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It was pretty exciting to get an email from TripAdvisor letting me know that I am among the top 1% most-read reviewers of all time. Considering how many people are posting reviews (there are over 100 million reviews on the site!), it is rewarding to know that folks are taking time to read the reviews that I put up there. I joined TripAdvisor in 2005 because we were getting ready to take a family vacation to Jamaica and I wanted to find a resort that would meet the needs of everyone. What attracted me to the site is the fact that the reviews are posted by ordinary people who are usually quite honest about their experiences. Because the site has been so helpful to me, I have always returned the favor by posting photos and a description of what my experience was like. I know they have taken some flack lately about possible bogus reviews, but personally I think the percentage of people who does that is pretty small. I always discount the exceedingly glowing reviews (unless a good number of people are glowing), and I also discount the one star reviews. In the case of negative reviews, I look really closely at what they are complaining about. If their only complaint is that the towels were not soft enough or some other minor infraction, I can discount their review. I feel that overall you can get a pretty good sense of if the hotel, resort, restaurant or attraction is one that you personally will enjoy. TripAdvisor - don't leave home without it!

So cheers to being in the top 1% - I just hope the government doesn't decide to tax me on it, because obviously I am having way too much fun!

Downton Abbey

Since I don't live in a cave, I had of course heard of the show Downton Abbey. Lots of people were tweeting about it and/or discussing it on Facebook. But I had never watched any of the episodes, because I read somewhere that it is a British soap opera. That pretty much killed it for me. Then my husband went to visit his parents when my sister and I headed to Cincinnati over President's weekend. He got caught up in watching the last two episodes of Season 3 with them, and he really enjoyed the show.

Since I am always struggling with gift ideas for him, a little light bulb went off in my mind and I picked up the three seasons on DVD for his birthday. So far we have watched all the episodes of Season 1, and I have to admit that I am hooked. The story line is interesting, the sets are amazing and the casting is brilliant. But I was quite confused about the whole "entail" thing. (Which sounds a little too much like entrails for my liking!) So I did what most people do when they are confused about anything - I Googled it. If you need some help following this important part of the story line, I found a great post on Austenprose that succinctly describes the legal issues surrounding the entail of the Downton Abbey estate. I now understand why parts of the family are on different sides of the issue, and can actually sympathize with both points of view. I am eager to continue watching the series to see who ends up on top in this debate. If you haven't seen the show, I recommend taking a look for yourself. It is easy to get caught up in Downton Abbey!

For several years I have been seeing advertisements by Family Tree Tours to travel to the country of your ancestors for the purpose of doing genealogical research and also to see the areas where they lived. It seems that the trips are normally to Germany, though I do think they went to Ireland last year. What makes these tours unique is that the tour director will try to line up an English speaking person in the town you want to visit, and will help you get to the town for a visit to hopefully learn about your family. Since I don't speak one lick of German, this would be of great benefit to me.

The reason I began to think seriously about going this year is the fact that we have a copy of the travel journal that Elsie Metz kept back in 1912. My Metz family is from the Rhineland Pfalz area of Germany, and that happens to be one of the tours in 2013. As I looked at the map I realized that the last town the tour will be visiting is only a thirty minute drive from Insheim, where my Metz family lived. Additionally one of my Metz cousins has introduced me through Facebook to a Metz relative who still lives in Insheim, so the possibility exists that I could meet her as well.

Unfortunately after looking at all of the German ancestors on both my side and Jim's side of the family, the Metz family is the only one from this region of Germany. So I would not be able to try and find any additional families on this trip. As part of the tour price, they will arrange for you to visit up to three ancestral towns so I would lose out there.

After reviewing the tour as a whole and all the wonderful places it will be visiting, I decided to go ahead and sign up for the trip. I mailed my deposit off yesterday. I know there are a couple people from the St. Louis Genealogical Society who have also committed to the trip, so I am hoping that we might be able to coordinate our travel plans so that I am not flying that distance alone. But if not, I will survive. What an adventure this will be! I can follow Elsie's lead and keep a travel journal. I will definitely be thinking of her on the trip.

This afternoon I received an email notifying me that my AncestryDNA test results were in. All I needed to do was click on Go To Results. I hesitated for a moment before hitting the button. What would I find? Would the results be so diluted as to not provide much information at all? What I found was certainly a surprise to me! The opposite of being too diluted, the results were almost too specific. Here is my chart:

AncestryDNA results

As I have looked at the charts of other people who have been posting their results, I have never seen one that is this narrow or limited in ethnicity. What is more puzzling, though, is the fact that my dad's paternal line came from northern Switzerland and my mom's maternal line came from central Germany. Where are my European roots? I was provided with a list of Ancestry.com members who purportedly match my DNA and also have British Isles ancestry. The next step is to go to their family trees to see if and where our families overlap.

