It gets to a point where it's a kind of Who's On First thing, but with empires.

It's weird. Findland's only been a country since around WWI, and my dad's family all immigrated to the US years before that. So, strictly speaking, they were Russian, because while there was the Duchy of Finland, there wasn't a country there. Don't try to tell Dad that, though. "My family's from Finland." "And that great-grandfather who the records said, 'came from the east'?" "Eastern Finland." "But the town the rest of them were in was already in eastern . . . " "They were Finnish."

OK, Dad. Aside from conquering armies from Sweden, Russia, and occasionally Germany doing what conquering armies do, I'm sure the bloodline is pure Finnish. Whatever that may be.

I'm sure the bloodline is pure Finnish. Whatever that may be.

According to my Finnish workmates, that would be anyone with a penchant for depression, swearing and drinking copious amounts of vodka. Also lactose intolerance.

Also stubborness and drinking copious amounts of coffee, to balance out the vodka.

And I understand that biting the nads off of reindeer as a adolescent rite of passage fits in there somewhere, too. Dad sort of skipped over that part in our little talks.

I just want to say how fascinating I'm finding the genealogy talk here. One of the things I'll get around doing some time soon is going into the history of my family, especially the German-Austrian immigrants whom we have very little info on, since my Dad's relatives were all deceased before I was born (and then he died in 1970, so not much in the way of reminicences I remember).

I'm coming from a family that reads 15 minutes of the Haggadah just because I make them do so, or else it would be 3 minutes.

Ha! Reminds me of the Seder my MIL gave a few years ago where the first night of Passover fell on the same night as the NCAA Basketball championships when the Florida Gators (ptooey) were playing. My FIL sat down and before the first glass of wine said, "If we're not done by 9:05, we're still done."

In some ways for me, genealogy is so straightforward and so complicated at the same time-- basically, went to Cuba from Spain in the early 19th century. But the great-great whatever grandfather who'd done that had made a pit stop in the U.S. and married himself a nice Creole Jewish girl from New Orleans. She converted and like a good Catholic wife, proceeded to bear him 25 children (2 sets of triplets, three sets of twins, and 13 single births) and not only did she survive, all of them did too, to adulthood. So who knows how much of the island I might've been related to. Of course, after 1959, all those records are lost, so a lot remains a mystery, although I do have one cousin who's working on trying to track down the lineage.

I come from a very secular nuclear family. Until I was 16 or 17 I had no idea that cereals weren't kosher for Passover.

She converted and like a good Catholic wife, proceeded to bear him 25 children (2 sets of triplets, three sets of twins, and 13 single births) and not only did she survive, all of them did too, to adulthood.

Holy crap. That's incredible.

I come from a very secular nuclear family. Until I was 16 or 17 I had no idea that cereals weren't kosher for Passover.

I think that was one of the things that startled the Jewish kids I went to the HS in Israel program with-- how very secular Israel was, especially since so many of them had applied to the program and gone with this idea of reconnecting with their spiritual roots. Observing from the "outside" as it were, it was fascinating to me.

Holy crap. That's incredible.

Isn't it? The other thing that just blew my mind, thinking about it, was that this grandfather, who was a sugar baron, was wealthy enough to leave his children $80K each when he died.

She converted and like a good Catholic wife, proceeded to bear him 25 children (2 sets of triplets, three sets of twins, and 13 single births) and not only did she survive, all of them did too, to adulthood.

Wow! That makes my Irish Catholic great grandparents slackers only producing a dozen or so kids each.

Why, yes, I've skipped again.

But! It's because today is Polter-Cow's birthday.

Happy birthday, Polter-Cow! With lots of wishes for a great day and a wonderful year!

Also, I'm mentioning this already because it's shabbat soon in my timezone, and the 13th (also known as "tomorrow", still) is billytea's birthday, but in his timezone it's very soon going to be this tomorrow, when I'll be deep into shabbat and not in front of a computer. So early timely timezoned wishes for him, as well!