Friends, by reading this genealogy blog, you are increasing your coolness immeasurably.

See, genealogy is hot.  White hot.  Like, melt-your-keyboard hot.  Why else would The New Yorker have run this article about how Americans are “mad about genealogy?”  They wouldn’t.  The New Yorker doesn’t lie.  Everyone knows that.

But that’s not all.  See, remember that show Sex in the City?  Remember how everyone started wearing ridiculously uncomfortable shoes and drinking really expensive drinks, because they made it seem cool?  Well, the star of that show, Sarah Jessica Parker, is about to do the same thing for family history.  She’s one of the first celebrities featured in Who Do You Think You Are, which premieres tonight on NBC.  They have other celebrities too, like Lisa Kudrow and Emmitt Smith.

Yeah, I know we’re all mad at NBC about Conan or Leno or something like that (I wouldn’t know, because I go to bed at 9:30).  But seriously, you HAVE to watch this.  The genealogical world has been on fire about this for months, and tonight’s the night.  It’s going to be awesome, and it’s (supposedly) going to do for genealogy what Roots did in the 1970s.  And then you can tell all your friends that you were totally on the cutting edge of this trend, because you hang out here at Clue Wagon.  See how I lead you right to the coolness?  You’re welcome.

(Seriously, you have to watch this show.  Because you know who else they’re going to have?  Matthew Broderick. As in Ferris Bueller.  Swoon. Can you imagine?  Ferris Bueller and genealogy AT THE SAME TIME.  If I can watch it while eating some ice cream, my head my actually explode from the overabundance of awesomeness.)

Who Do You Think You Are.  It’s on tonight at 8pm eastern/7pm central.  Be there.  Otherwise you suck.

Disclaimer: NBC didn’t pay me a dime for promoting this.  Weenies.  Also, I’m kind of mad at them because 30 Rock wasn’t on last night.  But then I forgave them, because of Ferris Bueller.

Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt

Other stuff you might like:

1. Snowed In? Watch This Tonight
2. Organizing Your Family Photos—Part 1
3. Organizing Your Family Photos—Part 3

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I’ve already talked about how I started to tackle the task of organizing my old family photos, and shared some of the cool things I found when I searched my photos for family history clues.  Now I’d like to talk about some of the tools I’m finding helpful in managing this project:

• Picasa.  Up until recently, I had been using the photo organizing software that came with my Kodak camera.  I hated it, but I never got around to looking for alternatives.  I’m glad this project forced me to finally do so, though, because Picasa is SO much better than what I had before.  For example:
  • It’s free. That fit my budget of zero dollars perfectly.
  • It’s easy to use. Making minor changes (cropping, resizing, etc.) are quick and painless.  I never once had to read the directions.  Uploading the photos to web albums for sharing was a snap.
  • It lets you tag photos by geographic location. If you know where the photo was taken, you can pinpoint that spot using Google Maps.  Visitors to your web albums can also see where the photos were taken.
  • It has a facial recognition feature. This isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough that I found it helpful (and a lot of fun).  It “sees” where there are faces in the photos, and asks you who they are.  As you identify people, it helps you find them in other photos as well.  I was amazed at how accurate it was…and it was interesting to see who the computer thought each person was in photos where I wasn’t sure myself.  It’s also sort of fun to see how it picks up on a strong family resemblance (it constantly confused my great-great-grandma with one of her sons, who looked exactly like her).  The other handy part of this feature is that once you’ve identified all of the people in the photo, your web album visitors can mouse-over each face and the name will pop up.  When I’m sharing group photos with distant cousins who don’t know the people in the photos, this is very helpful.
  • It allows you do make cool collages in just a couple of clicks. I made one to use as my Twitter background, which you can see here.
• Google Maps. It was fascinating to enter the addresses of some of my ancestors’ old homes and use Google’s Street View to see whether they were still there.  I was surprised at how often their houses were still standing, and saddened to see the state of some of them (the house where my great-grandparents were married is run down and boarded up).  It’s also a nice way to go for a “walk” in your ancestor’s neighborhood, and see what churches, schools, and other buildings might have been nearby in their day.
• The Minnesota Historical Society’s  List of Photographers. If you have Minnesotan ancestors, this is a must-bookmark.  The Minnesota Historical Society has a list of all of the known commercials photographers and photography studios in the state.  This is a huge help in dating photographs.  For example, I have a photo that was taken at the Hennepin Studio in Minneapolis.  Based on the time the family lived in Minneapolis and the time the website says the Hennepin Studio was in business, I can be reasonably sure that the photo was taken in 1907-1908.  That’s a big help.
• Uncovering Your Ancestry Through Family Photographs by Maureen Taylor.  This is one of the handiest genealogy-related books I own (which is really saying something, because I have three very tall bookshelves filled with genealogy-related books and materials).   The tools for dating photographs and coaxing out their hidden clues are fantastic.  Even if you’re not a genealogist, this is a great resource.

