Life Update and Sims 2 Legacy Challenge
A brief personal update: We sold my Mom's house at auction for less than the assessed value but about twice as much as we expected. The closing should come in a few weeks, and our estate lawyer is working on the estate taxes now. We hope to have everything settled sometime this summer.
I have scanned in most of the really old photos for which I am seeking help with identification. Some of my Mom's high school classmates, with whom I connected through Facebook, have been very helpful. One of her surviving cousins also promised to help with the older ones, and I plan to write a letter to another cousin who's been doing genealogical work on one of the branches of her family, my maternal great-great-grandmother's side, the Hamptons (who were, as it turns out, Quakers just like my maternal grandmother's line). A couple friends who have done genealogical work are very excited about helping me untangle the web of my family's past. I also plan to contact a woman who wrote several books about Frackville, PA, my mom's hometown, in hopes that she will be able to help identify some of the very old photos. If you're curious, you can view what I have so far, from the 1890s to the early 1960s, in albums on my Flickr account.
After the latest parent-teacher conference, in which KFP's kindergarten teacher expressed concern that our school district doesn't have a gifted program adequate for KFP's abilities, we will be looking for a new place this summer, in a nearby school district with a better program. Wish us luck!
In suckier news, I did something to my back yesterday morning. I was just dropping down to sit, and my back seized up extremely painfully. I didn't hear anything pop, so my husband, The Gryphon, agrees it is probably a muscular problem. I am treating it with ibuprofen, Icy Hot, and stretches. Unfortunately, my sedentary transcription work aggravates my back, so I have to remember to keep moving. I hope this doesn't last very long. The last time I hurt my back, it took almost two full weeks to get back to normal.
Meantime, I've found a new obsession/stress reliever/creative project. I have embarked upon a Legacy Challenge in The Sims 2, where I will play 10 generations of a family, starting with one Sim I created, Aurora Brandywine. If you're interested in that sort of thing, you can read about it on my Sims journal, (simalyce). Here are the first three installments:
The Rules
Aurora Goes to College
Aurora's Sophomore Year
I have scanned in most of the really old photos for which I am seeking help with identification. Some of my Mom's high school classmates, with whom I connected through Facebook, have been very helpful. One of her surviving cousins also promised to help with the older ones, and I plan to write a letter to another cousin who's been doing genealogical work on one of the branches of her family, my maternal great-great-grandmother's side, the Hamptons (who were, as it turns out, Quakers just like my maternal grandmother's line). A couple friends who have done genealogical work are very excited about helping me untangle the web of my family's past. I also plan to contact a woman who wrote several books about Frackville, PA, my mom's hometown, in hopes that she will be able to help identify some of the very old photos. If you're curious, you can view what I have so far, from the 1890s to the early 1960s, in albums on my Flickr account.
After the latest parent-teacher conference, in which KFP's kindergarten teacher expressed concern that our school district doesn't have a gifted program adequate for KFP's abilities, we will be looking for a new place this summer, in a nearby school district with a better program. Wish us luck!
In suckier news, I did something to my back yesterday morning. I was just dropping down to sit, and my back seized up extremely painfully. I didn't hear anything pop, so my husband, The Gryphon, agrees it is probably a muscular problem. I am treating it with ibuprofen, Icy Hot, and stretches. Unfortunately, my sedentary transcription work aggravates my back, so I have to remember to keep moving. I hope this doesn't last very long. The last time I hurt my back, it took almost two full weeks to get back to normal.
Meantime, I've found a new obsession/stress reliever/creative project. I have embarked upon a Legacy Challenge in The Sims 2, where I will play 10 generations of a family, starting with one Sim I created, Aurora Brandywine. If you're interested in that sort of thing, you can read about it on my Sims journal, (simalyce). Here are the first three installments:
The Rules
Aurora Goes to College
Aurora's Sophomore Year