March: The Beginning of Spri- NOPE, Still Winter.

Hi, America.

I'm so pissed off I can't see straight.

This has been the longest, most drawn-out winter - maybe not as ferocious as last year's in terms of snowfall, but definitely colder.  We've had a sprinkling of days over 45 degrees, but mostly Winter temps, regardless of The Beginning of Spring, St. Patrick's Day, and now, tomorrow, frickin' Easter.  We're still hovering in the mid-30s, for the rest of the foreseeable future.

I'm sure Republicans point to weather like this and use it to deny climate change.

F***ing Michigan.

Anyway, we did quite a bit in March, it seems - the month definitely went by fast.  Now if only the rest of the school year can go as fast, we'll be all set.

Enjoy.

Alayna gets some pet-cuddlin' in with Kris' Grandma's dog while we were over at her place helping her pack up her stuff for her upcoming move to Arkansas. . . or Arizona.  One of the 'A' states.

Revenge of the Nerds.

The Cannonball gave me a totally rad hand tat.  Let's hope they live up to her expectations in the fall.

Abby and her BFF Larkin at the Chestnut Hill Elementary Carnival

We had the Whites, Dad, and Chris' family over for pizza one Saturday, seeing how we hadn't seen people in awhile.  The Whites hadn't seen Chris' boys yet, and we had been meaning to get together with them for awhile.

Babies are a lot cooler than kids that run around screaming and getting into trouble, which is where we're at these days.

I finally bit the bullet and purchased a land line through Vonage so that the girls had access to a phone at home.  Vonage is an Internet phone service, and utilizes an adapter box that connects directly to your router in order to create a phone 'signal.'  Unfortunately, running this new phone signal our house's existing phone wiring wasn't making the house's jacks 'hot,' so to speak, so I had to get creative.  We wanted the main phone hub in the Study, upstairs, so I had to break out some power tools in order to make that happen.  I first drilled a hole in order to run the phone line from the router in the main basement area through a wall into the laundry room, then ran it up above the drop ceiling panels.  This phone cord was then run the length of the basement, through another wall, and up through a vent (the patch of light you see here is the bathroom part of the laundry room, a floor below.)  A lot of wiring, but all out of sight (Kris was adamant about no wires being visible - mission accomplished.)

I then had to cut some of the drywall back in order to allow the phone cord to fit with the air vent in place.  Not the cleanest cut, but you barely notice it with the vent in place.

Hooked up and operational.  Now with the hub established, we were able to activate our satellite phones throughout the house and - voila - we have ourselves a working land line.  I even ran a separate line throughout the basement in order to power four more phones downstairs (not that we need four phones in the basement, but I inherited a few vintage phones from Granny when she passed, and I always wanted to hook them up to a working phone line, so now there's two working phones in the Captain's Quarters.  Booya.

Kris goes to Ulta a lot (I think it's a make-up store. . .?), and she's recently introduced the girls to it.  Needless to say, they're both fanatical converts now.

Seriously.  This is the kind of stuff that happens when Yours Truly is away with the guys (this was taken while I was brewery-touring with the Sausage Pad in Kalamazoo.)

Breaking out some quality 2004-era video gaming with the offspring:  Star Wars Battlefront II for the PS2.  

Graphically it's comically out-dated, but the gameplay still holds up.  The girls had fun with it, especially our resident Star Wars aficionado, Abby.

No idea - Kris took this one.

A rare glimpse of the Cannonball actually doing her homework.

Another round of Trivial Pursuit.  We have a running protocol in this house that I'm the only member of the family that has to use the more-challenging Adult question cards:  Kris and the girls get to use the Kid question cards.

The night before St. Patrick's Day, me and a bunch of the husbands of Kris' group of Girl Scout/PTO/workout moms she regularly hangs out with all went out for a few drinks, bar-hopping between Diamond Jim's, Whichcraft, and Oscar's in downtown Midland.  While at Whichcraft, I was able to get my hands on Founders' KBS Stout: a barrel-aged bourbon stout that's one of the highest-rated and celebrated beers you can find - it's incredible (if not ridiculously potent.)

Pool at Oscar's, towards the end of the night.

Alayna had to create a diorama about a Native American tribe for her class, and was assigned the Chippewa.  Thankfully, her old man still had a bunch of old Playmobil figures lying around.

100% historically accurate.

