Genealogy

Since my last journal entry, I have been spending pretty much all of my free time working on genealogy.  I have been able to find many ancestors that have alluded me for so long.  The biggest obstacle has been Henry Clay Benson who is my great-great grandfather.  I was never able to find any connection to his father for the longest time.  Last week, I was looking at one of the websites and finally found a source that had Samuel Styles Benson as his father.  This has opened up a world of names.  I have since found well over 100 new ancestors including Kings of England.  I already knew my mom was descended from King Edward I and others, but now I found out that my dad is also descended from King Edward I.  I have been adding all the known ancestors to a software called Legacy.  I am planning to go through wikipedia and work on the royal genealogy from there.

We went to Worlds of Fun yesterday and had lots of fun.  We decided to have David wear underwear.  This would be the first time that we had him wear underwear outside of the house.  He did not have any accidents, so it was a very good day.  Of course, success is not without its setbacks.  Today, he decided that he didn't want to use the potty most of the day and we had several accidents.  I do however think that we are making progress.

I decided to add one to-do to my daily tasks each day.  The sermon today was about giving ourselves to God.  I plan to say a prayer each day to give the day to God and let his will be done.  I can't worry about what will happen and I just need to trust that God will provide for me no matter what.

Table Tennis Again? - 6/18/08

I went back through my previous journal entries and I noticed that in 3 of the last 4, I have mentioned table tennis.  Well, now make it 4 out of 5.  Today, I met with Bill Guilfoil, who is a well known player among the table tennis community in Kansas City and runs the Overland Park club.  He is going to be coaching me.

Today I pretty much worked on forehand and spacing.  I was already feeling like my game is improving from just a few new things that he taught me.  I still have very much to learn.  I am going to let him know when I am going to be in Overland Park and he said he could probably work around my schedule.  I hope to work enough to be able to have some success at the show-me state games in July.

I feel like I am a good player, but there are times where I don't have the confidence that I should to win.  I am hopeful that this will give me more confidence.  I am optimistic about it.  Speaking of optimism, I get a newsletter from Alan Zimmerman each Tuesday.  I had mentioned his book "Pivot: How One Turn in Attitude Can Lead to Success" in some of my previous journal entries.  In today's newsletter, his topic is "Optimism, Pessimism or Cynic".  He basically said that positive attitudes will lead to positive results and that we need to feed the positive thoughts and work on blocking negative thoughts.  I have a hard time doing that when I hit the ball off of the table or into the net, but today I realized that each time I do that, there is something that I did wrong that I can fix, so I my attitude about it is good.

My daughter went to a birthday party tonight.  The party was basically a carnival theme set up in the backyard of one of her best friends.  They had a ticket booth and gave the girls tickets at the beginning to be able to play games and get prizes.  After that, they were able to swim in their pool.  She had lots of fun and I had a hard time getting her to come home when I went to pick her up.

My finger is still hurting from yesterday and it is still hard to grip things with my right hand.  I am feeling a litte bit of numbness in my right ring finger.  I am not sure if I cut a nerve or something, but I am hoping it will start feeling better in the next couple of days.

Three Plates, A Coffee Pot and Lots Of ... - 6/16/08

Emily was putting the dishes away and I was working in my office.  I heard a crash like something was breaking.  I went into the kitchen and saw that one of our plates had broken.  No big deal.  I told her that she needed to get the vacuum out and sweep up the little pieces while I picked up the big pieces.  I opened up the cabinet with the plates and more plates came crashing down.  I caught two of them, but after it all ended, there were two more plates broken. 

My wife and I neither one are coffee drinkers, but like most people, we got a coffee pot for our anniversary.  We have had that coffee pot for over 15 years and maybe have used it 15 times.  Most of the uses were when we were first married and I made tea.  I don't drink anything within caffeine in it anymore, so I don't drink tea.  After the plates broke, I started to clear off the counter so that we could clean up the little pieces that had fallen behind everything on the counter.  I moved the bread first and then the can opener.  I then tried to move the coffee pot and crash.  Not only did we have three broken plates, but now a broken coffee pot.

