Random thoughts (by someone who woke up too early)

       1)    Is it just my brain, or do you have extremely weird memories from your childhood also?  Maybe it is being in the neighborhood that I grew up in, or maybe being here turns me back into a child and sends my brain back there as well. For example, I was in a bathroom at a friends house, and when I was younger, another friend and I had seen something through the shower's frosty door that was probably something to do with the lighting or whatever, but to us we saw a "black cloakey  looking shadow, and from then on, that bathroom had a "ghost".

       2)   Right now my husband and I do not have any pets.  Maybe that is why while I was eating breakfast and my friend's cat started chasing a rubber band around the floor, I started cracking up.

       3) I wore this shirt yesterday and my friend's Grandmother thought it was a Coke shirt:

4) Well, it's 3:24 pm... I am still awake! (But my brain isn't.)

Now it's 6:49 and my brain is zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.......

Old Room.....Old memories

Ok...well this isn't my old room exactly, but I am visiting a friend who lives in another one of my friend's old house. The room that I am staying in belonged to the "another" friend....Did you get that?
Anyway this room always reminds me of specific memories from my childhood. One memory was when I spent the night in this room as a child and the girl who lived here had a stuffed gorilla. I had woken up thinking that the gorilla was a whole gorilla's hand and he was trying to grab me!!! Another memory was when I set off their motion detector when I got up to get a glass of water. My memories are very random. How about this one the very first family had 2 sons....the one that had this room used to have some sort of electronic football game that looked like a football field. Very high tech for the early 1980's. I also have several memories from way back about the current family...one big one was dinner with a teenage crush.... Hmm I wonder if I will be able to nap now....

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How many maintenance men does it take to screw in a light-bulb?

      No, unfortunately I do not mean for that title to be a joke. I guess sometimes it's nice to rent and sometimes it's not. It is nice to be renting when something big that needs repaired happens, and we are not financially responsible for the repair cost......but on the other hand, sometimes it's annoying to wait on the small stuff to be fixed.....all we can do as tenants is turn in a piece of paper or  make a phone call and cross our fingers that it'll be taken care of sooner rather than later.
         ONE LIGHT-BULB PEOPLE!!!! With the hours we are awake now, we need lights to see. Now the checklist as we go anywhere... purse...check....cell phone...check....keys....check....FLASHLIGHT......<sigh> check.....Really???  No, we aren't camping (although the surroundings might fool you.) That is just what we need to take with us now. What really gets me is that the maintenance man lives in our building. Maybe he eats more carrots than we do, but he also has to have trouble seeing at night I would think...
         Jason would go out and change the bulb himself if it didn't have a spotlight type casing around it, plus we don't own many tools or a stepladder. In the time it is taking me to write this blog, the light bulb could have been changed. Just the one light-bulb in our breezeway.  Oh yeah... when we did actually have snow and ice here in Texas, our breezeway was pitch black. I realize the maintenance man could have slipped, but there are ways to get rid of snow and ice. Anyway, I feel that we've been more that a little patient. This will be request 4 or 5....I've lost count...

Who do you think you are??

That show on TV always inspires me to want to work on my family tree. I am up to 834 people, 17 generations,  and 332 different surnames!! The earliest birth I have is in the year 1435 that belongs to my 14th Great Grandfather on my paternal grandfather's branch. The research has been interesting and fun...
      Speaking of research, today I have been stuck on finding the date of my Great Grandmother's 2nd wedding. I was very surprised to find her name, and my Grandmother's on a census that was taken after my Great Grandfather had passed away, but listed my Great Grandmother as married, and showed my Grandmother as the head of household's step-daughter. I would have never thought to look for that information had I not received an email from ancestry.com with the "ancestry hint" leading me to that census.....

         Good grief!!! It's been 20 minutes since I finished that last paragraph. I had gone back to my tree looking for more ancestry hints.... I did find some hints for my husband's side of the tree. One tree had his Great Grandfather on it. After searching the tree, I figured out that the lady who made it is a very distant cousin to Jason. There were a few other trees also....

   I am also waiting to get more stuff in the mail from my Uncle Bob to help with my Mom's family's branches. I'm a little worried about our lack of mail lately though. Three whole days without mail....Who does he think he is??? (He= the mail man)

Family, Friends, and (Mess)-Up's

I'll let you guess what I wanted to say in place of  (Mess).....

Today I received an e-mail from a cousin of my Dad's step-cousin... Yes, you can read that again if you need to. My Dad's Aunt Laura had a son from a previous marriage.  I had written her after I found my Dad's Aunt and Uncle on her page. It's amazing how many connections that I have made since I've started my research. I now talk to distant cousins on both my Mom's and Dad's sides of the family. It's really neat to find out what traits run in the family.

