So many books ...

I have finally sorted through my books and have about 100 to be donated to the Save the Children Fund; I am just waiting for some boxes which I will, hopefully, collect from Himself on Saturday night when I go there for a party to celebrate a couple of things. I have asked for, and been promised, the boxes which the wine comes in as they are just the right size, i.e. not too heavy when full of books.

My new Kobo e-reader arrived a couple of days ago and I have set it up and bought my first e-book which I am enjoying. It takes a bit of getting used to and I miss the 'bookish' feeling but I have to be realistic about the number of books I can take with me and the number I will be able to house in the new apartment which, according to the powers that be, will be ready in the first quarter of next year. I AM NOT READY.

I have shredded all the old financial records and used paper and I can actually see the floor of my study again - and the bookshelves are half empty. The next job is the storeroom/laundry and although it will be a hassle it will not be emotional and I cleared it all ten years ago when I had the house painted so it will not be too bad. I just have to be firm with myself and get rid of the stuff. There is a council collection in November and I can put out any junk I have left.

I have been good about exercising and have bought myself a new pedometer but am having problems adjusting it as it seems to read either high or low so I have put it back to the default setting and at least I will have a comparison and some sort of a record. I'll do the WII a couple of times per week because I was amazed at just how fit it kept me after I hurt my hip and couldn't walk distances any more.

I phoned Big Sis today but received no reply so she was either out, ill or dead. We are not a very close family and last time she ended up in hospital on life support it took the authorities five days to find out who her family were.

CYNOPHOBIA [n] The morbid dread of dogs. Condition of cats and postmen.

Down for the count ...

Today is election day after a short and extremely boring campaign. The opinion polls show both major parties almost neck to neck with the probability that the Ranga will win. Both sides are pretty dire but I would prefer the Budgie Smuggler to get his nose past the post as the Ranga's big new tax on the mining companies will affect my shares.

I have started back on a walking programme as Little Bro said that it was the way he lost quite a lot of weight in quite a short time. I used to walk along the beach most mornings until I sprained my right hip, after which I started doing the WII Fitness instead as it is easier on my hip. However, that is getting better and the WII certainly didn't cause me to lose any weight ... a point which it made very clear to me every morning when I weighed in. Little Bro used a very fancy pedometer to count his steps; I had a very cheap pedometer which counted my steps very nicely but yesterday, after I had worked out how far I needed to walk, it died and I realised that it was like a throwaway watch - when the battery dies you buy another one. I might lash out and get myself an electronic one which has a USB connection to keep a record - or I might simply keep walking from one surf-club to the other one and home again, which takes me about 75 minutes.

However, I have lashed out and bought myself an e-reader which should arrive from Melbourne early next week as it was posted on Wednesday. There arae about 1 million books in e-reader format but most are books which are out of copyright. Nevertheless, I have no objection to re-reading Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins and John Buchan and hopefully a few more will be made available as time goes on. Already the 'Girl' books are in e-format as is Dan Brown's latest book whcih I tried to read in paperback form and managed to get to about page 120 before it bored me almost to death and I gave up on it. His books are getting longer and duller and more oriented to America and all its works, both esoteric and masonic.

The reason for the e-reader is that I am getting rid of my books and Cyberflirt is one of the books which has to go so no more hints for now but I might slip in an odd word every so often.

And here, from The Completely Superior Person's Book of Words by Peter Bowler, is your word for today:

MERKIN: [n] A pubic wig for women, or, to quote Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue 'counterfeit hair for women's privy parts.' Do not ask the author to explain this. The lexographer's duty is merely to record. To others remains it to remark, with Ambrose Bierce, "Can such things be?"

Books, Books and More Books

I have spent the last five days sorting through my books with a view to donating most of them to charity before I move house as the plan of my apartment doesn't seem to allow a great deal of room for bookshelves.

As a replacement I have ordered an E-book reader which is on its way from Melbourne and should be here next week.

