But it is a Dry Cold . . . That's Too Bad

Okay, so it is cold outside (for Healdsburg), especially in the mornings. This morning e.g. it was about 26° and that is cold anywhere, below freezing and all.  I could feel it as I wandered outside in my PJs (when the coast was clear) to retrieve the paper.

We have been having "sliver to half moons" in the evenings. And while this cold front apparently came from the Seattle area we did NOT get any of the snow that they did -- just the cold.  Not that we wanted snow, but precipitation of any kind would have been nice. There is already talk of the "d" word . . .

When I first moved to California (Southern) back in the early 60s people would mention how hot it got -- but that is was a "dry" heat and it was. Coming from the Midwest where it was a hot and humid heat -- there was a big difference. And so it is maybe for the dry cold as well -- but there seem to be some differences of opinions which makes no sense to me because it is cold.

So, on a cold night what could be better than some comfort food -- especially a comfort food that was well known from our childhood.

In a bit of coincidence, we chose to have "creamed tuna on toast" on the very day that would have been my Mother's 106th birthday, February 20th.

My mother taught me at least two "tuna" dishes: this one, creamed tuna on toast, perfect for cold weather and then tuna casserole salad, perfect for warmer weather. Both feature peas in a big way as well. I enjoy making both at the appropriate times of the year

Speaking of peas -- we also made a large pot of pea soup and along with some open face broiled cheese bread slices, we have been "comforted" most of the week. There is a lot to be said for cold, but dry weather.

One of the more interesting gifts that Gail received for Christmas this past year is pictured to the left (thanks, Lisa/Bob).

It is an ecologically self-contained sphere containing everything necessary to sustain life for the four tiny fish like creatures seen swimming around.

Surprisingly, we have managed to keep life continuously for these tiny creatures. There is no feeding required, just "light" management really.

We wake them up for about 4-6 hours per day by removing the hat that we place over the sphere to create the night for them.  We also make sure that there is NO direct beam of sunlight that enters their world. So far so good.

It is fun to watch these four (we think) zoom around their sphere if we turn it slightly. Then they just do their thing the rest of the time -- until we "tuck" them in for the night. Fascinating . . .


One place that is cold these days is PyeongChang, South Korea, site of the winter games 2018.

We have watched "some" of the events, but have found that after seeing a few examples of a given event, it gets tedious to watch them all -- so we power through until we find more that strike our fancy.

With the many hours that have already been shown on TV,  only about 30 minutes so far have featured "Curling". We watched that segment and enjoyed seeing the U.S. beat Canada to advance to be able to compete for possible gold.

The gold event happens (or already has happened) today sometime, and since we have recorded all the events, we'll look for that and enjoy it -- we just wish we knew the rules and strategy better. Maybe before the next four years, we'll read up on it . . . it could happen.

Growing up in the Chicago suburbs like we did, our family always attended church regularly. One of the churches that we attended for many years was Western Springs Baptist Church -- The Village Church.

Western Springs is midway between the two towns that we primarily lived in over the years -- La Grange & Hinsdale.

This church just happens to be the church that was the first preaching assignment that Billy Graham took after graduating from nearby Wheaton College.

It turns out that Billy had already moved on when we became regulars of the church -- but he did make several "surprise" visits back to the pulpit there. There were not many public announcements made as that would have inundated the church.

But, I can remember at least one such visit and actually paid attention as Billy had a way with words. The other aspect that I recall about those days was that another prominent member of the church was George Beverly Shea who was always the featured gospel singer at all Billy Graham appearances.

Another feature of the Graham/Shea union was that they conducted a radio broadcast "Songs in the Night" from our church. And as a way to legitimately stay out later on a Sunday night, we would attend the broadcast.

Sadly, Billy Graham died this week at the age of 99. He always projected such a positive image and is so well thought of throughout the world.  George Beverly Shea, who had a great bass voice lived to be 104 years of age and died in 2013. My parents enjoyed both of them immensely.

Lastly, I still receive almost daily, news of DNA matches. As I have mentioned before, so many of them I have no idea of how we match genealogically, or "in the tree".

But the match shown above, I can "relate" to and see how we match up "in the tree". It is for a 5th Cousin, Charles Baumgardner.

It used to be that I never considered Baumgardner names as related to us, only Bumgardners. But even prior to this DNA match, I've met other Baumgardners that we are related to.

It seems that for whatever reasons, even within the same family, some members have chosen to spell their surnames differently.

I have communicated with Charles Baumgardner a few times this week via Ancestry.com and we have shared some thoughts.  One question that he had for me was "where did the name Dayton come from?" 

And, you know what -- I could not give him an answer. I do not know how Dayton Bumgardner happened to be named Dayton -- and since my middle name is Dayton, I should know.

So, does anyone know how Dayton became named Dayton?  Please let me know if you know. It is times like this when I really wish our folks were alive.

Aside from all the above, we plan to watch the closing ceremonies tomorrow night, we will continue working on the puzzle -- which is about 50% completed and looking good, and maybe do a little more on the dreaded income tax and eat some more comfort food.

And Gail just received a couple more needlepoint projects and is happily coordinating them -- more on those later.

