Seriously, those bags of mixed chocolate are a total nuisance. Everyone knows what I am talking about -- the Hershey's minis bags that have milk chocolate bars, Krackel, and Mr. Goodbar. We have them in the office all the time, and there is a natural pecking order:

1. Krackel. Hurry up or you might not get any of these.

2. Hershey's Milk Chocolate. The old standby -- not bad.

3. (intentionally left blank). Blast! All yellow wrappers.

I've been working on my family history for a while now, and recently have made a number of breakthroughs that are really exciting. Some websites like ancestry.com and ellisisland.org have a lot of original documents scanned that give the feel of actually leafing through these intricate and old papers that each may have some tiny nugget of personally meaningful information.

I have a very distinctive last name, so much so that anyone with it is guaranteed to be related to me. Basically, this is because it is a completely made up last name, but the original name has remained a mystery. Anyone who might have known what it was is already dead, so I had always assumed I would never know it. Part of my research has led me down a path where I've discovered the following:

1. There is a branch of my family that I never knew about, living across the country with a slightly different name, and either they didn't know about us or have been craftily hiding from us for generations. We're talking about probably 100 or so people by now.

2. I've stumbled upon what may very well be the original last name. It actually corroborates an old tale my grandfather told us all, which was the only fragment of information we had -- that our ancestor gave a name to the ship captain, and after arriving in New York it morphed into something else.

3. I can go back as far as a great-great-great grandfather, born around 1850. I think it will be difficult to go back any further than that because wherever my ancestors are from, records of Jewish settlement might never have existed -- but if they did, they could easily have been destroyed because everyone manages to hate us for one reason or another. Can't we all just get along?

But seriously, the truly amazing thing about a project like this, and perhaps you can only know my feelings if you've done this yourself, is piecing together the puzzle of unknowns into a coherent full picture. A lot of "a-ha!" moments, for sure... it has been really gratifying, and I am not even done yet.

I wonder if anyone else has tried this and had similar experiences?