Earlier in the month, I decided to pull the trigger and have my old MacBook Pro sent out for servicing.  I bought this thing back in 2009, and the last three years or so it's been basically unusable:  it runs ridiculously slow, and so iTunes and iPhoto - honestly the only two programs I use it for - take forever to load (if they do at all.)  I briefly contemplated buying a new MacBook, but they're over $1300, and they're definitely NOT worth that much - I can't justify spending that much on a computer that's nowhere near as good as my current model.  Now, my dad offered an alternative:  he had recently sent in my step-mom's Macbook Pro, which was basically as old as mine, to a company called Tyrosys, out of Texas, and recommended I do the same.  Tyrosys revives old computers - updating RAM and operating systems, installing different drives, fine-tuning hardware etc. - thereby allowing me to keep my existing computer, at about half the cost of replacing it entirely.  They sent me a custom-fitted box, charged me about $500, and about two weeks later I had basically a brand-new laptop.  I couldn't recommend this place enough.

Kris had lost the Blu-Ray player remote, and for two weeks we tore apart the house looking for it.  Then, one day, she decided to paint her nails.  I hate wives.

Yoga session with Larkin.

Celebrating Grandpa Chinery's birthday over at Mom's house, one Sunday.

Baby juggling (Jeff's family was over at Annie's parents' house, so things weren't as chaotic as they could've been.)

During Spring Break.  Abby had consumed a ridiculous amount of Easter candy one day, and had vomited throughout the morning as a result.  She built an impromptu fort in the basement in an effort to quarantine herself from her family.  I found this quite considerate of her.

More roommate selfies. . .

There's this evening track activity in Midland called Fleet Feet:  a bunch of Kris' mom friends have their kids enrolled in it (like the girls' friend, Sophie, at center), so Kris wanted to see if the girls wanted to try it out as a Spring activity.  It's basically just running around a track at Northwood University, on the others side of town, twice a week, so we figured we'd give it a shot.  Alayna - as you can see here - wasn't a big fan of it.

Alayna liked hanging out with her friends, and drinking water from her sports bottle (according to her), but she didn't like the actual running part of it.  Since that's the whole frickin' point of the damn thing, we let her opt out of the activity.

Abby, too, decided against it.  Although more athletic and sports-oriented than her older sister, she found running around the track 'boring' and 'tiring.'  Honestly, she kinda has a point.

A recent Radio Wasteland haul.  I traded in an old copy of Led Zeppelin I I didn't need anymore (I recently bought a deluxe, remastered 3-LP of it, which is totally badass), and was able to pick up six vintage LPs at NO COST.  Some of these are 2-LP releases, too, and Jim even threw in some free Discogs and Third Man Records stickers and pins.  Not bad for a record-shipping trip.

Found the girls a cool little rocking chair for $5 at a local thrift store.  March was a good month for vintage shopping, let me tell ya.

On a rare above-40s weekend, towards the end of the month, Kris and I spent quite a bit of time in the yard, cleaning out the garden beds and preparing our yard for the Spring.  Now that we're home-owners again, we're taking every, necessary  precaution so that our property doesn't end up looking like a hobo's asshole.

While I cleared the yard of debris, Kris pulled up dead shrubs and plants from the beds.  We're going to have to drop some serious money into mulch and river rock this Spring, for sure - our beds are in desperate need of revitalizing.

We also need to look into fixing up this wooden bridge - it's covered in green crap and looks absolutely disgusting.

Abby lends a hand with. . . something.  Who knows.

One Sunday, Kris and I took the girls out with us Estate Sale shopping.  We scored a ridiculous amount of awesome books at one place (where you got to fill a bag of books for $5), along with a few pairs of brand new shoes for Kris and some random crap for the girls.  Kris was gunning for stuff that she could distress and use as decor for the house ('cause Pinterest), but didn't find much she was interested in.  At one house, they had this really, really creepy pool in their backyard.  Like something out of the '50s. . . or a horror movie.

This record cleaner got a lot of use over Spring Break. . .

