2019 Wrap-up

As all years are, 2019 was a mixed bag. So here goes a run-down on the big events of the year for me.





On March 16th, we got a kitty cat! His name is Cato. He's a long hair, mostly black cat. He has some white on his underside which make him look a bit like a skunk when he lies upside down, which is all the time! I've never seen a cat do this so much! He's a real sweetheart and I love having a cat again.

There's a pigeon on the roof that he went nuts about.

On September 1st, we replaced the old wore out mini-van that had gotten Tina (and now us) around for many years. The "grocery list" of things that needed fixed just kept piling up, so we decided that it was time. We got a Kia Optima, and are really enjoying having a better vehicle.

In September, I got my hands on some old stuff that my uncle had found about our family history. I was able to break through a brick wall on the Humphreys side in just a couple of hours with the information. My genealogy hobby has really become a big thing for me. Chromosome mapping is what really has my interest. The areas on the chromosomes where your DNA matches clump together indicate a shared common ancestor. Mostly, it's just dead ends, but it's a real thrill when I'm able to figure out who the distant ancestor is. I have figured out who several of my ancestors were that lived in the late 1700's to early 1800's. It is fascinating to me that information lives in me from 200 years ago!

In December, Tina and I celebrated the fifth anniversary of our first time of meeting each other in person. I took her out for a steak dinner. The photo on the left is the first photo of us, the second one was taken in December while we were waiting for our dinner.

Typically, I don't do New Year's resolutions. But I have one for this year. My genealogy hobby is eating up too much of my time, and I have other things that I need to focus on as well. So I invented a way to combat this. Long story short, I'll spend the next year going through each of Tina's and my chromosomes systematically. If I finish early, on chromosome 1, for example, I have to wait until January 30th so start working on chromosome 2. We'll see how this works! Ha!

A website that has been extremely useful to me for chromosome mapping is https://dnapainter.com/ Here's a screenshot of my paternal chromosome 3, since based on the work that I've been able to accomplish so far, it best depicts how the ancestors line up on the chromosomes. On the far left, the string of mostly purple ones are Franklin ancestors. The green one and tan one by themselves in the middle look to be Rains ancestors. The two previously mentioned areas are from Grandpa Franklin. On the other side, the dark blue ones appear to be distant Constable matches, and the mostly pink area is definitely Hoots. I inherited those two areas from my Grandma Franklin.

That wraps it up. Happy New Year!