As hobbies go, genealogical research is not exactly on par with snowboarding -- it ranks right up there with stamp collecting in its total lack of "cool" factor. Does anything really say "geek" more than an obsession with family trees?

But that's me -- genealogy freak (and geek). Even as a kid, I was fascinated by charts that showed relationships and family lineage and my great sea of cousins and second cousins, most of whom I would never meet.

I was obsessed with the grandparents who'd come from Ireland as very young adults (some still teenagers), never to see their own parents again. I felt their loss as my own, in that my family history seemed to begin with their immigration. Somewhere between Ireland and New York I found a hard line of mystery: I knew nothing of my great-grandparents, and I felt cut off from my own ancestry.

Read the complete blog entry - and find out why genealogy is such a spectacularly bad hobby for a gay adoptive parent - on ParentDish.