I have been having a lot of fun browsing through the e-books which are available. There are almost two million books listed but most are out of copyright with only about five new releases. However, here are quite a number of old favourites such as John Buchan and Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard and Jules Verne, most of which I haven't read since I left school; and a great number by Charles Dickens which I have never heard of and which I suspect never actually made it past the first printing.

The finishing date of the new apartment seems to be being advanced somewhat and I am not sure what to believe but I heard a whisper when I was having my hair cut this morning that David Jones has paid out big bucks to the builders to get the building finished earlier than planned. That means that I might have to think about putting this house on the market within three or four months. Hence the need to severely prune my book collection. It is not easy ...

I went to an OT who specialises in hands today and now I have several little splints for my sore finger, just about one for every occasion. At the moment I am trying out the computer one which holds the joint steady when I type and so far it seems to be working well and I can touch type again - except that I have got into the habit of not using the little finger on my right hand so I am a bit all over the place at the moment. Hopefully the splints will solve the joint problem because it is quite painful.

And I am finally learning how to use my mobile phone to text - I think!

If two wives are good ...

My half-third cousin who has been collaborating with me to sort out my great-grandfather's family thinks that he has found the elusive Anne Thomas, while I think that I may have unearthed Mary Morgan, from whom my cousin is probably descended. However, since the only concrete evidence we have as to Anne's existence is the possibly doubtful memory of my great-great aunt Charlotte, or Charlotta as she appeared to prefer, listing her half-brothers (gone missing; possibly dead) and their mother (Anne Thomas) on her father's death certificate we have a long way to go to actually verify them and that is not going to be easy as none of them is where they should be.

As my cousin remarked "They must have hated their descendants.".

And it is official ... I have healthy hair! I was complaining to my hairdresser that my hair was growing too quickly. He said that it takes something like 23 enzymes to grow happy hair and that only happy hair grows fast. Nice to know - I guess. A rather useless piece of trivia.

There was a terribly bad hair day yesterday at COTA. I had been notified on 7th July that I had three clients booked for yesterday and that Himself had two. As we received no further information we both turned up before 10.00am only to be told that Himself's clients had both cancelled and two of my three had done the same thing; my only client was booked for 1.30pm. Himself went home and I hung around until 1.40, decided that my only client had decided not to come and left. She turned up about 10 minutes after I left, according to an email I received from a very sympathetic receptionist, with the excuse that her bus was late. Twenty minutes late??

A bit of cat trivia from I book which I received for my birthday:

"Everything I know I learned from my cat: When you're hungry, eat. When you're tired, nap in a sunbeam. When you go to the vet's, pee on your owner", - Gary Smith

Silence is golden

For six days, just recently (two days?) I have had no voice at all, just a sort of strained whisper if I had to make myself heard. I had laryngitis and suddenly being unable to use the telephone and to have difficulty even face-to-face is incredibly frustrating.

However, not feeling up to doing much I got on with my genealogy research and of course,
sod's Law came into effect and my computer stopped being very co-operative. I was able to bring up web pages eventually but it took a couple of refreshes and was very slow. I defragged, error checked, switched off my modem at regular intervals and eventually emailed my IP who emailed back that they had checked and tweaked my settings and that it was nothing to do with them.

Strangely, things went a bit better after that and after another try at turning my modem off, lo and behold, I suddenly had a co-operative, fast computer again. And my voice is back, albeit sexily husky at the moment so I can use the phone, email and surf again. Life is good ...

Your unusual word for the day [I hope that there are scrabble players reading this]:

Pyknic - [a] (Pronounced the same as picnic.) Short and squat in build, with small hands and feet, short limbs and neck, a round face and domed abdomen. "I see that he has the true pyknic build," you remark to Althea about her new and proudly displayed baby; 'strange - I thought that was always inherited. Heavens, I don't suppose ... ?'

