Within one 24-hour period this week, I was contacted by unexpectedly by people I knew, and knew at one point they were going to contact me, but had now figured they gave up on the idea.
The first was Jane, someone that went to school and church with through most of our growing up, and with whom I had some cousins in common (her dad’s brother had married my dad’s sister), and who I seem to remember was briefly my girlfriend (at least in my mind) when I was about four or five. I haven’t seen or talked to her since high school, I don’t think, even though she’s lived here in the Dallas area even before I moved here in 1986. My mom told me some months ago that she had given Jane my number, and that I should expect her call, but I hadn’t heard from her until this week.
One reason that Jane was calling, besides just to get in touch with an old classmate, was to ask if I had ever searched for my birth parents — another thing she and I have in common is that we were both adopted, and through the same adoption agency. I told her that I hadn’t, but that I had done some DNA testing, and discovered some information, for the first time in my life, about my Old World heritage, and that I would highly recommend that she do the same.
The other people that I knew that I was half-surprised to hear from at this point were a couple of the Icelandic distributors of our parent company’s products, whom I met last August after the annual Super Rally, attended by our top salespeople from all over the world. In all my 12 years with the company, I’ve never really had much of an opportunity to chat with any of the foreign visitors, because I was too busy behind the scenes.
Recently, though, as you are aware if you’re a regular reader here, I’ve developed an interest in Iceland, because of my above-mentioned DNA research indicating that my male lineage is what is called Ultra-Norse, and the fact that a lot of the people in the research databases report ancestors from Iceland (as well as Norway and Scotland). I made it a point, then, to watch for the Icelandic nametag-flags during the mass-greeting phase of the tour, and to later approach those people during the slower filtering-back-to-the-buses phase — and, to my surprise, that strategy actually worked: I was able to spot the people initally, and again before they left, and they actually weren’t freaked out by this crazy American who had targeted them like a barn owl on a nest of field mice.
The Icelanders were quite friendly, an older couple, along with their daughter and son-in-law. The father, as it turns out, is an amateur genealogist (that’s very common in that small, tightly-knit country), and was especially interested in my DNA experience. They had their picture taken with me, and wrote down my email address so they could send me a copy.
Well, days turned to weeks, which turned to months, and I just decided that they must have lost my email address, and that I would probably just have to wait until next August (at earliest) to talk to them again.
Then, last week, I got a package from our corporate office. This wasn’t too unusual, but I knew I wasn’t expecting anything.
It turned out to be a photo book — and some picture postcards — of the Icelandic village of Akranes (about a hour’s drive out of Reykjavik), which, you may have guessed, was from Asmundur and Jonina, the genealogist and his wife that I met last summer. He wrote me a nice little letter, so I need to be sure to write back and thank them.
The trouble is, he didn’t give me an email address (although he said last summer he had email, and hey, Iceland has the highest percentage of Internet users in the world), so I guess I’ll have to thank him by snail-mail — even more snailish since it has to go over the Atlantic.
I’m trying to think of something to send them in return; my first thought was something stereotypically Texan — then I remembered that a big part of our distributors’ tour every year is dropping our visitors off at Southfork Ranch, with is the World Capital of Cheesy Stereotypical Texas Tourist Souvenirs, so nothing I could get them could compete with what they’ve already seen …
I’ll just have to think harder to come up with something unique …
In the meantime, it’s great to have a foreign penpal again — I haven’t done this since high school!
I had to watch a lot of TV during my sick leave, including cartoons. I didn’t really care for The Angry Beavers on NickToons, but the theme song is mind-blowing — it’s like Tijuana Brass on way too much Red Bull. I’ve been trying to tell my wife about it, but it’s hard to do it justice with a description.
The first day of summer isn’t that significant in here Dallas, since the high temperatures have been near 100 for a month now, but at least the change of the season means that the days get shorter from here, for the next six months. 
Check this out: 
