This and that.

Argh. My e-mail is messed up again. I'm really unhappy with my ISP, considering that this is the second (well, really, third) time I'm going to have to call and get it restored.

If I didn't have so many people who knew my e-mail address as it is - and if there weren't so many people out there that it would be hard to contact - I'd just get a Hotmail account or something and be done with it. Of course, I'd still be paying for home internet access.

***

My father has recently gotten interested in doing genealogy. As one of his brothers had mostly figured out their family history, he's been working on my mom's family, which was originally more challenging to figure out, as a couple of the more recent ancestors were orphaned. But I guess he figured out a way to work around those dead ends.

First thing we learned: my mom's father's family (on my grandfather's father's side) were not Scots, as we had long assumed, but French, with a surname that could be anglicized to sound Scots. Apparently they 'followed the lumbering' - they first arrived in Nova Scotia (and we may be thus distantly related to some of the Cajuns; my ancestors were in Nova Scotia shortly before the "Acadians" were expelled). Then from there to Quebec. Then New York State. Then Wisconsin, and finally, Michigan, where, after my grand-dad's generation, people stopped working in the lumber camps.

That branch originated (apparently) in the Dordogne River valley in France, which made me drag out an atlas to remind myself of where it was.

So apparently, I have ancestors from Perigord or thereabouts.

More recently, he found information that traced further back. I'm less sure about it. Supposedly we (my mom, my brother, all our other relatives sharing that bloodline, and me) are related to the Plantagenets. Yes, those Plantagenets.

On the one hand, I'm inclined to think about it a bit in the sense that some wag described the "Past life regressions" that were popular in the 1980s, where people supposedly figured out who they had been in a previous life. He remarked that everyone you talked to who believed they had had a past life had been Cleopatra or some king or someone famous - no one ever said their past life was as a farmer who died at 28, or as a woman who worked in a bawdy house. So I kind of see claiming relationship to royalty as being something like that. You don't often hear of people boasting of genealogy of a long line of peasants or ditchdiggers or honey-wagon drivers. (Though I would argue, from my perspective, that one big difference is that genealogy is actually, you know, real. I don't believe in the past lives thing - I tend to be of the opinion that life here on earth is a ride that we get our tickets punched only once for).

On the other hand, I find it rather amusing. If it's true. For one thing, I'm probably one of the least "regal" people (at least in terms of bearing and attitude) that I know. And for another, for all those times I rolled my eyes at the self-styled princesses...perhaps (though I'm sure the bloodline would be far too watered down for a claim to actually have any merit), I could actually claim to be one. Heh.

Oh, I guess I'm supposed to hate the Tudors now. Didn't Henry VII or Henry VIII kill off the last of my Plantagenet ancestors? (It amuses me how fast I can slip into imagining a real kinship there. Just like I think of Churchill as "Cousin Winnie" after learning that I am distantly related to him).

I guess this also means I'm related to bad old Richard III. On the upside, I guess that means I'm related to Henry V. (Puts the Shakespeare plays in new light. And I really need to read Richard III, and probably re-read "The Daughter of Time," and read Henry IV and Henry VI.)

(oooh, Wikipedia says that there are "several illegitimate lines." I bet that's where I come from.)

So, to bring in the previous topic, maybe I need to call my ISP and tell them that letting my e-mail tank is no way to treat royalty. Though that would probably lead to them fixing it even slower.

***

I'm already starting to think about "next sweater projects," even though I'm really nowhere near to finished on Thermal. Right now it's a toss-up between "Potter" (a sort-of coat sweater with ribbing) or the saddle-seam pullover (actually a pattern designed for a man) from Interweave.