It's a wise child that knows its own father

I have had a big breakthrough in my family research. the Davies branch of the family has been a mystery for years. From my great grandfather down I had a great deal of information, but his parents and siblings were a total mystery and with only his father's name, Edward Davies, and his trade to use as a tool it was all pretty hopeless trying to trace my great great grandfather.

And then someone on http://www.genealogy.com/ came up with a will which named his wife and three children. My great grandfather was not named but I had chanced on a scanned newspaper item in which he visited Melbourne and stayed with his sister Mrs Baldwin. A clever researcher with data from Victoria found that one of the daughters named in the will had married three times and the third husband was a Mr Baldwin so I had the connection. A death notice confirmed his wife's name and also that of his parents so I was able to go back another generation to my great great great grandparents.

A lucky strike in the 1841 Wales census found them and several siblings so I thought that I had it all.

Then I received an email from a Davies who said that he was descended from my great great grandfather through his first wife. First wife?? There were two sons by the first wife (J. and W.) and on the second marriage certificate of one of the sons his mother was named as Mary Morgan. That was fine until my half cousin sent me a copy of my great great grandfathers death registration which added another daughter for the second wife, guessed at some of the children's ages (I suspect that those very rackety girls had stretched the truth a bit), and named the first wife as Anna Thomas.

So now I have two first wives unless, heaven help me, he had three wives. The family seemed to believe in multiple marriages so it is possible I suppose. One of the daughters had three husbands and a fiancé so why couldn't her father have three wives?

I am assuming that the family of J., the son who married twice, had their mother's name correct and that it was Mary Morgan but where does Anna Thomas come into the scheme of things.

The second brother from the first marriage has a rather unusual name and I think that I have found his marriage registration. I have ordered a copy of the certificate and am keeping my fingers crossed that his mother's name will be on it. I will work with Mary Morgan until/unless I get information to the contrary because I can't find any records of a marriage for either of the girls to my great great grandfather.

I can't commend the researchers on the genealogy board enough. The almost always come up with the required information if it is there to find and with the archived newspapers now being scanned and put on line, albeit with some very quirky errors, there is a lot more information out there. I chanced on one marriage entry between some man and his "fecund" bride. It took me a minute to realise that in the original article she was probably a 'second' daughter.

The word of the day is not in my book of unusual words so I looked it up on the Concise Oxford dictionary:

fecund - prolific; fertile.

If it seems too good to be true ...

My new computer is very nice ... I think. I set it all up, turned off my modem and tried to install Blink only to find that the instructions didn't work. So I phoned the Blink people and spoke to a very nice man who told me that I had been sold an outdated version . No doubt that is why it cost me $20 instead of $99.99. However, he said that all was not lost and it would work just fine if I changed some of the settings. He talked me through it and I wrote down the instructions so that I could install it in my other two laptops.

That night I turned the computer on and nothing happened; nothing at all except for a pretty test pattern. I have a five-year warranty so I wasn't particularly worried but I had problems sleeping so I got out of bed and tried to fire it up. Still nothing but I noticed that there was a very quick message telling me to hit the Esc key for the start-up menu. I did this and was given the option of system restore or reload. I did reload and because I had made a boot disc, there was a backup copy on my hard drive and it reinstalled itself again.

Then I had to reinstall Blink and the instructions which I had written down were not explicit enough so I had to phone the Blink people again and another very nice man talked me through it again. Hopefully it is now stable and I won't have to go through the process again. But the first thing I did after Blink was back was to create a restore point, just in case.

I can't use Win 7 for my Family Tree Maker without downloading a patch and that would make it incompatible with what is on the other computers. I know FTM of old - it is incompatible with earlier versions ... and there is no version yet which is Win 7 friendly so I will not be able to pass minimegs on as I will need it for backup.

Himself had a try on the new one on Thursday as he only had one morning client and he pronounced it a nice computer. But I don't think that he looked at the mailbox which is different from OE.

Now for your Cyberflirt hint for the day:

All the most successful flirts know a little something about everything, and can speak charmingly and intelligently on virtually any subject that matters to his conversational partner.