Janice Williams Loves Austin

I have two topics tonight:  The new family project I started yesterday and the PAIN I am suffering from.

I’ll start with the pain. Last night Mark had a gig downtown at the Amsterdam Cafe. There was a time I rode with Mark to a lot of his gigs. I would hang out and kill time while he set up his drums, I would watch the whole show, kill more time while he packed up the drums and loaded out, and then ride home with him. Somewhere along the way I wised up and I go separately to a gig if I go at all. Mark told me from the beginning that it wasn’t a requirement and he is working and it doesn’t matter if I am there or not (though he does love to have me there, he assures me). So I decided yesterday that since he was playing with Jackie Bristow, who is very talented and I like her, along with Chip Dolan, a friend of mine, too, that I should go see them play. Also, it was an early start, a short show, and just around the corner from my office, where I wanted to pick up a large framed photo I bought on Friday.

He began to set up and I drove his truck to my parking garage and killed some time on the internet and then, about showtime, I got my photo and went out to the parking garage to put it in the truck before I went to the gig. With hands full, slippy shoes, no free hand to hold the handrail, my foot slipped on the bottom step and I went down, twisting my ankle and banging it and twisting my knee and every other joint in my body and ended up on my bottom on the garage floor. Ow. Good thing:  The framed/glassed photo did NOT break.

I sat a long time debating calling 9-1-1 or information for the security guard number of the building. I didn’t want to call Mark because he should have just been starting the gig. Eventually, I tested everything and didn’t think anything was broken and I got up and hobbled back to the security desk. The very sweet guard got me a chair and an ice pack and bandaged the ice pack to my ankle. We talked a long while and then I did some flexing and testing and decided I was able (if only barely) to go to the gig.

I have a lot more sympathy now for people that cross the crosswalk ever so slowly (unless they are on their cell phone). I waited until traffic was nonexistent to cross at the crosswalk and I slowly made it across. With nothing to lean on, that was probably the most difficult part of the walk. I clung to the Norwood Tower wall the next block. I’m sure diners in Perry’s Steakhouse wondered why this drunk woman was grasping at their windows with a pained look on her face. I rounded the corner at the gig and Jackie and Chip were outside. They had not started yet. That was good in that I could tell Mark why I was walking this way. He got me a good seat and I propped my foot up high and enjoyed the music until he could get packed up and get me out of there.

A night of rest did wonders and I’m much better today. I’m still not making any land speed records and I am avoiding walking to the other end of the house if I can. But, yes, this has made me KEENLY aware that we are among the nation’s uninsured. We don’t want to be, but Blue Cross is taking their sweet time deciding if we (well, really Mark) is healthy enough to insure. Anyone who doesn’t think the insurance industry needs reform or our government shouldn’t get involved and help people find insurance, not just affordable insurance, hasn’t been laid off and lost their insurance. Oh, wait, I was going to stick to two topics tonight, wasn’t I?
Now, on to the family project that I told you about yesterday and is on the web here.  What I hoped would happen happened fast. Just by starting the project, I got enthusiastic. Yesterday I wrote about Pitt Williams, my great-great-grandfather. My intention was (and really, still is) to just write down everything I know off the top of my head and then go back and do the details later. I’ve learned that when I start putting in details and parents names and brothers and sisters and on and on, I get bogged down. Or, when I try to cite my sources in detail, I realized I don’t HAVE sources so I go in search of the information again to cite the source. So yesterday I just wrote about Pitt Williams and then today I wrote about his wife Nancy. But immediately I got back into my genealogy programs and started filling in the details and adding more bits of information and some pictures. I don’t want anyone to have to read it over and over and see the differences, so maybe you’ll just want to come back and read it when it is all done. But my plan/hope is to write what I know in my head about one person a day. I’ll start with 16 great-great-grandparents, then do 16 pairs of great-great-great-grandparents (because there’s only a few I know much about the wives) and then come back to the 8 great-grandparents and eventually get to the grandparents and more. So by the end of summer, I should have a lot of sketchy information and I hope I will have gone back and filled in more of the details as I go, too.