Happy Belated Birthday, Margaret.

For the love of geneology! Oh for tracking down every last bit of your blood lines until you're absolutely sure you're related to Jesus' mistress...

For me, the buck stops at majorly obsessing over the origin of first names. (Though if I were seriously going to ponder the family tree, I'm sure the tricks of the geneology trade could yield very intriguing and personal information like the Jewish grandfather I've never met). When I was something like 11, I purchased a "baby names" book from this skeezy bookstore in an even skeezier mall and upon ringing me up the clerk asked if I was expecting. No, I explained, I just like to write stories and I like for my characters to have names with distinct meanings. He was probably just as embarrassed as I was. Because of that episode, I hesitate to call first names "baby names" because they aren't baby names for very long...we kind of have them well beyond those baby years (months?).

Since those days, I've turned into a name snob -- I hate trendy names and names that have been fucked with by really bad spellers. My name, Margaret, is of Greek origin (margaritos), and means "pearl." So classy, so prepster, and so your grandma's grandma's name, right? Teehee! But did you know that my name has a birthday?? June 10! And yours has one, too. --Pending your parents didn't make it up.

In other, but totally related, news, I just found out that my mom has a Great Aunt Dagny...Dagny being Norwegian for "brightness, joy." Love that name! Must remember that if I ever have girls beyond my intended Lillian and Helen. Teehee!*

*You can never have too many teehees! in a blog posting.