I’ve been working on my family tree a lot lately, especially because I’ve gotten down to the 1000-1100s, before people had standardized inherited last names. It’s cool, because there are a ton of Welsh people in my tree, and they all have names like Owain ap Bleddyn, whose dad is Bleddyn ap Owain whose dad was Owain ap Bleddyn– and they just keep recycling the names (”Ap” is “son of”). AND, thanks to my recent forays into the Welsh language, I can actually pronounce these names! Also, because the records are not always accurate with spelling and stuff, I can usually figure out what a name is supposed to be if the record has mutated it into something weird over the past 1000 years.

I’m directly descended from William the Conquerer, too. Because Bill (from France) conquered England, where they spoke Anglo-Saxon, every descendant and ancestor of his has about 10 different records, each with a different name. For example, The germanic name which was something like Adelheidis (also recorded Adelis, Adelidis etc.) became Adelaide in French and Alice in English. Since some records were in Latin (!), it is also found as Alicia and Alixia. This genealogy thing is a Name Nerd’s wet dream!

So enough with my ancestry bullshit. It’s weird, because I’m not technically even related to the people, being adopted and stuff. Or rather, since it’s a great big incestuous world out there, I might be, but not in the lines that I’ve drawn.

Let’s see… What else is new?

Oh yeah– I finally broke down and bought a wrist brace, because the Ace bandage kept getting dirty and ratty and wasn’t doing much anyway. However, it’s this nasty shade of greyish-beige. It’s that icky neutral color that hospitals and run-down government office buildings use. It’s so awful, I mean if you are surrounded by this color, you are about to die or get in big trouble. Healthy happy people do not need to come into contact with this heinous shade. So, I had this red and black striped sock with a hole in the heel– I cut the foot part off and now have a wrist brace cozy. It actually matches my work shirt nicely (it’s black with a red logo)! It probably looks completely retarded, but I don’t care because it saves me from having to look at the awful beigeish-death hue. Hmm. Beigish Death Hue. That should be the name of my next band.