Tag Archive: cousin


I live in Los Angeles, CA. My friend who lives and works in Washington DC announced on Facebook that she has a new Twitter account name, so I entered that into the Twitter Find People feature, and followed her. We otherwise were Facebook friends, but I had not been following her on Twitter.

Within minutes, my email showed that she was following me, too. We exchanged Direct Messages. I told her I barely ever used Twitter to announce what I was doing, but preferred to use it like little emails, just for Direct Messages.

My cousin Steve also lives and works in DC. She wrote back the following: “Your cousin Steve (I think) was my Mac instructor the other day. How do I know? We were in my email and he saw you sent me a message.” I immediately thought: The Odds Must Be Crazy 🙂

[EDITOR: The same thing happened to me last week. Only instead of Twitter it was on <CENSORED> and instead of my Mac instructor it was my <CENSORED>. But otherwise exactly the same.]

(Submitted by friend of the blog, Kathleen Scott)

My husband’s grandfather got into genealogy and tracked down their surname – Engstrom. It’s a regional uncommon alternative spelling of Angstrom. In the ’30s most of the Engstroms had moved to Chicago.

My grandfather moved to Los Angeles in the ’30s but his brother stayed in South Africa. I’ve started to meet the SA contingent through Facebook. Including one Colin Engstrom Scott.

I can’t tell you how weird it was to see my husband’s uncommon surname as my 2nd cousin’s (x times removed) middle name especially as he was born and raised in South Africa. Turns out it’s his maternal grandmother’s surname and that she came from this same area in Sweden.