I had this problem come up a few times since I've moved to Ontario. How do I refer to some of my more distant and differently connected family when talking about them to other people? Living closer, and interacting more, with a greater array of my families relatives is really cool but ultimately brings up the problem that I never know the exact term for people. When I was younger I called most of them aunt and uncle (and still do with most of my dad's cousins who live in Tofino) but now that I am older, and my age is closer to some of these people, this won't work.
Just today I read a
really cool post from Lifehacker (one of my favorite blogs). It talked about using the "computational knowledge engine"
Wolfram-Alpha (similar to searching through a encyclopedia.. ?? but with the ability to do math or compare things?) to understand familial connections.. so I searched "mom's cousin's son" and got this:
Mystery solved.
As a note this little dude is a German incense burner that my mom got on our family trip to the Maritimes. You put a little cone of incense in the body and he "smokes", though this picture it kinda looks like his souls is escaping! The first time we did this we let the whole cone burn down and the house stunk! the next time we restricted mom to a short time .. and cracked a window.