What tools have you found helpful in working with your old family photos?

Note:  Links to Amazon, like the one for Maureen Taylor’s book above, are affiliate links.  That means that if you buy the book, you pay the same price as you would have if you’d gone looking for it yourself…but I get a very small commission from Amazon for referring you to it.  Then I use that money to pay the electric bill.  So thanks for the electricity!  I only recommend books that I genuinely like, and I paid for them all myself.  No one has bribed me (so far).

Other stuff you might like:

1. Organizing Your Family Photos—Part 2
2. Long-Lost Relatives: Good or Bad?
3. Organizing Your Family Photos—Part 1

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This is my great-grandfather, Arthur Walter Scheiber, in 1931.  I’ve often wondered how my ancestors fared during the Great Depression, and this gives me a clue.  Art was a railroad worker for most of his life, but this photo seems to indicate that he may have also sold used cars on the side for a period of time.  The back reads, “Dad’s pal Grimm calls this ‘Scheiber’s Breadwagon.’ He (Mr. Grimm) has this picture right over his desk.  He sure likes my dad,” in Art’s son’s handwriting.

This is my grandpa, Donald Arthur Scheiber, in about 1918.  That’s his mother’s handwriting on the photo at the top—it says: “Donald & Sport[,] Aunt Martha’s house.”  Sport the Dog appears in a number of photos labeled “Aunt Martha’s.”  He was probably Martha’s dog.  Some of those pictures include people I don’t recognize at all, but Sport’s presence gives me some clue that they’re connected to Aunt Martha’s branch of the family.  That’s a huge help when you’ve got photos of unknown people.  Don’t discount the value of identifying the pets in your family photos!

This is my great-great-grandfather, Frank Scheiber.  His line is the one on which I’ve done the most research, so I’m fairly confident I have all of the family’s geographic moves documented.  The interesting thing about this photo, though, is the photographer’s stamp.  You can’t see it very well here (because no matter what I did, it just wouldn’t scan well), but at the bottom it says, “J. Cole, Carrington, North Dakota.”  Since my research (so far) indicates that Frank and his family never lived in North Dakota, I’m curious.  What was he doing there?  Was he visiting friends or relatives?  Was he looking for land?  Was he on some sort of business trip?  I don’t know yet, but I’ll definitely be looking in and around Carrington for connections to this family.

The woman in this photo is my great-grandmother, Severina Elizabeth Nelson.  The older boy next to her is her brother, Allert B. Nelson (yes, it’s “Allert,” not “Albert”).  The younger boy is their half-brother, Clarence Nelson.  I was thrilled to find this photo, since I don’t have many of Clarence.  As I looked at it, I noticed something interesting about the pin on his lapel:

The button appears to be a picture of a woman wearing a dark-colored dress.  What does this mean?  Is it some sort of mourning custom?  I don’t know, but it’s a great clue (especially since Clarence himself is one of my most elusive ancestors…more on him in another post).

This one is my favorite.  The little boy on the steps is my grandpa, Don Scheiber.  The two women on the left are his paternal aunt, Irma Scheiber, and maternal great-aunt, Martha Erickson Swanson.  The man in the suspenders is his father, Art Scheiber, and the man in the suit is Martha’s husband, Alfred Swanson.  The older woman on the right his is grandmother, Mary Leonora Holthusen Scheiber.  This photo was taken at Art Scheiber’s home at 5411 Emerson Avenue South in Minneapolis in about 1918.  What caught my eye in this photo was the service flag in the corner of the window on the right side.  Art Scheiber had a brother, Edward, who was serving in the military at the time the photo was taken.  Although I think it was a little unusual (at least at this time of the photo) for a brother rather than a parent to have a service flag, I guess it’s possible.  Alternately, it’s possible that Art’s mother was living with him at this time; she was still married to his father, but they seem to have spent some period of time living apart during this period.  But the flag shows two stars, not one.  Could another of the Scheiber brothers have served?  There’s no other evidence of that so far, and they were a little old for service in World War I…but this photo tells me I definitely need to do some digging.

