Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are now...

Both dead, or presumed to be dead. Carl went out to the living room this morning and  come back with the sad news, that the remaining fish is now dead, floating, lifeless, on the bottom of his bowl.... I'm a bit saddened at his passing. Maybe I'll try again with some more fish... someday, if I can get over the possibility of my being a bad fish-parent. Or maybe he died because he tried to eat his brother and his brother disagreed with him... in which case it serves him right.

The great Rosencrantz mystery... or was it Guildenstern?

Yesterday I was gone most of the day. Carl got home about 10pm and beat me. I walked through the door and said, "Hi, guys, I'm home," to my husband and my fish collectively. Then I thought, "Oh no, I wasn't home to feed my fish!" So I looked in the bowl as I was grabbing the fish food and I said, "Carl, what did you do with Rozencrantz, er Guildenstern!?!" He said, "Hun?" Ugh... One of my fish died while I was gone and Carl flushed it and didn't want me to know. I was sure!

Carl comes over and looks in the fishbowl. Looks confused. Sure enough there's only one fish in the fishbowl.                          "Where was the last place you saw it?"
 "IN THE FISHBOWL! It was there when I left this afternoon!"
"Do you think it might have jumped out?"
"He was the one that would have, but how?" (The fishbowl edges are very concave to the fish.) So Carl grabs a fork and rakes the handle through the rocks on the bottom... "Maybe he's hiding, or do you think the other one might have eaten him?"
"I don't know!" We look around behind the piano and under the stand next to it... No fish. No suspicious trail of water from flopping on the piano either....

So we gave up looking for the fish for the night.

Hopefully if it did fall on the floor and we just haven't found it, we do before it stinks!

Valentine's Day... or the day after anyway...

Let's just say that Valentine's Day didn't work out for us last year. I was hoping (for once) to have a Valentine's Day with a handsome man, but we ended up eating Sushi at his parents... not bad, not romantic either.

This year, we promised to do better. Was it? Yeah! We went up to Blue springs and hanged out with Carl's sister and three kids (and saw an armadillo and some manatees and lots of fish) and ate greasy pizza at Hungry Howie's. It was wonderful, but once again, not very romantic. So the day after Valentine's Day, Carl decides we're gonna still do Valentine's Day anyway. We had a delicious (!) homemade Alfredo on spaghetti pasta (I don't know who invented canned Parmesan, but I suspect that's why the recipe called for twice as much as it really needed when freshly grated). The pasta was accompanied by a wonderful salad and warm garlic French bread.  Our "wine paring" was Martenelli's apple cider. Thanks to Dollar tree we even made it candle-lit.

After a meal like that, and dishes (the biggest downside to eating at home). I was feeling like rolling to bed and sleeping for about ten hours. But Carl had more. He locked me in my bedroom for five minutes and when he allowed me to exit, he produced a lovely plate of cheeses, nuts, dried cranberries, and chocolate (after dinner because, "only a full cook can really judge food.") Unbeknownst to me, he stopped at Whole Foods "on the way home" and procured 3 very distinct cheeses.
The Mahon Do was the mildest, from Spain, it looked and tasted like a mild form of Munster.
The Capricho de Cabra was also from Spain, it was a goat's milk cheese whose flavor I might not be able to distinguish from any French Chevre. I love goat cheese. : D
The third was Brillat Savarin, a relative or type of (I'm not sure which) Brie. It was incredibly pungent, almost spicy in aftertaste. But the buttery center oozed out and cried, "Spread more of me on your cracker!" So I did, and then it was all gone. :(

So, conclusion? Valentine's Day can be wonderful without being on February 14th, in fact, I'd love to have a cheese course EVERY day, but alas, my favorite food is expensive, and so it will continue to be consigned to special occasions.

Genealogy quote

My Grandma sent me this one. Too true. We can't find an author for it.

"Genealogy begins as an interest, becomes a hobby, continues as an avocation, takes over as an obsession, and in its last stage, is an incurable disease."


Tonight we did sealings for my great-great-grandmother, Harriet Shay, and two of her sisters to their parents. It was cool. I'd never seen more than one child sealed to a set of parents at the same time. The feelings and warmth phenomenal as I knelt in proxy for someone that I am a part of... that is a part of me. I know they appreciated it. I was sorry Carl couldn't make it.


I had the same feeling last night when Carl was able to be with me when we were proxy for the sealing of John S.C. Bell and Harriet Shay. Then we sealed my great grandfather Clarence O. Bell (their son) to them. There is power in doing work for those we never knew in life, we must have been friends before. :D

All the Jameses

Last night while I was looking for people who had been "missed" (their work is ready, but not done), I discovered something cool about my Bell line. My husband's family has a joke that all they know how to spell is "Carl Day," (seriously they have 5 generations in a row where somebody has the name or a variation in  every generation). In my family they couldn't spell anything but James Bell. Starting as far back as I have names for there are 4 of 7 generations where  my direct ancestors name is "James Bell," and in at least one of the generations where my direct ancestor isn't James Bell, his brother's name is James. Then if you expand out another generation, you get my brother whose middle name is James.
There are four generations where there is no son named James (mine, my fathers and two more), which makes me wonder if there's a fluke (like the uncle James did something really dumb and they didn't want to name after him), or if I'm missing a child; based on the numbers of children in those generations, either is definitely possible. There's also a chance that their cousins living next door beat them to the name.
This tradition would have a good chance of making it easier to find the next generation if James Bell wasn't quite so popular. Maybe not as much in Scotland in the 17th century, we'll see how the search goes.

Welcome to my Blog!

I've started blogging. I wonder how long this craze will last, but for now I'm starting this blog to keep in touch with my family and friends, and to share not only what my crazy husband and I are doing all the way over in Florida, but also to share some of the stories and information I'm finding as I do my genealogy, so it all falls under that big umbrella, past, present and future family-ish relationships.
I'm also hoping that as I run into roadblocks or questions, that asking them here will help me to find answers and work out problems. So please comment or email me suggestions or whatever when those times arise.

So thanks for checking it out, I hope you'll stay.

P.S. Like my bookshelves?