One of my interests and I wouldn't say its a

hobby is genealogy. I more or less have things sorted out on my mothers side but things are a bit murky on dad's side. So the yesterday what with nothing much better to do, I did a bit of digging. My grandfather had the same name as me: James Shannon. His initial was B for Blaine. There's a bit of a write up on "Find a grave." Something will come up if you Google the name. Including myself I can trace back 4 generations. The earliest is a James Shannon residing in Fort Greene area of Brooklyn 1815-1885. The building he lived in and the address is still there over 175 years later. Impressive. I did a bit more digging but I hit a break wall. Tax records were recorded in pencil in the early 1800's so not much survived. Most likely there would be no hospital records because most (I'm assuming) babies were born at home. It'd be cool to find out what James Shannon did for a living, what were his interests, who his parents were that kind of thing.

On this day 30 years ago was Black Friday. Our F4 tornado that killed 21 people here in Edmonton. I was 35 years old at the time, working with the Army and Navy warehouse in what is now called Cobogo lofts. I recall that day as we had our coffee break at 3pm and I'd often go to this little basement cafe in the Revlon building. It was a slow day. We had credit at "Joe's," and I was just coming back with my take out order through the big green doors. Bob was my co-worker and he had his desk by the back receiving bay door where we'd get all of our truck shipments. Coming through the doors Bob had said something about a Tornado. I was more interested in eating my first meal of the day. After lunch I asked Bob what was it again, something about a tornado? After he filled me in I got the idea to go upstairs to the roof to see if I could see anything. More on this after wrestling.
       After work at 4:30pm on that day I still had no idea to what extent this tornado had on the city. When I headed up to the corner where Fox towers one sits on 102nd Ave to the bus stop, it was perfectly calm outside. When I got off my bus a 9710 156th street, the wind and rain picked up. My suite was on the top floor there in the centre of this google street view picture. The building next door at the time was a house with a picket fence and some beautiful trees. I had some business with the caretaker at the time so I went to her 2nd floor suite facing the back.The one pictured here on the 2nd floor by the stairwell. I knocked on the door and she brought me over to the big window to look at the clouds over the trees. Some of those clouds had green tints in them. After I did my business I went upstairs to catch the news. About 10 minutes later I got a knock on my door from the caretaker saying my mom and dad were on the phone calling from Coquitlam where I grew up. They said it took some doing to get a contact # but they were able to call me to make sure I was ok. They were more up to date then I was but the rest of the news filled me in. It was an event I'll never forget. Anyway, that's all for now.