This weekend my sister and I went to Cincinnati to visit relatives. On Saturday I was able to interview two sisters who were my mom's first cousins. I had not really met them before so my mom's sisters Margie and Betty set up a lunch meeting with them. Their family lived with my great-grandparents after their father became ill and they lost their own home. (I think there is another story there.) As Michael J. Crusham was the first in the family to come over from Ireland, I was eager to hear what they had to say. Unfortunately their grandfather, Michael, died when they were still in grade school, so they had no idea why he left Ireland or who was on the ship with him. They did have some interesting stories to tell, and I shared some information with them that they hadn't known, so it was a good meeting. I was able to videotape an hour or so of it, until the battery on my camcorder died. It is kind of hard to be plugged in when you are at a restaurant. Because of side conversations I was not able to ask all of my questions, so I would like to meet up with them alone next time I go to Cincinnati.

After we left the restaurant my sister and I headed off to a second cousin's house. He is the one that has the diary of a distant relative (second cousin, twice removed to me), and I had contacted him ahead of time to see if he would consider letting me bring the diary back to St. Louis and scan it on Jim's big scanning machine at the office. Then I would return the diary to him. He agreed, as I will give a scanned copy to him as well. I was just a little concerned that we might never get a copy from whatever institution he ends up giving this diary to in the end. I will be talking more about the diary on Write Formation.

We got to see a number of other relatives as well on this trip, and had a lot of fun. Unfortunately all the visits took place around food since there really is no other place for us to meet. I always need to plan extra workouts after trips to Cincinnati!

Crusham Family

On my Write Formation blog I have been writing about the fact that I am participating in the February Family History Writing Challenge again this year. For last year's challenge I was writing about one of the branches on my mom's tree - the Crusham family. I would love to do a book about the family particularly since I have traveled to where they lived in Ireland, and I thought the challenge would give me the push I needed to get on with the project. I was able to keep up with the daily writing word count I had established for myself, but I realized there is still a lot I don't know about the family. So I have continued to research them and the towns they lived in. For this year's challenge I decided to write my own story, and it has been much easier to come up with things I want to say. I think I will probably just keep going with it once the challenge is done the end of February.

Having said that, I am excited to be going over to Cincinnati this weekend with my sister. We always have a lot of fun visiting the relatives and eating unique Cincinnati food, but this weekend I will be pushing forward with my Crusham research. Two of my mom's first cousins, sisters in fact, are meeting my sister and me for lunch on Saturday. My mom's two remaining sisters will join us as well. These cousins, whom I have only met briefly at funerals, used to live with my great-grandparents when they were young. I am so eager to hear the stories they will have to tell! And I am hoping they won't mind if I videotape them as well, if that is possible at a restaurant. Maybe they know why great-grandpa's dad came over from Ireland all by himself when he was only about 18 years old. And why he picked Cincinnati as a place to live. If I am lucky I will be getting some great material to add to the Crusham Chronicles!

good idea

There is a project that has been bouncing around the back of my mind for a few years, and I am ready to go forward with the idea. I obtained the domain names a few years ago and they have been dormant all this time. But after researching blogs for my presentation on Beyond the Blog: Tips for Turning Your Blog into a Book last fall, my eyes were opened to the types of weird and wacky blogs that were either a) being turned into books or b) being sold for huge amounts of money. I think this new blog idea can experience the success of the ones I had been reading about.

I forgot how much decision-making takes place when establishing a new site. What platform do you want to be on? Blogger? Tumblr? WordPress, and if so WordPress.com or WordPress.org? What theme do you want? How about the graphics? So much to consider! I hired an illustrator to come up with a "character" for lack of a better word. We met on Monday and it was so fun to watch her draw up ideas on her tablet right in front of me. We came up with a pretty good sketch of what it will look like. She should have it officially drawn this weekend. Then I decided I want to have a special font for the name of the blog and the tag line that I will be using. So that meant an hour pouring over fonts and determining which one would look good with my "character".

We are on our way though. I am going with WordPress.org, and I have my theme and font selected. My web designer is customizing the theme to be more in keeping with our thoughts of what this new brand should look like. Hopefully by next week I will be able to roll it out. Stay tuned...