So, some of you may have noticed I have been pretty sporadic, both about posting, and about my life in general at the moment. There are a number of things in the hopper right now.
L. is moving in with me at the end of the month. This was not what we had originally planned, but her roommate all but abandoned her, leaving her with few viable options. Our plan was to do something at the end of the summer. I have spent lots of time working extra jobs and the like with the intention of moving out, and now she is going to be moving in. L. is moving in on April 29th. Her birthday is May 1. Anyone who wants to get her a cheap/easy present can help with the move! Beer and pizza will be provided, and, if enough people show up, who knows, it may roll into a crazy housewarming/moving event.
I never really updated all of you on the name change thing. Part of the change is a shift to an identity that is connected to the central theme of a book I have been working on for a while. It is more than loosely connected to myself and my family. I have, over the years, done crap loads of work on my genealogy. Through my father’s father, I can trace back my family/clan origins to Scotland in the mid 13th century. Thank goodness for Scotch-Irish catholics and their family bibles.
On my mother’s side, there is an equally interesting lineage, running through her father, that ends up going back to a similar time frame in Spain. This family line goes back to a long and rich list of aristocrats and nobility, whose descendants have several notable (and a couple of infamous) names, not the least of whom is Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. The branch that my maternal grandfather is a descendant to ended with him. He was the youngest son of five children, and all his siblings died young. None of them had any sons. My mother was the last person born into that line. I am the first son after the end of the line, but borne of it.
My first name (which some of you know I bear with mixed emotions) is a byproduct of massively coincidental importance. Through my father’s side, there was a tradition to name the firstborn son of each generation to get that name. My parents were at odds about this (my mother wanted me to be a Joseph, which was her father’s middle name). Amusingly, or, as fate would have it, my mother’s father had the same name as my father’s father (though my paternal grandfather was an eldest, and my maternal grandfather the youngest). As far as my father was concerned, that was too much of a coincidence to let pass. At the time in my life when I was seriously considering priesthood in the Catholic church, I was going to either keep my name, and take Joseph as my confirmed name, or change my name to Joseph.
In researching family history, history in general, and how this seemingly disconnected line of relatives have had a part and parcel in the development of several sweeping events in Western history and geography, I came to realize that there is quite a bit to write about. In addition, not all that is there is good (though a lot of it is). Part of who I am, genealogically, is this melange of crazy battle-loving drunkards and crazy land-loving aristocrats who finally crossed paths through my parents (who are, at the least, a fairly unlikely match).
The name change is, in part, representative of the work I am doing, and partially cutting back on some of the lingering traces of my life who, now, are left without a forwarding address. I am sure some of them will find ways back, and I may yet go complete-lock down, but, for now, I am trying to maintain a semblance of my former “open information” outlook. In abandoning my old monkier, I am also rebuilding my overabundant number of slots for icons, so expect to see some weird ones as time goes on. Right now I am doing it in dribs and drabs, but I will probably hit a good chunk sometime around the end of May.
There are plenty more changes in the wind, more than a handful of them left to chance, the remainder left to decisions on my part.
