This weekend a momentous life event passed un-remarked: my tenth sumoversary.
It started with the ladies' sumo weekend in LA in 2008. After that I really came to like sumo but, ironically, the friendship that brought me to it fell by the wayside. Since then have come a subscription to TV Japan, a viewing of sumo firsthand at the Kokugikan, celebration of Sumo Sunday for my 50th birthday, and a deep appreciation for sumo by mrguy (the best!). It's kinda lonely being American sumo fans, but there are always the message boards and, recently, the english language sumo blog Tachiai has come to the scene.
Ten years after the ladies' sumo weekend, almost all of the rikishi we saw that weekend have retired. However one of them, Tochinoshin, has just battled back from injury to achieve his highest rank to date, ozeki, and there are always new grapplers to meet and appreciate.
We'll see what the next basho holds.
June 11, 2018
June 10, 2018
Happy Things
The news has not been my friend this week. In the course of one day there was Tony Bourdain, changes in leadership in forkliftland and then I took dinner to a colleague recovering from cancer surgery. That last thing was the highlight of my week, I think.
So I'm going to combat the sadness with sharing happy things. Here is one example: pelargonium "Mr. Wren", originally from the garden of my oldest friend in the world that nice boy who knows who he is. I love Mr. Wren. He has cheerful little flowers and really satisfies. All he wants is water. I can see this planter box from the kitchen den, and it gives me so much pleasure.
Hats off to you, Mr. Wren!
So I'm going to combat the sadness with sharing happy things. Here is one example: pelargonium "Mr. Wren", originally from the garden of my oldest friend in the world that nice boy who knows who he is. I love Mr. Wren. He has cheerful little flowers and really satisfies. All he wants is water. I can see this planter box from the kitchen den, and it gives me so much pleasure.
Hats off to you, Mr. Wren!
May 27, 2018
Eggs
On this holiday weekend, I stopped by the store for some eggs. I've been craving them during the Whole Life Challenge, and wanted to make some deviled eggs for mrguy and for the mama, who was coming over for lunch today.
Man those eggs were good. Here I am happily sampling while doing Norwegian genealogy research. The big blue book is my trusty Norwegian dictionary, cause sometimes you know that Google Translate's words "Male's brother Unmarried Inner Snouts" probably actually meant something in the original Norwegian. In similar news, there is a newspaper whose name Google Chrome translates as "Eyelids". Best newspaper name ever.
In other egg news, we have a birth to announce. A few months ago we bought a security camera for the front door, mostly so I could see which breed of animal is eating my plants. Soon a nest appeared on top of it, and now we have a family of Black Phoebes hanging out at the front. When we open the door, they fly to the No Parking sign in the middle of the street, and then return to the nest when the coast is clear. Today when she was leaving the eagle-eyed mama saw a little shell on the ground. Sure enough, a little later we heard the sweetest tiniest peeping sounds coming from the nest.
Our new birds have arrived!
Update: one week later there are three little fuzzy heads in the nest with their beaks wide open. We had the front yard and back slope groomed today, so there will be lots of bugs for mister and mrs phoebe to collect for the young ones. And our camera does audio, so we like to listen to them when we can. It's sweet beyond words.
Roots
The search for documents continues vis a vis Irish citizenship, and my interest level surges and then diminishes because finding documents and then obtaining them even when you have all of the information about how to get them is darned challenging.
The folks in Ireland couldn't find my grandfather's birth record, but I knew what it looked like in scanned versions on the Internet. So I called Ireland early one morning and guided them to the page and then the part of the page on which the record was to be found. Sure enough, the certified version arrived a few weeks later.
American records are proving much more difficult. Pop was born in the state of NY, and those guys are TOUGH with their records. Getting his birth record was going to be impossible, but I have his certified copy from the City of NY that he used to get a passport in 1970-something, and that's what I'm going to use.
My grandfather's death certificate was the toughie. A few years ago I looked, but didn't know the location of death. I remembered from conversations with my aunt many years ago that the "country place" as they called it, was situated at the crossroads of several municipalities. They paid partial taxes to each. I have spoken to or corresponded with each of the registrars. Some were allowed to answer questions, and some were not. Each had elaborate conditions I would need to fulfill in order to even ask for the death record.
Eventually I remembered that I had some contracts related to the sale or rental of the house. I looked in them and the house did not have an address. It was at this point that I was feeling overwhelmed and decided to hire someone with more experience than I to help me through the hard parts. At about that time I discovered two things: a) I might need a court order to obtain a death certificate and b) I found the NY death index and learned the death cert # and locality of death. Whew.
The intricacies of this whole project are pretty daunting. My grandparents were unmarried (to each other!), which for Irish records folks is unusual. And my grandfather often misstated his mother's first name (half of the children called her by one name in records and half of the children used another). And he lied about his age. So there will be extra documentation and affidavits to produce. None of this is cheap, either. But I want to prove that I can do it.
The folks in Ireland couldn't find my grandfather's birth record, but I knew what it looked like in scanned versions on the Internet. So I called Ireland early one morning and guided them to the page and then the part of the page on which the record was to be found. Sure enough, the certified version arrived a few weeks later.
American records are proving much more difficult. Pop was born in the state of NY, and those guys are TOUGH with their records. Getting his birth record was going to be impossible, but I have his certified copy from the City of NY that he used to get a passport in 1970-something, and that's what I'm going to use.
My grandfather's death certificate was the toughie. A few years ago I looked, but didn't know the location of death. I remembered from conversations with my aunt many years ago that the "country place" as they called it, was situated at the crossroads of several municipalities. They paid partial taxes to each. I have spoken to or corresponded with each of the registrars. Some were allowed to answer questions, and some were not. Each had elaborate conditions I would need to fulfill in order to even ask for the death record.
Eventually I remembered that I had some contracts related to the sale or rental of the house. I looked in them and the house did not have an address. It was at this point that I was feeling overwhelmed and decided to hire someone with more experience than I to help me through the hard parts. At about that time I discovered two things: a) I might need a court order to obtain a death certificate and b) I found the NY death index and learned the death cert # and locality of death. Whew.
The intricacies of this whole project are pretty daunting. My grandparents were unmarried (to each other!), which for Irish records folks is unusual. And my grandfather often misstated his mother's first name (half of the children called her by one name in records and half of the children used another). And he lied about his age. So there will be extra documentation and affidavits to produce. None of this is cheap, either. But I want to prove that I can do it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
