More Toys

Just when I had thought the Christmas season was finally over, I received one more gift. Perhaps I had prematurely discounted Epiphany.

Flipping open my email, in that lazy holiday weekend sort of way, I was jolted out of my reverie by the arrival of an announcement from AncestryDNA.

That DNA test result they had promised would take them six to eight weeks to process? The one I mailed in mid December?

Yeah, that one.

They're done. I now have the results, ethnicity estimates and eighty two matches at the level of fourth cousin or closer.

Just ducky. I now have another toy er, tool to add to the genealogy toolbox.

There's only one problem with that, though: when I sent the return mail back to AncestryDNA in the middle of last month, I didn't mail just one package. There were two. And just like that time our family mailed off three passport applications with one that really, really, REALLY needed to get done quickly, guess which one didn't finish first?

I'm beginning to get that hazy déjà vu feeling.

Fortunately, my DNA sample did make it to the AncestryDNA lab about three days after my husband's did. Hopefully, that will calculate out to a three day delay in getting my results back.

What's really good about this unexpected (half of a) surprise is that, after deciding to snag that holiday sale at AncestryDNA, I realized—too late—that it would have been a wonderful thing to have the results in pocket in time for my genetic genealogy class at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. After all, we'll have an entire week's worth of classes focused specifically on how to use DNA test results for genealogical purposes.

Thus, the gift of this early arrival. It couldn't have been more perfectly timed.

Which reminds me of the one other task I had planned on completing before heading to SLIG: upload my DNA data to GEDmatch. (If that last sentence sounds like alphabet soup to you, take a peek at The Legal Genealogist Judy Russell's explanation of what GEDmatch does.) And that, in the true manner of the genealogical guinea pig that I am, I will save for a review in tomorrow's post.