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When I joined Facebook awhile back, I thought it would be interesting to create a group for the Kneb family, just to see what would happen.
Well it took 6 months but finally one of our long lost cousins in France found us! We knew instantly we were related because really, how many people could there be out there with a last name like ours?!
It’s been an interesting couple of days as we’ve traced back our lineages in funny exchanges of half-English and half-French. Michel and I have figured out that our great-great-grandfathers, Benedykt (mine) and Guillaume (his – probably ‘Wilhelm’ in Poland) were brothers. One of Guillaume’s progeny emigrated to France and another to Brazil, hence the growth of those branches.
In one of our messages, Michel told me to go search our family name on ‘Orkut’ and I’d find more Knebs.
Or-What???
Apparently there are places in this world where people aren’t inundated with pokes, Funwall posts and invitations to join inane applications which enable you to throw sheep at one another.
Places like Brazil and India.
‘Cause that’s where Orkut enjoys a strange and wild popularity.
Orkut is an Internet social network service which is run by Google and named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. [...] Similar to Facebook, Friendster and MySpace, Orkut goes a step further by permitting the creation of easy-to-set-up simple forums (called “communities”) of users. Source: Wikipedia
Run by GOOGLE, no less!?
Orkut has been around since October 2006 January 2004. That’s almost 2 years after the around the same time as the birth of Facebook which is, as you probably know, the number one time-sucker for North Americans. It was purported to have over 67 million users in August 2007!
So how come lil’ ol’ me here in Canada had never heard of Orkut until today?
Should I be embarrassed?
I did consider myself to be relatively Web 2.0-saavy. I mean, I know about Twitter and Pownce and smugmug and Ooma and Lypp and a whole bunch of other stuff with really stupid names. Am I losing touch?
Apparently there’s no need to worry. Orkut was just an unfortunate victim of one of those freak phenomenons where one country goes ga-ga over an application/trend/way of life, to the exclusion of everyone else.
Orkut is the most visited website in Brazil, being more visited than Google Brazil, number 2 on the list. In total visits, Google is probably still more popular since it appears as the second (the Brazilian version) and seventh most visited site (the international version). The initial target market for orkut was the United States, but the majority of its users are in Brazil. In fact, as of January 2008, 55.32% of the traffic come from Brazil, followed by 16.53% from India. Source: Wikipedia
So it makes perfect sense that while me and my Canadian cousins were writing on each other’s walls and inviting each other to ‘slap, hug or tickle’ one another on Facebook, our Brazilian relatives were leaving each other ‘scraps’ on Orkut.
Though we don’t really know much about it over on this side of the pond, Orkut may one day turn out to be a social networking heavyweight to be reckoned with here, too.
In the meantime, now that a couple of us Knebs have bridged the gap between the branches of our family tree, it will be interesting to see what middle ground we will choose.
Maybe *gasp!* it will be good ol’ fashioned… email??
Growing up, my brother and I always figured dad didn’t really care for Christmas.
When we were in my teens, he refused to put up Christmas lights on the trees outside. He always grumbled when my mom would excavate the umpteen boxes of wreaths, ribbons, bows and Santa cookie jars from the basement. And he always put up a fuss about mom chopping down a tree off the property at El Rancho (by herself!.. what a woman!) saying it was such a waste.
But now, thinking back on it all, I think he was just being clever.
After all, it got him out of stringing up all those lights in the freezing cold; it wasn’t cruel – I suppose my brother and I were old enough to do it. It gave him an excuse to excuse himself from climbing the ladder to wrap the banisters and later, the ledge high up in the living room, with wreaths and lights. And it got him out of dragging a tree a quarter of a mile through bumpy, snowy banks.
Ah yes, my father is a wise man. Mind you, we always noted that though he may have complained during the preparations, he always seemed to enjoy enormously sitting beside the lit Christmas tree and crackling fireplace with an amber-hued glass in his hand.
And then I got these photos from my sister-in-law a couple weeks ago.
And I’ve realized that my dad has finally embraced Christmas with all his might.
Or so I thought…
When Martin & Anna got married, my dad started shopping for a sleigh. Once he found the perfect one at some auction or other, he brought it home and spent the next two winters refinishing it. Then he bought a thoroughbred mare last year specifically to pull it (all his other horses are quarter horses).