I titled this entry "Three Plates, A Coffee Pot and Lots of ...".  If you are squeamish, I suggest you stop reading for today.  However, if you would like to know what it was lots of, then read on.  We had glass on the floor, on the counter, in the cabinet, in the silverware drawer AND in my finger.  I didn't realize how bad it was until I saw the blood rushing out of my finger.  My son tried to give me a band-aid, but it just diverted the flow of the blood.  He finally had to get some gauze.  However, we couldn't find any tape.  We looked everywhere and finally he found some duct tape.

My finger finally stopped bleeding, but it still hurts when I try to use it.  Anything I grip causes pain.  The good thing is that I use the pin-hold grip to play table tennis instead of the handshake grip, so it hasn't affected my table tennis game.

What's for Supper - 6/13/08

As I sit here and write, I am waiting to eat supper.  I just got finished grilling a whole chicken and it looks and smells good and is making me hungry.  We are having Rice-A-Roni with it, but we didn't start it soon enough because the chicken was done about 15 minutes before I expected.  I used Emeril's Chicken Rub and coated it with a sauce consisting of Worcestershire, Butter, Peanut Butter and Lemon Juice. 

Speaking of food, last night we went to Cheddar's for our anniversary dinner.  I always like the food at Cheddar's.  I had the steak sandwich which is much better than any other restaurant in St. Joseph.

My mom has been sick since March.  She went to the hospital with asthma and it has not improved since then.  She has been back in the hospital one time since and seen many doctors.  She was even diagnosed with Sleep Apnea througout the whole ordeal, but can't wear the mask because of her breathing problems.  She finally found a doctor who figured out what was wrong with her.  She has a dysfunctional vocal cord.  The doctor's said that they had to clear up this problem before they could help with the asthma.  I am thankful that they found the problem, but prayers are still needed because she hasn't been healed yet.

I have completed my first full week using the new time management techniques that I learned.  One interesting thing that happened is that I was so organized with everything that I got a lot more done than I was expecting and felt like I didn't have as much work to do.  This afternoon when I couldn't work on one of my to-do's because of file issues, I was trying to figure out what I should work on.  It is definitely making me more productive, but I may need to add some short-term projects to my to-do's so I won't be sitting around waiting.  I am sure my boss will be happy about it.

I got an e-mail about a Table Tennis Tournament in Abilene, Kansas, but it will be on July 12 which is the day I return from Washington, DC, so I won't be able to play in it.  It would have been nice to have some practice before the Show-Me State Games.  There is also a tournament the last week of June that I can't attend because I have tickets for the Cardinal games in Kansas City.  I am hoping that I can play in 4-6 tournaments a year going forward.

I updated the genealogy site last night.  I put in all of my Grandpa Yates' ancestors up to 10 generations (which would be my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents).  I have more information than that, but I want to start entering some of the other branches.  I have started doing a little bit of research and have found even more information and found some "cousins" that I knew, but didn't realize were cousins.  Thankfully, I haven't found that I am related to my wife (yet).

Happy Anniversay - 6/12/08

Well, I missed a journal entry yesterday.  I had it on my to-do list, but got distracted.  The source of my distraction was that I found a website called Geni.com the other day.  This website allows you to build a family tree and share it with others.  They are also able to then edit any part of the family tree that they would like.  I had been thinking about genealogy lately and finding this website has re-energized me into looking into family history again.  About 10 years ago, I did a lot of work researching both mine and my wife's family.  I had found (through various sources) over 400 ancestors of my children (including one branch that went 77 generations back).  I plan to adding as much of this to Geni.com as I can when I can.

Today is mine and my wife's 15th wedding anniversary.  We were married on June 12, 1993.  I gave here a crystal clock that was engraved with our names and our wedding date.  She really liked it.  We are going out to eat tonight.  During the first years of our marriage, we always ate at Red Lobster, but we haven't kept up that tradition.  I am not sure where we are going tonight.  I will let her pick.  We would like to go out alone, but we don't have anyone to watch the kids, so we will be sharing our anniversary dinner with them.

