Thursday, August 30, 2012

Overwhelming number of shaking leaves

Have you ever been overwhelmed with your genealogy stuff that you don't know what to do next? I mean sure, most of the time I'm searching for more stuff. The missing links. Those times when you have hit every other brick wall and are forced to spend time working on siblings of your direct ancestor. And then boom. You're at your 15th cousin five times removed's wife's uncle's second wife's great grandfather. Usually that only happens to me on geni. Just keep adding and adding and adding....

- if you have a tree on ancestry... And I think most genea-nerds do... You know about the hints. Those shaking leaves everyone gets excited about in the commercials. There may come a time when the number of hints is... Overwhelming.

- you think that would be awesome right? So many hints how can that be bad!?!?

- lets just say that I have 9095 hints as we speak. And no I didn't make up that number. How did it happen you ask? I just kept adding to my tree. Those lovely family tree hints? Yea those are like the gateway drug or something. Before you know it you're in deep. Oh it has five siblings and the parents?! Cool! You think so. But then boom. Those 7 new people all get 2 hints each and that's 14 leaves. One hint led to 14. Hypothetically.

- think of it this way. You have 4 grandparents. Say each has the family tree hint, an in each of those you have parents and 2 siblings. 16 people. If those 16 people have a family tree hint thats 16 hints. But they should all have at least 1 census hint right? 32 hints. All of your male ancestors so far have military records? Add 6 more (minimum... You could have draft and pension records ) so we're up to 38 hints. If all of those people are dead? Add a record each for SS, Obit, and findagrave.  So now we could have 86 records for 16 people! Imagine if you have thousands of people in your tree! It just gets worse from there too.

- the further back you go you have more records, for the obvious reasons of the tree growing. But back in the day people may have had 8 kids or more. Adds to the hints you get. And of course anyone can have those headstone pictures. Do you have a Revolutionary war vet? Even if they're not a direct ancestor you get the war record, a pension file, a dar or sar record. Then if you're lucky enough to get to back in the day Europe, maybe some nobility or royalty, you get those family crests and flag pictures. You know what I mean. Then there are the wicked awesome castle pictures. Before you know it you have hundreds or thousands of hints and you ask yourself how did this happen?

- in not saying I don't like the hints. They're wonderful. But what do you do at this point? Start with photo and story hints? I have less of those so it could be a start. Family tree hints? Nooo that's how we got into this mess. Just walk away from it? Sounds like a plan for now at least.

-anyone else have this problem? What do you do?

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

43 days... And DNA!!

It's been a while I know.  And I'm on the iPad so no paragraphs either lol.

- I told you all that I sent in my DNA results and I was expecting them 6-8 weeks after they received them. Guess who got them early! I sent them in on 7/16 and got my email results on 8/4!!   Holy cow!

My results say I am 50% eastern European, 34% British isles, and 16% central European. Well, I understand eastern Europe. That's Poland. Both of my grandmas parents were polish. Found out that my dads side has a good portion of British blood. After being in this country for quite some time. Central European? That's Germany. I thought that would actually be higher. But hey. Not complaining.

- I don't completely understand the DNA matches. All the high matches I've looked at seem to have no common ancestors. Even 96% confidence matches. I do have a possible explanation. I don't know the names of any cousins on my dads side. I don't even think I have all of the ancestors siblings. And of course the only family from that side I could find is from his moms side. I only have his dads parents and that's it. (that's actually new... I found that out from him). So it's a good possibility the 96% match is from my dads side of the gene pool. 

-My vacation starts in 43 days. Not that I'm counting. Can't freaking wait! Going to Pennsylvania the end of September. In addition to just being excited to get away from work and Florida heat I have another reason. I mentioned to my bio dad that I'll be coming up to pa and asked if he'd like to meet with us (did I say anything about finally telling my mom I was talking to him? Well I did and it's all good. Even offered to go with me if I wanted to meet him!) . He's been very cool with all of my questions and stuff so I'm not really sure why I was so freaked out asking if he wanted to meet up. He said yes. Very accommodating. Like hey let me know what days will be good for you I'll arrange my work schedule.

- so I'm like. Ok that's cool. I'm trying to evaluate my feelings on everything. Still. Every time I send an email or a message I kinda worry that he won't reply. I'm not sure why. I mean so far so good right? But there's that little fear of rejection in the back of my mind. I don't know what to expect and that freaks me out a bit. Not being in complete control. I don't know what I'm going to do or say when I meet him. I don't even know the exact day yet.

-I'm not angry. I know a lot of people might be? But strangely I'm not. Ok when he didn't reply for a month I was a little bit but the moment he replied and showed an interest... I mean... I don't understand that lol. I mean I don't wish things had been different. I mean how would that be? Would I really want to be a kid shuffled between two parents? Would I be in Florida now? Would i be better in math, physics, and chem if I had him to help me with that? I mean I like how I grew up. It was fine and dandy for the most part. I dunno. I dunno how I feel about everything. It's a good thing I know that but. I dunno.

- I know there are other people out there dealing with the same thing. Somewhere. Any of you have the conflicting feelings or what? No one ever comments on my blog so please do if you can relate!