The Friday Five, stolen from everybody

1. What is your lineage? Where are your ancestors from?

Everywhere, for values of "everywhere" approximating "Northern Europe". England, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, at least. Probably a number of other places. I have a tenuous link back into Norse royalty. I'm apparently descended on the wrong side of a lot of blankets from St Olaf of Norway, and the lines from there go back into and beyond the Middle Ages. Harald Fairhair of Norway, Charlemagne, King Alfred of England...It's kind of a funny story. My mother received an out-of-the-blue phone call one day, asking her whether she was descended from <my grandfather>. The caller's wife turns out to be her third cousin, never met, and the caller sent her his research, which I now have.

I've also got a copies of two autobiographies. One is my great-great-grandmother Blanche Son of France, who was born in 1856 in Paris but came to the US to attend university, met a man here, and married him. Her grandfather Francois-Joseph-Victor Broussais was once acclaimed for his medical theories (later dis...what's the word I want? Means "shown to be false or not valid").

The other autobiography is my great-grandfather James Morford, who worked on the Panama Canal.

Rosa's ancestry includes mine (duh) as well as Mexico and Spain.

2. Of those countries, which would you most like to visit?

I've already been to England, Germany, France and Austria. Tried to drive through Switzerland, but since my passport was being held hostage by the campground in Germany, Switzerland wouldn't let me in. Of the countries I haven't been to, Scotland and Ireland top the list.

I've also been to both Mexico and Spain.

3. Which would you least like to visit? Why?

None

4. Do you do anything during the year to celebrate or recognize your heritage?

Nope. I feed Rosa Mexican food, but that's mostly because I like it.

5. Who were the first ancestors to move to your present country (parents, grandparents, etc)?

Hm. All of my great-grandparents were native-born US citizens. I have ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. I haven't determined exactly when each branch of the family came to the US yet. I believe the most recent immigrant was my great-great-grandmother mentioned above.

This week's questions make me miss my genealogy project. I have megabytes of data, all stored on a Macintosh zip disk in Reunion (which by the way I highly recommend, though I have never seen the latest version). And I have no Macintosh. Ray took it in the divorce. One of these days, though...

I like it when the Friday Five make me reminisce or rant or just babble.

(no subject)

jingoro should be tickled to hear that Rosa is now requesting Totoro.

Packing list for Colorado

Buying the tickets was almost a farce. I think it took seven or eight attempts to get the input to go through, but it finally worked once Ray activated Netscape instead of IE on his Mac. Since he was paying, we bought them on his travelocity logon. All I have to do now is figure out what to take.

This list is mostly for my own use since this is a convenient place to refer to it.

( Read on, if you are really bored )