June 12 happens to be the anniversay of many other things in my life also.  On June 12, 1996, I defended my master's thesis at Iowa State University.  On June 12, 2003, I started working from home.  I have been working from home ever since.  On June 12, 2006, I started working for Swiss Re.  I didn't change companies voluntarily.  Swiss Re bought my former employer (GE Insurance Solutions) and this was the first official day of work after the acquistion was completed.

Our youngest son, David, is 3 and we are trying to potty train him right now.  He is very stubborn and we have had to clean up many "accidents".  He knows how to use the toilet, but there are times where he just refuses.  The goal is to have him trained by September for pre-school.  We only put pull-ups on him for bed or when we go somewhere.  Last year, we tried to have him go every 30 minutes, but he would just go on the floor.  This year, he at least is going sometimes, so there is hope.

On the work front, I was accepted into the Leadership Development Programmeat Swiss Re.  This is a program to develop leaders (bet you didn't see that from the title).  It involves 3 courses.  The first one I attended in Kansas City last November.  I thought it was really good for the most part.  There are four main topics for the course which are Interpersonal Leadership, Negotiation, Health/Fitness and Financial.  My favorites were the Interpersonal Leadership (where I learned a LOT about things that I am doing wrong in my leadership) and Negotiation (where I got a little heated in one of our mock negotiations).  The second course will be in Hong Kong in October.  I have never been to Hong Kong, so I am excited to go.  The third course will be in Switzerland next year.  They will basically build on the first course I attended in Kansas City

It's a New Start Today - 6/10/08

Last year in June I started journaling.  It was a great experience and one of the big advantages is that I really noticed things in my world more because I was always conscious of what I wanted to write about.  However, I went to India and July and when I got back, I stopped journaling because I was tired.  I have been thinking over the last year that I wanted to get back to journaling, but just didn't feel I had the time to do it (or was just too lazy).

Well, I finally am doing it.  It only took about 10.5 months, but I am here.  This part is easy.  In my journals, I am going to just go over things I am doing or just thinking about.  Keeping it up every day is going to be hard.  What gave me the kick in the rear to start again?  Well, I took a time management course last Thursday (today is Tuesday) and they gave us some very good techniques to use to help us achieve our priorities.  One of the things that was taught in the class was that every week we need to "Sharpen Our Saw".  What this means is that I need time for myself to rejuvenate so that  I can be refreshed to accomplish the tasks I set out to do.  As part of this, we are to pick one thing out of each of the following categories and do it each week.  The categories are Physical, Emotional/Social, Mental and Spiritual.  I picked journaling for the mental part.  The others I picked were walk (haven't started it yet), play on the wii (guilty pleasure) and work on my sermon (which I also haven't started and I am doing on Sunday).  Let's pray that I can continue because I felt it was really fulfilling when I did it last summer.

I have been playing table tennis more the last 2 years than I had previously.  When I was in high school and college, I played all of time.  However, school and actuarial exams got in the way.  Well, I finally finished actuarial exams, so now I have more time to play.  We have had a company tournament in our office the last two years.  Last year, I finished 4th, but my performance was not as good this time finishing 12th.  I felt like I was actually playing better this year, but just didn't perform as well that day.  I have decided that I am going to start competing in tournaments again starting with the Show-Me Games in July.  However, I don't just want to show up and get beat.  I want to actually win some matches.  Therefore, yesterday, I called a person who was advertising private lessons.  He is down in Kansas City, but he said that he is able to teach me over the noon hour if I give him enough notice.  I look forward to meeting him.  Not only will he teach me skills to improve my game, he also has some good stories about the history of table tennis in the Kansas City area.

As I mentioned in the last paragraph, this year, I passed my last actuarial exam.  This was a long (sometimes off and on) process that went on for 12.5 years.  My goal was to achieve fellowship in both the Casualty Actuarial Society and the Society of Actuaries.  Currently there are only 33 people that have achieved both.  I still have one requirement left, however, before I will be a fellow of the SOA.  I will be going to a course called the Fellowship Admissions Course July 9-11, and on the evening of July 11, I will become an FSA (Fellow of the Society of Actuaries).  It has been a long ride, but I am finally glad to be done.

I look forward to sharing each and every day.