Criminal Minds at Work: #DeleteFacebook

Criminal Minds at Work: #DeleteFacebook: Yes, I'm still on Facebook despite the kerfuffle in the news about the role Facebook data may have played in Cambridge Analytica and Agg...

Spring promises

Spring is here with all its tease and impending promise.

Beyond the whistle of the late March blizzard, one can feel it. Hear it. Even the snow now falls slower, quieter, laden with the promise of a quick melt. The chickadees chirp louder, with more persistence, with a familiarity born of eight long months of winter feeding and...their newfound longing to mate. In the evenings, at times a grouse drums in the forest.

On sunny days, the sun rises earlier and travels higher and kisses warmer.  The robins and the geese are yet to arrive, but we imagine them. They will come—soon. Expectations.

Spring—that time of year when life opens. When the future is more imminent than ever. Spring, when graduations happen, careers are chosen, love is consummated and new life is conceived. When one is rejuvenated, inspired, preparing. Learning.

Except...

I’m old. My careers have ended. Love is listless. My children are now the restless parents and my bucket list is terrifyingly short. All that’s on the horizon is another summer, a bout of gout. Another realization that one more summer sport must be put aside.

Forever.

I foresee one more adventure becoming nothing but a virtual campfire dream.

Spring—what do you wish me to do? What new and amazing and intriguing things are you promising? Riding in on your warm breezes is a renewed passion for...what?  What new truths are streaming in your rays, hitting my face, filling an eager mind with wonder?

What spring looks like where I live

I feel the power of your  potential, but Spring, exactly what are you promising this old lady?

Spring Promises has been brought to you by the BackTracker Series. At 15 she ratted out The Traz biker gang. She'll be endangered forever. 

Criminal Minds at Work: DNA and Privacy

Criminal Minds at Work: DNA and Privacy: THE LEGAL ISSUES When my kids gifted my husband and I Ancestry.ca  DNA testing kits, we both got a tad nervous.   Not so much because we feared what might ...

Ancestry--from whence one came

I’m not really a nut over family trees; to me the significance of my ancestors has rested mostly in the stories told to me by my parents. Faces and names and branches on trees mean little to me without a story.

Some people are obsessed with their ancestry, believing perhaps that by remembering and honoring those who have gone before, they will find a measure of immortality in their descendants’ pursuit of the same passion.

I pursue my immortality by publishing novels.

But curiosity is what it is—as is Holiday advertising. So when my son and his family gifted hubby and myself ancestry.ca DNA testing kits for Christmas—after a month of research and contemplation I spit in the vial and mailed it off over the pond to be processed in the Ancestry DNA lab in Ireland.

One doesn’t get a lot of information back with the results. In fact, one gets about ten times as much information and email litter inviting one to cough up one’s Ancestry.ca membership dues and search out ones relatives and build one’s family tree on their website.

Be that as it is, I found the data I received interesting.

Here are my ancestry.ca DNA results for my Ethnicity Estimate:

Great Britain 51%
Ireland/Scotland/Wales 24%
Europe West 11%

Scandinavia 9%
Finland/Northwest Russia 4%
Africa North < 1%

Unlike those in the Ancestry TV ads, the results did not surprise me. They’re a close match to the oral family history passed down.

The only surprise is that smidgen of North African. It is, I’ve come to say, my token attempt at diversity, otherwise I'm kinda like almost pure WASP.

Using my imagination, I filled in a bit more of my history.

It appears my ancestors were not very adventurous. They did not travel far, did not mingle with outsiders—didn’t sow their wild oats around the world so to speak. I've inherited this homebody tendency, staying close to where I was born and traveling afar only for short stints. When my ancestors immigrated to North American, they did so en masse, (according to the Ancestry Immigration maps provided) to New York and then the Eastern US. Family to them, as it is to me, was obviously important.

The tiny bit of North African in my past is interesting. My maiden name is Fairbrother. Perhaps that is because there was dark skin and hair somewhere in my past, with me descending from the fairer of the brothers. Perhaps, too, the North African ancestry explains the kinky (albeit blond) hair that sprouts up once or twice in each generation.

So all in all it’s kind of cool to have had my DNA tested.  My children now wait with great anticipation for my husband’s results to come in. Maybe he will have bigger surprises.

Ancestry--from whence one came has been brought to you by DISPASSIONATE LIES, a tale of conspiracy--and  a powerful woman.

Eileen Schuh, Author 

FIREWALLS
FATAL ERROR
Schrödinger's Cat
THE TRAZ
Web site: http://www.eileenschuh.com
Blog: http://eileenschuh.blogspot.com

Top 10 Things to do When Bored with Ice Fishing....

10. annoy the fresh water shrimp swimming around in the hole by hitting your line against them

 9. walk  over to the other fishing people and find out if they’re catching anything
 8. change your hook
 7. change your bait
 6. if you're not too remote for cell service, step away from the hole and check your email (phones don’t float.)
 5. turn on your tunes
 4. drill another hole
 3. move everything to the other side of the lake and drill another hole
 2. have a snack. Take a whiz. Open a beverage.

And the number one thing to do if bored when ice fishing...

 1. Plot  a novel

These Top 10 Things to do when bored with ice fishing have been brought to you by:
The BackTracker Series