Oh! And for the proper Erisian effect, I have a storage closet out in the breezeway of the building. On the backwall of said closet someone had drawn a monster with the word Chupacabra. Office person was startled and offered to have it painted over. I told him not to bother and did not go off into a discussion of the X-Files.

On the backwall of said closet someone had drawn a monster with the word Chupacabra.

Now THAT is awesome.

On the backwall of said closet someone had drawn a monster with the word Chupacabra.

Clearly a sign that it's meant to be your place.

On those DNA things, take the percentages with a grain of salt. To begin with, the percentage of something in your genes isn't the same as the percentage of it in your ancestry, and secondly, especially with the parts where they tell you you've got 2% or something like that, there's a lot of guesswork. The commercial services want the percentages to add up to 100%, so they'll fill in gaps with whatever seems the most likely. People using the same kind of technology for scientific research will identify what they can and label the rest "unknown." If it tells you you've got more than 10 or 15 percent or so of something, then you probably do have that ancestry, but the percentages themselves don't tell you that much. There are a bunch of webpages where four or five siblings took the same test and compared their results, and they all had the same big pieces, but in different amounts, and the 1% and 2% things were completely different.

I found my DNA results pretty interesting. I'd been able to trace mostly English heritage on my family tree and knew I could trace back to the 1600s from England to the U.S. on both sides of my family, but it turns out I'm mostly Irish (29%) and Scandinavian (22%). I do have about 15% Great Britain and 13% Western Europe, but the big surprise was 11% European Jewish. My dad tested 22%, so that clearly comes from his line. We had no idea, but we suspect now that it's from the Dutch part of his heritage. I also have, in theory, trace amounts of Iberian Peninsula, Italy/Greece, Finland/Northwest Russia and South Asian, but I take that with a grain of salt, as you say, Hil.

Sounds lovely, Connie. Starting over in a new place is stressful, but can be unburdening, too.

I wanted to share this with y'all, especially the teachers & librarians. A friend of mine is a professional archaeologist frequently annoyed at the quality of education her kids are getting in public schools, and since her daughter read the entire 8th-grade history textbook in the first week of school, she decided to, um, prepare some supplementary materials.

[link]

Check it out!

That is awesome, Consuela. It's unfortunate that it's necessary, but awesome nonetheless.

Nom, dinner. Orzo, ground pork, peas, onions, corn, and feta.

That's very cool, Consuela.

Exciting, Connie!

(Where's Theodosia with something?)