After more family research and trying to make connections, I called my friend Jennifer. We chatted on Skype for like 2 hours.The pictures below are not in order....

I was feeling dorky:

Screen on screen on screen on screen....

 I am drinking out of a glass...Jennifer just took the picture.

    Those are the latest "Skype Bloopers"... I have an album with that same name on my Facebook page. 

SPEAKING OF BLOOPERS.....

               Shortly after I signed off skype I knocked over my Dr Pepper and spilled it on our "coffee table" tray.   That was so much fun to clean up..... NOT!!  The tray is plastic though, so it wasn't too bad. 

    My last thought of the day is that I'm getting old. One of my sister's friends, that I think I've known since they were in preschool or kindergarten turned 20 tod- (well technically yesterday.) That means that it won't be too long till Haley is 20.....<felt a gray hair sprout up on my head>. 

        Well now it's time to catch up on my DVRed shows...

    

Digging Up Dead People....

Were you just thinking to yourself, "WHHHHAAATTT??" I saw that on a friend's Facebook status and couldn't figure it out myself. She was referring to tracing her family tree. I have been actively been tracing both my Mom's and Dad's sides of my tree for around 2 years or so. Before I got on ancestry.com I would just randomly Google a n ancestors name or  two..... I actually came across a website that had one set of my Great Great Grandparents on my Dad's Mom's branch of the tree!! I had written the moderator of that site and have kept in touch with her and her daughter on Facebook. More recently I found a group on Facebook researching that surname and found a guy that shares 3 generations of the same relatives ending 2 or 3 generations back....He resembled my Dad a bit...

       Speaking of my Dad, his Grandmother Beulah (pictured above) is who I get my looks from. I had discovered that I looked like her a few years ago when we received more old family photos.I always wondered what she was like as a person.... Just how strong is the Brown (Beulah's maiden name) family DNA.... I have a picture of my Grandmother Ruth, Beulah's daughter, when she was a child. I found a picture of myself around the same age and compaired... very similar features...One day a couple months ago my Dad even blurted out "You look like my Mom" when I was posing for a picture with Jason.

       But on the other hand, a few weeks ago, my Mom told me that I reminded her of her Mom... my Grandma Kate. That was based on how I have my recliner in my living room. So what if I have a TV tray next to it with evrything I think I will need for a while on it, ie. remote, nail file, kleenex, drink holder, trashbag, etc.... What can I say.... Grandma Kate was a smart lady!!  I've had luck on my Mom's side of the tree thanks to a copy of my Grandma Kate's family tree that one Uncle loaned me, and 2 CD roms of pictures from my Mom's side of the family that I got from another Uncle. I love this old wedding photo!!! (My Grandparents on the right)

       One mystery that I do hope to solve is how exactly Jack Haley (The Tin Man from The Wizard of OZ) is related to my Mom's family.   Rumor has it, and My Mom told me, that when she was growing up she had always heard that Jack Haley was her Dad's cousin. I haven't been able to find the names of his parents, but I do know that his real name was John Joseph Haley. There is a John Haley who was my Great Grand Uncle that I could see possibly being "Jack" Haley's father...

 They make it look sooo much easier on the show "Who Do You Think You Are"......

    

I'm BAAAAAACCCCCKKKKK!!!!!

  I had totally forgotten that I had this account set up back when I still had my card business going, oh well. Now the question is, What should I write about? Today as been alright so far. Jason and I really miss our former landlord though. The new one that replaced her is not as personable as our last one. For example, we were able to talk about our day, my health issues and general stuff like friends and neighbors normally do. Visiting this new landlord is like going to the Principal's office (not that I know what that is really like.) I understand that maintenance request have been piling up because of the recent winter storms. I won't go into too much detail, but what I will say is that small jobs that could be fixed in a shorter time than the large ones and could affect the safety of a tenant should be dealt with in a shorter time than 4 days.
      Jason and I now have to run our errands  in the late afternoon and evening. I guess it's the former "Front End Supervisor" in me, but lately I've noticed more and more employees at different places not working on the clock. Today I noticed 1 regular register, an express lane, and all self checkouts open. There were only 2 cashiers and 4 slackers.... I mean sackers. There were at least 4 customers ahead of us in our line and the same in the express lane. My experience told me that they should have been calling for back-up cashiers. Of course we got to hear all about "Johnny" and "Lisa's" weekend and what they will be doing on their next day off...
        Don't get me started on the amount of expired items that I've found on the shelves. Today we actually didn't see any (shocking) expired food, and we had gone to 2 different stores. I really hope that I'm not borring my readers too much. After the trip to the first store we saw our landlord and I kid you not I heard the music for the Wicked Witch of the West as she flew ....I mean drove by on her broom... I mean in her car....
           Now it's time to spend quality time with my husband... Thanks for reading!!