I’ll be working on each of these clues in the coming months.

Next I’ll talk about some of the tools I’m finding to be useful in organizing, analyzing and sharing my family photos.

Other stuff you might like:

1. In Which We Don’t Talk About Job Hunting At All
2. A Real-Life Valentine
3. No Imbeciles, Please

© Kerry Scott for Clue Wagon, 2010. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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One of the genealogy-related projects I’ve been putting off for, oh, 10 years or so relates to my family photo collection.  I have nearly all of the old photos in my family, and they’ve been sitting in a box, unsorted, for a decade.  Late last fall I finally decided to tackle them.  It’s turned out to be a huge project, but I’ve finally come to a stopping point (at least with the oldest photos in my collection…the modern ones are a whole other animal).  Here’s how I did it:

• I sorted the photos by branch of the family they came from.  There’s a little bit of overlap, but not much.  Then I separated the photos that show living people from those that don’t, because I want to make sure I’m not putting photos or information on living people on the internet (which is, of course, a bad idea).  About halfway through the first branch of photos, I figured out that I should have also put them in roughly chronological order.
• I decided to assign each photo a four-digit number, starting with 1000.  This way, I could easily save the photos without having to worry about how to name them after people with unknown names, birth names versus married names, names with multiple spellings, group photos, etc.
• I created a spreadsheet in Excel to serve as an index.  It has the following columns:
  • Photo number
  • Subject (including full names of all of the known people in the photo)
  • Date (the exact date if I knew it; a good guess if I didn’t)
  • Source (who gave me the the photo)
  • Back (any notes, marks, stamps, or other information on the back; when I recognized the handwriting as belonging to a particular person, I note that as well, since some sources are more credible than others in terms of identifying people and places in photos)
  • Notes (observations, clues, or other information related to the photo)
• I started scanning.  This part was no fun at all; it’s just as slow and tedious as you think it will be.  I finally started breaking it down into tiny increments, with a goal of scanning/saving/studying five photos a day.  I didn’t make it every day, but when I did, I felt like I was making at least a little bit of progress.
• I saved each photo as a .JPG with just the 4-digit photo number as the file name.  Right now they’re all in one big directory, which makes it easier to upload them to the web (more on that later).  I later discovered this post by Miriam Robbins Midkiff, which says I should have saved them as .TIF files for preservation purposes.  I’m still glad I did them as .JPGs so I could share them online, but I may go back and re-save them as .TIFs.

Part of the reason this took so long is that I found that working with the collection all at once gave me a unique opportunity to really study each photo.  When you look at them all as a group, you can more easily see patterns…which houses are in the background, which photos show a particular woman wearing the same hat or necklace, etc.  Next , I’ll talk more about the clues I found throughout the project.  Then I’ll share some of the tools I found helpful as I tackled this project.

Photo by purple monkey dish washer

Other stuff you might like:

1. Long-Lost Relatives: Good or Bad?
2. Organizing Your Family Photos—Part 2
3. Organizing Your Family Photos—Part 3

© Kerry Scott for Clue Wagon, 2010. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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One thing that’s changed a lot in the 10 years or so since I last worked on my family history research is the internet.  Cousins are easier to find now.  I know, because I just found some on Facebook, while my carrots were roasting for dinner.  It was that easy.

When I started doing research in the early 1990s, you had to look through phone books (remember those?).  If you were lucky, you were working with an uncommon name, and you could narrow it down to just a few possibilities.  Then, you might write a letter…or, if you were really bold, you might call.  You couldn’t be sure you hand the right person, and they couldn’t be sure you weren’t a weirdo or something.

Now, you can look people up on sites like Facebook.  You know you have the right person, because you can see all the people they’re connected to, including their siblings and cousins and teenage children.  You can see their picture before you talk to them, and note how much they look like Great-Grandpa Joe.  If you friend them, they can see everything about you, before they even decide to friend you back.  It’s cool, but it’s a little creepy too (and people…check your privacy settings, please.  Do you really want random strangers seeing all that before you’ve friended them?).

