Long dead Jamestown colonist.

About four weeks ago I embarked on what can only be called an obsessive quest to discover my ancestry. I've always been interested, but each time previously that I started researching information, nothing was readily available. Finding out anything of substance meant having to go the archives in Raleigh and searching through census and land records. That really wasn't feasible.

Now, however, the internets make this all a lot easier. I knew that my mom's side of the family had already been pretty well researched, and her lineage was traced almost immediately.

My dad's side, however, is a different animal. The furthest I can go back is my great-great-great grandfather William Henry, who was born in 1820 in Franklin County, NC. All of my family lived in Franklin County until my grandparents moved away in the early 1960s. My triple-great grandfather is listed in the 1860 census as 40 years old, with his wife, Mary, and five kids (one of which is Jo Henry, my great-great grandfather). His occupation was a brandy seller, which fits in nicely with my previously-held belief that I come from a long line of alcoholics.

That's where the trail ends, though, and I have yet to make a connection going deeper into the past. I'm fairly certain that I am a descendent of the original J. colonist from Bere Regis, County Dorset, England who settled in Virginia in 1635. My problem is connecting the dots between him and my 19th century granddad.

What I do know so far about myself is this: my genes have been in this country a long time. Nearly every ancestor, maternal and paternal, immigrated to Virginia in the 17th century, most not long after the founding of Jamestown. There are two German ancestors, one French Hugenot, two Irishmen, and four Scots. Besides that, though, I'm nearly all English. That's pretty amazing considering my families have had 400 years to intermingle with other folks. Probably explains my Anglophilia, as well.

Dude - I love to eat. My current obsession is Thai Orchid on Jefferson Street in Roanoke. I've been eating there at least three times a week lately. Today I went by and grabbed an order of sweet basil fried rice with tofu. The flavors contained therein nearly drove me to insanity. Fresh basil, sauteed tofu, rice and some kind of sauce that I couldn't even describe. Crazy delicious. My previous favorite was yellow curry with tofu, but I kind of wore that one out with repeated devourings.

Anyway, I say all this because I found a couple of food-related websites that intrigued the hell out of me. The first one is Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality. This one made me laugh uncontrollably and barf at the same time. This is a remarkable feat for one website alone to accomplish, and so - I salute it. As a sample of what to expect, take a gander at the following:


McDonald's Sausage Breakfast Burrito as advertised, and


the same breakfast burrito as delivered at your local McD's. Absolutely disgusting.

Another website that was pointed out to me by fellow frankblack.net Forum members was The Great Taco Hunt. The blog features a man known only as Bandini, who is an obsessed taco lover committed to finding taquerias nationwide that cater to connoisseurs such as himself. I identify with this man because I, too, am a taco lover (albeit a vegetarian one), and I appreciate his obsession with a particular food. I am contemplating starting my own bean burrito search. The Taco Bell version is starting to lose its hold on me.

I have to go now. I'm kinda hungry.

The power went out at home around 4:30am yesterday morning. Like on most of the east coast, high winds have been whipping like mad since Sunday night. They are starting to die down now. Sunday night, though, it was hard to sleep because 50 mph winds with some 65 mph gusts felt like they were blowing the house down, and I just knew that not cutting down the three dead trees in our yard would prove to be a fatal error.

But - no trees hit the house, although several fell in our neighborhood. The main consequence of the wind has been the electrical outage. AEP says no power until late Thursday night, which I think is nuts. Nuts, I say. Just across the mountain ridge from us, in the same neighborhood as us, I can see kitchen lights and TVs spilling blue glow out the windows as if taunting me. Why do those folks have power? I'm sure the explanation is simple, but I wish I knew.

Meanwhile, Janelle and I ate Little Caesar's last night (side note - whatever happened to Pizza! Pizza!? That was the shit when I was a kid. Two square pizzas for the price of one. Dad picked them up at least once a week.) and then sat in the living room, reading by the light of a kerosene lamp until 9:00 or so.

I finally finished Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End today during lunch. Bravo. Super great read. I don't know if I like the book because I work in an office (it can be described as office humor, I guess) or the odd little things about it. It's written in first person plural (We this, we that) although you never learn who the narrator is. At one point, the plot seems to be nearing a horrifying and seemingly hastily written conclusion, until tragedy is averted. The novel is brilliantly constructed - the organization is superb, really - and each character is memorable and likeable, mainly because each represents "that guy" or "that girl" in any given office.

I gotta go back to work, now. Next up, I plan to re-read The Gunslinger (wish I had known it had been revised before I read the first version), and then carry on with the rest of King's Dark Tower series. I can't wait.

Happy New Year from the Star City

Maybe all I need is some proper motivation. Maybe my goals are too lofty. I dunno. But after overlooking 2006's New Year's resolutions, I see that not a one of them was accomplished.

Allow me to review two of last year's resolutions:

1) Learn to play guitar.

Yeah, whatever. I picked the thing up a few times, and I don't have the patience for it. I know exactly what sound I want to come out of the thing, but I can't sit down long enough to make it happen. So instead I sit around and listen to R.L. Burnside and imagine what I could sound like if I was dedicated enough.

2) Learn to speak a foreign language.

First off, one year ain't long enough to do that. So file this under the "goal too lofty" category. But I'm just entirely embarassed when I travel and I can't speak the language. In meetings, everyone speaks English, so it's all good. Take a walk out of my hotel, though, and I'm lost. Completely isolated, because besides a few token words in Italian or French or German, I don't really want to communicate with anyone. That's not to say I can't enjoy myself, because I can order a beer. I have that one down. But you see my point.

This one is still a goal, though, and I think I can accomplish it. I just have to be a bit more realistic about it. My usual initial strategy is to sit down with a book of Neruda poems, convinced that by translating them, my Spanish will become fluent. And it won't hurt. But I won't become fluent that way, and it is doubtful I'll get very far through the book before being distracted by something else.

So - I'm not going to make any resolutions this year. I would rather go through 2007 and be pleasantly surprised when good stuff happens.