Why It Doesn't Start Where It Really Starts

There are five of us in our family, me, my wife and our three kids. I would love to talk at great length about these four wonderful and amazing people, but this blog is mostly about my dead relatives (and the more I think about it, "My Dead Relatives" might have been a better title. "The Three Thousand Project" sounds like some weird hybrid film, part live action, part cartoon, where space aliens fight gladiators. Either that, or one of those earnest Bill Clinton-sponsored efforts to provide every village in Botswana with its own goat. It's confusing, and possibly misleading. Mr. Clinton, if you've stumbled in here, thinking I have some goats ready for export, you're out of luck. And anybody looking for gladiators fighting space aliens, or zombies, or whatever they do in those films, you've come to the wrong place.)

"The Three Thousand Project" paints me into a corner. First of all, who really enjoys projects? "Project" usually involves cleaning several years worth of funk out of a bathroom sink p-trap, or filling 875 old Clorox bottles with water for use in the event of a Natural Disaster, or reorganizing the ward Home Teaching routes, and who wants to do any of that? Second, if I don't scare up three thousand relatives, the whole thing is a lie. It's like those Doomsday preachers: you declare an exact date for the end of the world, you get all your followers to dress in white Stetsons and join you in a field somewhere, and before you know it, it's the morning after The Last Day, and everyone's safe and sound, and you look like a real knucklehead. All you folks who think that the curtain is going down in 2012 because some stone in the Yucatan says so, well, my friends, you're gonna be disappointed. Mayan calendar, my eye.

So "My Dead Relatives" would have been a better choice: it's simple, and straightforward, and there's nary a hint of deadline pressure. And much like my other deadline-less recent projects -- mastering conversational French, completing a hundred mile bicycle ride, giving up red meat -- this one, sans pression, would have died in the electronic equivalent of a pile of Whataburger wrappers and dust covered bike parts. Spilled milk, I guess. "The Three Thousand Project" it is. Game on!

Knowing my kids, the prospect of their lives being discussed in Dad's family history blog would have elicited: a) a sober and serious-minded expression of grave concern over the potential exposure to identity theft posed by this breach of family security; b) a protracted display of outrage over a technologically incompetent middle-aged man's decision to ruin his daughter's life; c) an offer to trade the unlimited use of his image and personal information for a copy of "The Beatles: Rock Band", complete with the Paul McCartney Hofer Violin Bass and the George Harrison Gretsch Duo Jet Guitar (Kid "c" is a wheeler-dealer, but a wheeler dealer with taste).

So I'm leaving them out of it.

Names Added Today:

Me (Page 1, position 1)

Family Group Sheets started: 1 (My Family) 5 family members total

Total Names to Date: 5
Names Left to Go: 2995