So when Anna brought Ella to the Ranch for a visit this year, Dad was prepared. He pulled out the sleigh, donned this red and white santa suit, and took everyone for a ride.
My heart almost overflowed when I saw those pictures. Dad really is a softy after all..!
Then, when I went back home for the holidays, one night I couldn’t sleep and started digging dig through some old photo albums.
Lo and behold, I stumbled upon a picture which I never really paid attention to before, but with this recent picture of dad in his sleigh in my mind, it took on new meaning.
I recognized the Santa suit in the picture taken this December.
It was the same one he had worn almost thirty years ago when I was a little girl. The only difference now is that he has his own white beard.
I guess he loved Christmas all along. It just took his first grandchild to bring it out again.
Finally.
The cat’s out of the bag, and the beans are spilled. We finally told Rob’s parents last night and WHEW…what a relief!
I like to think that I can keep a secret pretty well.
I never did say anything when we were kids and used to play a game that consisted of throwing eggs around until someone missed (and hilarity ensued, ha ha!) and my mom would muse aloud, “So strange that the chickens don’t seem to be laying very well these days…?!”. I kept my mirth to myself.
Or the time (or rather… times…) my little brother snuck out of the house to go party with his rowdy buddies and rolled the car all the way down the driveway in the dead of night so my parents wouldn’t hear him. I didn’t breathe a word though I had many opportunities (I think may have been secretly proud/in awe of his daredevil ways).
Oops.
How is it that when there’s something you know you can’t say, it is the only thing that keeps popping up in your mind and you feel an irrational desire to BLURT OUT THAT VERY THING YOU KNOW YOU CAN’T?!
We picked up Rob’s parents from the airport last night after two weeks of frolicking in Mexico – two very tortured weeks for us two pour souls, having to keeping our mouths shut (or so they would have been tortured had not the news itself been so happy in its very nature). It just didn’t feel real until we told them, especially since we got to share the news in person with my family moments afterwards, as we were up at El Rancho for Thanksgiving with the whole Kneb Clan.
In the car on the way to their house, every question Rob’s parents asked seemed uncannily steeped in innuendo (but only to paranoid ol’ me, you see). Their lighthearted “So what’s new?” made me bite my lip and look away while I replied, “Oh, you know, same old, same old”, and their innocent inquiry of how my parents were made me squirm in my seat and my face heat up as I told what I knew was a largely downplayed “Oh, they’re really good.”
Really good? Really GOOD?! My parents were teary eyed and buoyed with emotion that must have surpassed the human capacity for joy, and all I could say was, ‘really good’?!!!?
Wow, I suck at lying.
So I’m glad it’s finally out and I can smile widely at all and sundry without check.
Rob and I are engaged!
And it’s so hard not to be nauseatingly blissful about it.
Photo courtesy of Duaner
Rob and I are back from our weekend in Calgary/El Rancho. Apart from the fresh layer of SNOW which greeted me upon my arrival Thursday morning (sheesh…! I definitely don’t miss that, that’s for sure) it was sooo lovely! I got to know my funny little niece, communed with the menagerie (llama-llama-ding-dong), had a great birthday dinner for Mama K (which even her granddaughter attended) and spent some quality time with Nenny and Ania. I won’t bore you with details, the pictures say it so much better. Here are pics for the Ella fans and here are some from the ranch.
Bonus:
I met my darling niece yesterday for the first time. I told her all about the fun things we would do together one day – shoe shopping and sipping pink martinis and gossiping about the boys who were in love with her and talking about all the funny things her dad (my brother) did when we were kids, and oh, the list goes on and on. I can’t wait… (only about 15 years or so to go!)
She is so beautiful I can barely stand it. Beautiful and already very hilarious – check out the funny puckered lips she was making when she first laid eyes on her favorite ciocia (well ok, one of many favorites). I think I made quite the impression.
Apologies in advance for the excessive cooing… I didn’t know Robbie was taping and it really is amazing the sounds that just come out of nowhere when someone puts a baby in your arms.
Rob and I are up at El Rancho today eating yummy cakes, playing with puppies and baby bunnies and making fun of the four atrocious-looking llamas that dad bought on a whim a few weeks back (…”but they are great lawn ornaments!”) and will be heading back for more fun times with Ella in Calgary tomorrow. More pictures coming soon.
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