olympics

R. is watching speed skating right now (possibly tivo'd from a previous night). I notice a Canadian woman speedskater and was about to ask if this is the one he was talking about the other day, who was training with the men rather than the women, but he says no, this has some different last name. It shows up on the screen, Klassen, and I'm going, geez, where do I know that last name from. Oh, yeah. A significant fraction of my Mennonite relatives in Canada have that last name. A little googling indicates that yes, she's from Manitoba, and the "Mennonite Brethren Collegiate Institute" has a page about her:

http://mbci.mb.ca/community/alumni/cindy-klassen/

Her heritage is almost certainly very, very Dutch. Surprise. And given the way Mennonites in Canada work, almost guaranteed that we share an ancestor within a half dozen generations, max.