Like Summer, Like winter

Okay, so we here in Northern California do not have the blizzards and snowfall that we see back East. Maybe some in our mountainous areas, but not here in Healdsburg. But never-the-less this week has been a real mixture of seasons.

We do have the dogwood blossoms and some of the other flowers, but covered in rain rather than the white stuff. This week we used our a/c for the first time to counter the 90° that we were experiencing for the first time this year.

And today, it is cool, damp, gloomy and just plain Northern California winter-like. We have the heat on and still feel the burn cool . . .

Speaking of politics, can you believe the election year activities so far -- wait til the conventions, we can only guess what will be happening at them.

My genealogical search engine of choice is still by far Ancestry.com and I use that every day multiple times throughout.

This week I attended the Wednesday Webinar hosted by Legacy Family Trees and the speaker was from "find my past" and was terrific and knowledgeable. 

So I have spent a good deal of my researching time in "find my past" and was caught up in the many new resources that they have available -- and they are growing very rapidly.

We have some UK ancestors identified and this site can shed some light on those folks plus they have a lot of US resources as well, which surprised me. I plan to incorporate this site into my regular searching regimen.

Hopefully I will be able to share some of the interesting finds that I have made there already, in coming posts.

One of the things that I always tease my wife (and my older brother) about is the fact that they are "first born" and as such have received benefits unlike what some of the rest of us have received.

Starting with baby books and pictures . . . I can't really hold my parents at fault for showering attention on you-know-who, but this book does shed some light on the subject. 

I will read the parts about "middle-kids" with interest and will share some of that later as well. But as I go through the family tree and list the children in birth-order, I have to wonder if the same things that I have observed in those around me were true for those earlier children as well. Most likely to a great extent they were true.

As I go through our routine everyday, the addition of baseball this week has made a positive impact on both of us.  As I have mentioned before we record every Giants game and watch it about an hour after it starts. So day games are the best because then we can watch in the afternoon and even pause them to finish watching in the evening. Nighttime games are another matter because we start watching them at around 8 pm and of course that takes us into the 11 pm time-frame. Often though we will "speed" through watching and finish in way less than three hours.

This week though, we have pretty much watched the whole games (minus the commercials though) and have loved them. Especially the home opener game in San Francisco against the Dodgers.

When I lived in the Los Angeles area, the Dodgers were my favorite team, but now having lived in the Bay Area for twenty some years, the Giants are "our team". The home opener started out as though it was going to be a total disappointment as the Giants were losing 4 - 0 after a few innings.

But, when it was all over, the Giants scored twelve runs (that was fun to watch) and the Dodgers scored six. A slug-fest with the Giants on top of the total 18 runs scored. Enjoyed it a lot.

Ken Burns has a two series special coming up this week on PBS -- Jackie Robinson -- should be very interesting and we have it scheduled to record . . .

On our nightstand currently (and will be for some time as this book is nearly 1000 pages) is the above book about Frank Sinatra.

I am already experiencing pain in my wrists as I hold this mammoth read. I'm glad though that the first bit that we have read has been interesting enough to overlook the struggle to get comfortable while holding the book upright.

We enjoyed the previous book -- Carly Simon, "boys in the trees" and I sure do seem to notice certain patterns in the way that celebrities live their lives . . .

Since Sinatra has been such a public figure for most of my awareness learning about some of the behind the scenes happenings is fun.  

And so went our week.  We will continue to read, watch, research and enjoy the summer/winter days.

It is a perfect day to have "ribs" for dinner, which is what we have planned along with game four of the Giants/Dodgers series . . . See you all "in a few".