Obviously, I’m into family history, so hearing from a long-lost cousin who wants to share information is generally exciting for me.  However, I know not everyone feels that way.  Sometimes branches of the family have lost touch for good reasons, and other times people have family situations they just don’t want to have to explain to a stranger.  These things can be delicate.

So I’m curious.  What would you do if you got an email or a Facebook friend request from a long-lost cousin?  Would you be excited or annoyed?  Would you think it was a scam?  Would you respond?  Would you be curious to see what pictures and information they had to share, or would you want no part of the whole thing?

Photo by skittzitilby

Other stuff you might like:

1. What’s Next
2. Red Owl, Family History, and Company Relationships
3. Organizing Your Family Photos—Part 2

© Kerry Scott for Clue Wagon, 2010. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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This tidbit about my great-great-grandpa’s brother, Valentine Scheiber, is one of my all-time favorites.  It’s from the Milwaukee Sentinel, 17 November 1881:

A day or two ago, Squire McWhorter was called upon to perform a marriage ceremony with which a little romance is connected.  The contracting parties were Mr. Valentine Scheiber, an old “typo” well-known to the fraternity in Milwaukee, now foreman of Culver, Page & Hoyne’s printing establishment in Chicago, and Miss Mary Triplett, also of Chicago.  Miss Triplett had been induced by her parents and friends to consent to an engagement with a rich old bachelor in Chicago, but it seems that her devotion to Mr. Scheiber was of a different nature, as she arrived here with the latter gentleman and Squire McWhorter tied the knot which made them man and wife.  A late dinner was served at the residence of Mr. Fred Scheiber, of the law firm of Cotzhausen, Sylvester & Scheiber, of Poplar street, who is a brother of the groom, and then the couple left for Chicago to the surprise of the parents of the bride and, no doubt, the old bachelor.

I guess this is how it was done before eloping to Vegas was invented.

Photo by StampingMad

Other stuff you might like:

1. No Imbeciles, Please
2. In Which We Don’t Talk About Job Hunting At All
3. Organizing Your Family Photos—Part 2

© Kerry Scott for Clue Wagon, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Want to know what genealogists from coast to snowed-in coast are talking about?  Of course you do.

Tonight is the premiere of Faces of America on PBS.  I’m pretty sure it’s going to be excellent.  Henry Louis Gates, Jr. hosts it, and they use DNA (plus good old-fashioned research) to learn about the family histories of 12 famous Americans:

• Professor and poet Elizabeth Alexander
• Chef Mario Batali
• Comedian Stephen Colbert
• Novelist Louise Erdrich
• Journalist Malcolm Gladwell
• Actress Eva Longoria
• Musician Yo-Yo Ma
• Director Mike Nichols
• Her Majesty Queen Noor
• Television host/heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz
• Actress Meryl Streep
• Figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi

If you saw African American Lives, this is along those same lines (and if you didn’t, you should rent it or something, because it’s excellent).  You definitely don’t have to be a genealogist to enjoy this stuff.  It’s on tonight at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central (although you should check your local listings, because sometimes they move stuff around).

Photo by rednewport

Other stuff you might like:

1. This Might Actually Be Better Than Ice Cream
2. In Which We Don’t Talk About Job Hunting At All
3. What’s Next

© Kerry Scott for Clue Wagon, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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I’m working on restoring my great-grandma’s old cast-iron pans, which are nearly 100 years old.  I inherited a big skillet, a little skillet, and a Dutch oven.  The Dutch oven has tiny specks of yellow paint on it, because apparently my grandma kept it on the stove, and my grandpa once painted the kitchen ceiling without moving the pan.

Unfortunately, the pans had been sitting for a while before I got them, and they’ve been sitting ever since, because I didn’t really know how to rehabilitate them.  I finally did some research.  Apparently the process involves scrubbing the rust off with coarse steel wool until my arms fall off, then cooking something fatty and dead in them until they’re seasoned again.  I’m a vegetarian, so I don’t generally cook fatty and dead things, so this is a stretch for me.  I picked bacon, thinking that would be the least icky thing.  Now my entire house smells like smoke.  Dead pig smoke.  Also, the angry dead pig splattered hot grease all over the place, including my hand, and it freakin’ hurt.  I’m amazed the smoke detector didn’t go off (Note to self:  That’s probably bad.  Test smoke detector later.).