Tragedy struck towards the end of the month:  my Pioneer receiver began cutting in and out while using my turntable, so I was finally forced to bite the bullet and drop some money on replacing my far-nicer Denon receiver.  I had been putting this move off for years because a.) I had a receiver that worked just fine (the Pioneer), and b.) it was next to impossible finding a qualified person to fix a vintage receiver.  Recently, while record hunting at Radio Wasteland, I learned of a guy here in town that fixed vintage stereo equipment out of his home, so with the sudden death of the Pioneer, I finally pulled the trigger and dropped off the Denon for repairs.  The repair dude said it'd take some time to fix, due to the fact that he was extremely busy with other repairs and there were a few receivers lined up ahead of mine on his to-fix list, but I wanted to get the order in as quickly as possible:  it's going to be a long, looooong record-less month ahead.  Pray for me.

A girl-requested glam pic.  'Cause why not.

- Brian

Memor Esto Majorum

Hey folks.

Just figured I'd share some of my recent research with everybody.  I know I mentioned this before, but Kris bought me one of those DNA tests from Ancestry.com, and I began utilizing the company's extensive archives in late December.  Since then, I've added over 1,000 members to the various branches of my family's tree, and have put in hours of extensive data mining, referencing, etc.

I've found tons of relatives that fought - on both sides - of the Civil War.

Now, this wasn't my first rodeo, guys - I've been doing family research for nearly 15 years - but having access to the kind of records that Ancestry has is incredible.  I've been able to pinpoint the exact dates ancestors arrived in the United States using ship logs, I've determined occupations of family members using federal census forms, dates of marriages and maiden names from marriage licenses, and even military service details using old recruitment logs.  I've learned tons of stuff about my extended family's past, and have really only touched the tip of the iceberg, regardless of nearly four months of research.

While I knew a lot about my family's past, there were still quite a few eye openers.  I found physical evidence that the Houghs of Alabama and Mississippi were slave owners (whoops.)  I pinpointed the first Houghs in America to a 1683 crossing, when 23-year-old Richard Hough, a Quaker from Cheshire, England, crossed the Atlantic and settled in Bucks County Pennsylvania.  Interestingly enough, in that same, small Quaker colony outside Philadelphia, in the same year, lived Richard Lundy - my direct ancestor from my maternal Grandma's line.  Given the small population and religious selectivity of the region at the time (1680s), the two dudes most likely knew each other well.  What are the odds of that shit?

Anyway, aside from my hours and hours of family tree-building and ancestor research, I also received my ethnic DNA results back.  Again, no major surprises there, but a few eye-openers, definitely:

During my research I had repeatedly found English and Irish ancestors, but was also  able to trace the Hunter line (my paternal grandma's line) to Scotland, so I wasn't shocked to find that I'm practically a third Irish/Scottish.  While the Houghs and several other key lines came from England, I was surprised the DNA percentage of that region was only 21%, while I was 26% Western European (primarily German.)  While I did find some German ancestors, there wasn't a lot of connections, so I had to dig a little deeper to figure out why those numbers didn't add up. 

I had to take a closer look at England's history to put everything together.  After the fall of Rome in the 5th century, England was repeatedly invaded and conquered by different bands of people.  Saxons (from Germany) were the primary group, and formed the dominant population in England for centuries, and it was from these groups that the beginnings of many different lines got their start.  The Houghs themselves were Saxon nobles in Cheshire (see coat of arms.)  Anyway, the Franco-Vikings the Normans invaded England in 1066 (Battle of Hastings, guys) and took care of the Saxons, but that pretty much explains my DNA results.

For the most part.

There were a few curve balls, though.  For one, I found out that I was 11% Southern European.  Taking a closer look at this, I found that most of this was due to the fact that I had roots in southern Italy.  That's right, I'm a tenth-Italian.  Who knew.  I also found out that I'm about a tenth Norwegian, so whether that's on account of Viking raids on England in the 7th and 8th centuries, or else I had some ancestor (probably named Sven) cross over in the 1880s at some point, who knows.  There were a few other areas that popped up in my DNA (3% Spanish, 1% Eastern European, >1% Greek, etc.), but those could very well be from marriages and the like - I didn't see a lot of that in the main lines.

So yeah, there you have it.  If you have any interest whatsoever in your family's past, I'd highly recommend looking into this stuff, it's pretty cool.  DNA kits and a month of free family tree research sets you back about $100, but on Black Friday and other promotions you can see that price drop to about $70.  I'd say it's worth it, for sure, but, then again, I'm a huge history nerd.  Perhaps this shouldn't come as a surprise, either, since one of the centuries-old coat of arms mottos connected to the Hough family is Memor Esto Majorum, or, "Remember Thine Ancestors."

- Brian