That is a bit of our week.  See you all "in a few" !  😋

Gung Hay Fat Choy !

While it is only "day 48" of 2018 -- it is also the Chinese New Year -- the year of the dog! We did not see any parades in the streets of Healdsburg along with the fireworks and all, but if we still lived in San Francisco, that would be a different matter entirely.

Huge celebrations were shown on TV and more firecrackers than ever before. It is a fun tradition to see unfolding through the bay area and many other locations throughout the world. It is the kind of news that we expect to see and enjoy.

Dino is right in there with the celebration. Actually, as long as he gets his two meals and his daily allotment of treats, one day is pretty much the same as the next. And that is the way that we like it as well.

Today it is going to be about 70°. That is a bit cooler than the last two weeks but supposedly much warmer than what they are predicting for the next several days. The cold front from Seattle is making its way to the North Bay -- too bad the rain from Seattle is not.

Valentine's Day has come and gone -- but half the cake is still with us. We are so fortunate to have a "baker" living across the street from us who loves to let us critique her work before she lets the general public taste.

This pure moist, fluffy chocolate cake enveloped in a chocolate ganache is "out-of-this-world" and would win awards in any competition.


We are parsing it out so that it lasts for several days. We add a dollop of vanilla ice cream and savor the moments that we have each night as our nightly treat -- wow!

The cake made celebrating the day special and gives us something else to look forward to after dinner time. The consistency of the cake is so good -- it reminds me of my Mother's favorite -- her chocolate "dump" cake, which she loved making for us.

 Of course, what would Valentine's Day be without a puzzle -- and in this case a unique wooden puzzle from Liberty Puzzles.

In this case, "The Tree of Life" brightly colored and so far interesting to work on (when we feel like it).

Gail puts two pieces together and then says she is stumped but shortly after concentrating a bit she gets a few more. And so it will go for a few weeks.

This puzzle does not have the traditional straight-sided edge pieces so that makes it challenging as well. We can leave it set up and then sit (or stand) to work on it when the urge strikes us.

Also colorful is the new needlepoint that Gail is working on currently (I just view). She works on the needlepoint when she is inclined to do so and frequently spends quite a bit of time "in her knitting den".

She often puts on "background" TV to keep her company and Dino often sleeps by her side while she works.

She is awaiting a few more needlepoint projects to arrive and this one is just a filler until they do. It is so nice that she has the needlepoint, the puzzle, and some games on her iPad to vary her activities during the day.

Also these last several days, a trip outback gives us a glimpse of what springtime will be bringing our way.

Already -- and each year it starts with ONE poppy and then grows like wildflowers into many many poppies.

Then there are the Meyer lemons -- lots of them currently. Because of the predicted coming weather in the next few days, we are going to pick most of them due to the freezing.

The bucket in the middle of the picture is displaying our solar powered water pump -- which really does work, but only if there is sunlight.  The hippo hasn't moved since last year and the purple blossoms are fun to see again.

Overall, loads of color in our daily routines -- we enjoy it -- we're old . . .

Lastly, we have been watching some of the Olympic Winter Games -- it is hard to coordinate the recording of "new" events and not keep seeing the same events over and over. And due to the time changes -- we often have heard about the results of events before viewing them -- very confusing.

The U.S. has a ways to go to be in a leadership position with respect to medal winnings. There still is another full week of events and I can only hope that "curling" at some point will be featured.

We will watch the events that strike our interest but not necessarily "all the action". It can get to be repetitive in a hurry, so we'll be choosing selectively. And it really helps to have things recorded so that we can "power" through when we need to . . .

We do look forward to watching the "closing ceremonies" though. It is amazing to think that these athletes work for four years to get to the next Olympic games and for some, it is over so quickly.

That is a bit of our week, see you all "in a few" ! 😍

The Games Have Begun

The winter Olympics . . . but one game is done -- Super Bowl 52 -- the Patriots came close but . . . so now PyeongChang has begun. Curling even made the spotlight with more to come. Figure skating, downhill skiing, and other sports are in full swing.
The opening ceremonies were fun to watch and they seemed shorter in length than I remember from the last winter events. It is hard to know what events to record as they repeat them. It is a good diversion from other happenings in our world e.g. flu, weather, & politics.

So for the next two weeks or so, our spare TV viewing will concentrate on PyeongChang and the Winter Olympics. Some politics enter into the equation but looking at the early medal count it almost looks like my DNA Ethnicity chart . . .

The display of drones in formation was amazing -- technology changes how we can entertain and make things exciting to observe.

While Korea was covered with snow this week, so were many other places as well -- including a very familiar (to our family anyway) house in Chicago.

To the right is a picture of our Grandparent's home, Dayton & Hildred Bumgardner, at 2521 N Bernard St in Chicago, taken this past week.

My brother Marv had some friends visiting in California this week and while chatting found our they had a son who lived in Chicago -- just a couple of blocks away (in Logan Square) so the friends called and asked him to shoot a current photo, which he did, again, technology.

As I look at the picture I can "feel" the cold outside, but remember the "warmth" from the inside. I'm glad that Marv shared the photo -- thanks.