You bacon people are crazy.  I’m sticking to broccoli.

DISCLAIMER:  I’m not actually a judge-y vegetarian.  Meat isn’t for me, but I don’t care if you eat it.  My husband eats it.  My kids eat it (well, if nuggets and fish sticks count).  I’m only posting this because apparently I need to wait for this bacon grease to cool before I pour it in a cup to get rid of it.  I figured I’d use the time to write a blog post about it, because if there’s anything I’ve noticed about the internet, it’s that people love to talk about bacon.  My theory is that the word “bacon” is apparently a guaranteed traffic generator.  So I’m testing this hypothesis.  I probably should have used this time to steel-wool the next pan, but I’m pretty sure I can’t move my arms anymore.  The first pan took 45 minutes of hard scrubbing.  This totally counts as my workout for today.  So now I can go to Kopp’s tomorrow, where the flavor of the day will Super Bowl of Custard (chocolate frozen custard with a rum caramel swirl, chocolate covered peanuts, chocolate chips, and roasted almonds).  You know why they call it that?  Because it’s the SUPER BOWL OF CUSTARD.  For real.  Take that, bacon.

DISCLAIMER ON THE DISCLAIMER:  Kopp’s didn’t pay me anything for mentioning them.  In fact, they charge me every time I go there.  Shouldn’t they be giving me free custard or something?  Geez.  Freeloaders.

Photo by Olddanb

Other stuff you might like:

1. This Might Actually Be Better Than Ice Cream
2. Organizing Your Family Photos—Part 1

© Kerry Scott for Clue Wagon, 2010. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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A few weeks ago, the Minnesota Association of County Officers unveiled its database of Minnesota marriages.  For genealogists, this sort of thing is a lot like Christmas morning.

I’m supposed to be cleaning up my old research, but I couldn’t resist the urge to plug in a few names.  A half hour later, I’d ordered 15 marriage certificates.  They’re $9 each.  Some women binge on shoes or purses…I binge on vital records.  Yep, I’m a weirdo.

A bunch of the marriage certificates came yesterday, including one for Mabel Ruden and Mark Seliger, who were married in Albert Lea, Minnesota in April 1918.  Mabel was one of the witnesses at the wedding of my great-grandparents, Severina Nelson and Arthur Scheiber (that’s them above; Mabel is the one on the right).  I’m researching her because I suspect she may be related to Severina.

Mark and Mabel’s marriage certificate was the only one that also came with a copy of the marriage license, as well as the application Mark filled out to get the license.  Check out the things he had to swear to, under oath, when completing the application

• That I have no living wife.
• That I have not been divorced within the six months last past.
• That I am not epileptic, imbecile, feeble minded, nor inflicted with insanity.
• That we are not nearer kin than second cousins.

The bride had to meet the same criteria, although there’s a footnote at the bottom.  It states that it’s okay for her to be “epileptic, imbecile, feeble minded or afflicted with insanity” as long as she’s over 45 years old.  I’m guessing the idea was that she wouldn’t get pregnant and pass her “afflictions” on if she were that old…whereas the groom could do so at any age.

Of course, it’s important for researchers to keep in mind the context of the time in which records are created…but it’s a little jarring to see some of this stuff.

Photo:  Wedding of Severina Elizabeth Nelson and Arthur Walter Scheiber, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 18 June 1913.

Other stuff you might like:

1. Organizing Your Family Photos—Part 2
2. A Real-Life Valentine
3. In Which We Don’t Talk About Job Hunting At All

© Kerry Scott for Clue Wagon, 2010. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Once upon a time, I decided to move to Milwaukee.  So that’s how it started.

I lived in southern California in the early 1990s.  My family and I are originally from Minneapolis, but we moved around a lot, and I grew up mostly in southern California.  I was 21, and I’d had enough of California, and I wanted to leave.  So I moved to Milwaukee.

The thing was—I’d never been to Milwaukee.  I didn’t know anybody in Milwaukee.  In fact, I had to look on a map to be sure where Milwaukee was (clue:  It’s actually really close to Chicago.  That’s how we get stuff from IKEA.  We don’t have IKEA up here.)  I’d lived in Minneapolis, though, so I figured it would be pretty much the same thing.  Plus, I’d seen Laverne and Shirley and Happy Days.  That was enough, right?  Plus, if I didn’t like it, I could just move someplace else, right?

