A Question About Fruit

OK, here's one to ponder... How do they make seedless oranges? Don't you have to plant a SEED to grow a new orange tree? Where do the seeds come from if not from the actual orange? Is each seedless orange the end of its "orange lineage?" I am perplexed...

Here We Go...

As of tomorrow, my blog will officially be "public." I am going to tell a few friends about it, and see where it goes from there. Until now, I've only told 3 people -- my husband, my mom, and one of my oldest friends -- so, I was able to see if it was something that would work for me. There was no stress about whether or not I was posting things that were important or meaningful...

When I originally told my mom about my blog, she said, "Oh, I don't think I could ever do a blog. I don't like the idea of putting myself so "out there" for the world to see." Her comment got me thinking: Why exactly am I doing this? Why start a blog? I haven't fully been able to answer this yet in my own mind, much less in the public arena of a blog.

What I do know is that like many of my freinds, I am trying to find an outlet for expressing myself. My group of friends is made up of lots of former career-women: many of us have chosen to leave our careers (either temporarily or permanently) to begin families. My cohorts are lawyers, teachers, nurses, entertainment industry professionals and social workers. We are of various ages and ethnicities, not to mention that we are spread out across the country. But what unites us is our desire to DO somthing. Our need to be involved. Whether we serve on committees or we enroll in classes to further our education, we are not sitting back and letting life pass us by.

That is why I started this blog. I do not want life to pass me by. There are too many people to meet, too many sights to see, and too many things to do. And, in this case, too many things to write about! I have only just begun...

New Cousins

Yesterday, I met three new cousins that I didn't know. It was an absolutley wonderful experience, and I am so glad we were able to all come together for the afternoon. They are delightful people whom I hope to get to know better in the future.

This meeting made me think about all of the aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. in my family tree that I have not met -- either because they died before I was born, or because our families were not close geographically. The saddest part is that there are also many I haven't met purely because the branches of the family have drifted apart over the years. Whether due to geography or some other "political issue" that can divide a family... In fact, there are plenty of my relatives living within a 100-mile radius of here that I would love to meet and get to know. Unfortunately, not everyone seems to have time for that.

But, that is one of my goals in life: meet as many cousins and other distant relatives as I can. And make sure we figure out how we're related. Some of the last names on my family tree are fairly common, but some are certainly distinct enough to reasonably assume that everyone with that name is related. I just have to figure out how...