So we might as well think about Christmas since we are seeing that type of weather -- back in the Midwest and other spots in the country -- not in our neck-of-the-woods though. here this past week it again has been at or near the 80s.

Gail has powered through the four Christmacy type needlepoints that she just finished. These happen to be Christmas Coasters and may wind up to be gift items for next season -- unless we choose to not part with them once they are finished with plastic sleeves.

The project went well and Gail enjoyed working on them -- but now she is waiting for other projects that were ordered but have not arrived as yet.

It used to be fairly easy when Gail needed another project -- we could just drive a couple of blocks and make selections from a beautiful store right in downtown Healdsburg -- but that store eventually moved to Windsor and then became "online" only.

The closest needlepoint store now is in San Rafael, which is over a couple of hours round trip from here -- so we usually order via the Internet.

To the right is not the leading medal winners at the Olympics, but rather a depiction of the countries from which my ancestors came.

And the red enclosed area is where most of them landed when they came into the United States.

As I mentioned last week, I was surprised at Finland since I had not heard of that prior, but Scandinavia in general I had.

I'm sure that as more and more people are DNA tested (we sent in our cheek swabs to the fourth testing company this week) there will be more and more answers as to how they connect to us genealogically as well as genetically.

And by the way, the DNA testing results are not exactly the same from each company. It will be interesting to see the results from the fourth -- in a few weeks.

So, our ancestors came from the purple regions and first wound up in the red region -- from there, all across the United States.

Since our family has a high percentage of Scandinavians represented, we might have to rethink some holiday menus. And in some states (Minnesota for one) there is already a major focus on lutefisk as a Christmas dinner for example.

I always thought of lutefisk as a cruel joke of some sort, but maybe now it is worth taking a peek at -- then I saw the meme to the left.

I have to say that it is probably true -- but in a way, you are getting twice the bang for your buck.

I'll think about it -- okay, I have. I can't imagine the odor remaining in the whole house after a lutefisk preparation party like what we see with the making of tamales . . . those Norwegians and maybe Finnish as well, I don't know.

Don't forget Valentine's Day coming up this Wednesday.

Maybe that would be a good day to try out the "Lutefisk & Chocolate" theme.

Heavy on the chocolate I'm sure. We do enjoy a small treat almost every day -- and some of it is chocolate. So far it has not included lutefisk.

So, that is a bit of our week,

See you all "in a few" !

Super Week !

And it has been. This is, of course, the week before the Super Bowl and the preparations are in place. It is the last big event scheduled to take our minds off the "other" items in the news. In a couple of weeks, the Winter Olympics will help us forget the everyday happenings.

One interesting event this week has been the super blue blood moon and eclipse. We did see the beginnings and the leftover results but missed the actual event -- we did see pictures plenty though.

We in our town of Healdsburg this week have been about 70 - 80° warmer than Minneapolis. We have seen 80s this week but mostly in the mid-seventies. It is pretty nice and nicer still when we see the breaths of folks visiting the Super Bowl grounds talking about how exciting everything is . . .

Interestingly for me, the game comes exactly five years from the day that I was released from the hospital after spending 21 days there with Guillain-Barre in 2013. Super Bowl 47 was played between the Ravens and the Forty-Niners and I arrived home just in time to see the kickoff and enjoy the guacamole. It was February 4th that year as well, unfortunately, the Niners lost 34-31.

The Niners were not even close to repeating that feat this year -- may be "next" year . . .


The big news for me in the genealogical searching efforts has to do with DNA testing. We have already tested with the big three -- FamilyTree DNA, Ancestry DNA, and 23&Me DNA and this week I sent all those raw numbers to MyHeritage DNA as they will display matches from their data bases.

And we have ordered testing kits from MyHeritage now as well.

In the meantime, MyHeritage has taken the raw numbers from the "big 3" and displayed some of their results to the left.

They break out their estimated percentages for what nationalities are represented in each of our samples.

It is surprising that both Gail and I have a certain percent of Finnish ancestors -- me 11% and Gail about 6%.

I know of NO Finnish ancestors -- but I'll keep looking. The other interesting fact that MyHeritage points out is that Gail and I besides being husband & wife are 3rd - 5th cousins. I just wish that I could genealogically figure out how we are genetically related -- again, I'll keep looking, but if any of you know -- please tell us.

Growing up in the Midwest I can remember seeing (once in a while) a sign here or there that said: "Lincoln Slept Here".

And there are other presidents who apparently have the same kind of signage around the land. I have to wonder in future generations what the signs will say about our current president (45th) or even the 42nd president.

There are a lot of presidents that apparently there does not seem to be any mention of "where" they slept -- or if they did, just saying.

Lastly, I have struggled with what should be on the menu for the game tomorrow. I scoured the back shelves of the freezer and have come to a conclusion -- it is to be ribs . . .

I was going to have chili, but then I came across the above genealogically related "meme" and I changed my mind. But in time that will not bother me -- after all, I spent several years in the "meat" industry and I just can't think about those things.

So, BBQ ribs it will be along with potato skins, corn, black beans and maybe some chips and dip.

That is a bit of our week, see you all "in a few" !