Legends of the Falls

I found this site that will map out the prevalence of your surname in countries around the world.

Here’s the map for Fall and the legend that goes with it (a real Legend of the Falls – pun intended).

This came as a real surprise to me. I have seen lots of references to Falls from Somalia, so I expected something to pop up there. I also thought Fall was of German ancestry so I would have expected an appearance there. But not Canada and Sweden. Food for thought.

NOTE: I did a little digging and discovered Africa hasn’t been indexed yet so no Somalians is understandable. Also, the name is of Celtic (Irish) origin so the United Kingdom over Germany is now understandable.

Now, for an even bigger surprise, it turns out that Larry is the most popular Fall forename (with Lisa and Christopher 2nd and 3rd). Now that I never would have guessed. I am reasonably sure that Abdou and Papa belong to the branch of the Falls who have emigrated out of Somalia.

If you go to the site, you can actual drill down to the country and state level.

and this chart that I put up for a short while

Well they were made a little over a year ago (more like 14 months to be a little more specfic)

Unfortunately, my exercise campaign only lasted a couple of months until my “unretirement” in the Beer Mile last Labor Day.

The good news was that my weight didn’t balloon back up. I pretty much fluctuated around 220-225.

At the end of last spring, I decided to try to drop some more weight.. Things get pretty quiet around State College following spring graduation (mid May) up until the kids come back for the second summer session (end of June), so around Memorial Day I decided to go into one of my “no drinking” phases for the month of June. I also started watching what I ate a little more closely (nothing too health nut serious, mostly cutting back on the amount of red meat, eating a lot more chicken and sometimes fish).

I was very please with the results. By the end of June, without too much sacrifice my weight got down to 215. Rather than end my “fast” as originally planned, I started extrapolating and figured that I could quite possibly break 200 by Labor Day.

Since then, I’ve modified the plan a little, i,e, the complete teetotaling has gone by the wayside. As often as not, I’ll have a beer or two after my men’s league golf on Wednesday and I will drink during “special occasions”, maybe every second or third weekend.

While there were a couple of moment where I wonder if I could make it, I am proud to announce that my scale read 199.5 when I stepped on it this morning. Mission accomplished. I can now go out and celebrate for the Holiday Weekend and first football game of the season (and probably recoil in horror when I get on the scale Tuesday morning but that’s a problem for another day).

I honestly don’t remember that last time that I was under 200. Has to be about 15 years ago. I know when I was training for my marathon (sometime around 1987) I was about 188 but I started putting the weight on after it.

I’m not sure how much longer, if at all, I’ll try to keep losing weight but I am at least going to try to stay under 200.

Now I have to go back and see if I can reclaim at least some of my UncleLar party image that I lost over weight loss campaign. 🙂

Today, Lex roamed centerfield at Yankee Stadium. He’s in the bright yellow T-shirt, seen clearly in the 2nd shot.

The coaches were:
Mike Torrez – Pitching
Ron Blomberg – Hitting
Micky Rivers – Fielding

Very cool day. I hope Lex enjoyed it.