. We're having a pajama day today, and making our tourtiere for dinner, and tomorrow we're going to my brother's for Boxing Day. Then I plan to sleep until New Year's.

This entry was crossposted on Dreamwidth (https://awanderingbard.dreamwidth.org/298178.html). Replies are welcome in any location.

Title: Magician, Heal Thyself
Characters: Lancelot, Merlin, (Arthur, Gwaine and Leon, briefly)
Rating: PG
Warnings/Triggers: Brief mentions of blood
Spoilers: Set between Series 3 and 4 (I think?), no major plot points spoiled
Pairings: None
Word Count 1,949
Summary: When Merlin is hurt on a journey with the knights, Lancelot has to play caregiver to an injured wizard, who has his own methods of getting well.
Author's notes: Written for consci_fan_mo, although it’s a reworking of a story I had almost finished before the Great Flashdrive Crash. That version had daemons, but I couldn’t fit them in with the word count limit, so this just plain canonish fic. Unusual for me, I know. :-P

A huge thanks to aelfgyfu_mead for her mad Old English skills. She’s awesome and everyone should know it.

( Best to have someone who understood watching over him.Collapse )

This entry was crossposted on Dreamwidth (https://awanderingbard.dreamwidth.org/297737.html). Replies are welcome in any location.

Title: Vampire’s Best Friend
Characters: Mathurin LeBlanc, Louis the Chow-Chow
Rating: G
Warnings: vague injuries
Word Count: 1,991 (whew, cutting it close!)
Summary: Even vampires need fluffy friends to keep life interesting.
Disclaimer: Work is all from my own imagination. Any resemblance to other characters or situations is coincidental.
Notes: Original work, set in the same universe as The Best Parts of Existing, which I wrote for last year’s consci_fan_mo. You don’t have to have read that to follow this one, but it might help. The salient details are: Mat is a French-Canadian vampire and works as a pathologist at the local hospital. That’s really all you need to know to follow this one.

If you’d like to read more about him, you can check out this tag.

Also, here’s a picture of Louis.

( Animals don’t particularly care if you don’t age or aren’t really alive or are very cold to the touch. Collapse )

This entry was crossposted on Dreamwidth (https://awanderingbard.dreamwidth.org/297607.html). Replies are welcome in any location.