This is the way my brain worked when I was 21.  I was completely fearless.  I miss that girl.

So I moved to this strange town all by myself.  It was a big adventure.  Everyone should do this at least once.

My family is very small, but I had a distant cousin who still lived up in Minnesota.  She was 90 years old when I moved to Milwaukee, and she wrote me a letter in which she told me that I actually had roots in Wisconsin.  She said my great-great-great-grandparents had been early settlers in West Bend, Wisconsin (about 45 minutes north of Milwaukee), and that they were buried there.  This was news to me.  I thought we’d always been Minnesotans.  I had no idea we had any connection to Wisconsin at all.  Being alone in a strange place, I found this news oddly comforting.

My cousin died very shortly after she wrote the letter, so I never got to ask her more about these grandparents.  I decided that I’d find this West Bend place myself and check it out.  I looked in the White Pages (kids, that’s how we did things in 1992) and found the Washington County Historical Society.  I called them and spoke to a little old lady, and I explained that I’d heard that my great-great-grandparents were buried up there.  She said she’d call me back.

And she did.  She called and told me where my grandparents were buried.  Then she said this:

“You know, we have a whole file on them.”

And that’s the line that changed everything for me.

I made arrangements to see the file…which turned out to include the original, handwritten will of my great-great-great-grandma, and tons of other information as well.  I spent the next several years’ worth of Saturday mornings at the library, doing research on my family.  Later, I moved to Washington, DC, where I spent another two years’ worth of Saturday mornings at the National Archives and the Library of Congress.  I joined the National Genealogical Society, and a bunch of other genealogical and historical societies.  I was a serious researcher.  Whenever someone asked what I’d do if I won the lottery, I said, “I’d be a professional genealogist.”

Then I moved back to Milwaukee, got married, worked my way up the HR ladder, and had two kids.  I hardly did any research at all.  I wanted to, but I always had a million other things I had to get done.  Still, when someone asked what I’d do if I won the lottery, I said, “I’d be a professional genealogist.”

And then, when I stopped working, I started a blog…about job hunting, not family history.  Because I’d spent the past 14 years immersed in hiring people, and it was easy.  To go back and pick up my research again, after a decade away from it…that’s hard.  To make a complete career change (especially to something that sounds so dorky to most people)…that’s hard.  To leave behind everything I’d worked for for those 14 years…man, that’s hard.  HR was good to me.  It would be much safer to let it just keep on being good to me.

Here’s the thing though:  the older you get, the harder it is.  A lot of people wish they did something else for a living, but they never actually do anything about it.  Those are the people who are angry and bitter at work, who are always bitching and whining and rolling their eyes, because they never had the nerve to make a change.  I can’t stand those people.  They suck.  The older I get, though, the more I understand how easy it is to end up in that place.

So screw that.  I’m making the change.  I’ve stopped talking about HR, and I’m working on my research.  Eventually, I’ll be a professional genealogist…or maybe something else.  I don’t know.  But I know I’ve made the decision to take a different road here, and I’m going to see where it leads me.

But what I really wanted to tell you was this:  If you want, you can come with me.  Within the next few weeks, I plan to start blogging again…not about job hunting, but about my new life, and about the process of making a huge life change, and possibly about ice cream (because my new life needs to involve ice cream, or we can just forget this whole thing).  If you’d like to join me, you should subscribe via RSS or by email so you don’t miss it.  You can also follow me on Twitter, or just check back here obsessively.

I don’t know if you’ll like it or not, because I’m not totally sure what all I have to say.  But it’ll be an adventure.  Like moving to Milwaukee…but…well, cooler.  Or maybe not as cool.  Whatever.  Just come with, dammit.  Geez.  Don’t be so snooty.

(Oh, and confidential to my Milwaukee friends…I’m REALLY sorry about the reference to Laverne and Shirley.  I know how you hate that.)

Photo by Noahg.

Other stuff you might like:

1. In Which We Don’t Talk About Job Hunting At All
2. Red Owl, Family History, and Company Relationships
3. Long-Lost Relatives: Good or Bad?

© Kerry Scott for Clue Wagon, 2010. | Permalink | 29 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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