Swimming in the DNA pool and trying not to drown.

Woah Nellie!  If you recall I uploaded my Raw DNA files to gedmatch.com and once it processed I have already been contacted by a match.  Upon the recommendation of a friend (waves to Sarah M) I also transferred my files over to familytreedna.com and now I'm really swimming in the DNA pool!  I've really got to wrap my pea-sized brain around all this scientific data.  I'm not sure I'll ever really understand all these sequences and segment and cM.  I don't have the foggiest clue as to what is going on, but I sure am excited about it.

I don't know how much time I have to devote to understanding this DNA thing, but by golly I sure do want to get a better grasp at what's going on.

The only thing that I've been able to determine without a doubt is that I'm 100% European descent. The only thing that pops up that is extremely fascinating is the stuff over on gedmatch.com.  I don't know how, but it's showing up (hundreds of) thousands of years ago...pygmy.  And that makes me happy.

What ya gonna do with all that DNA?

I am self-confessed DNA freak.  Okay, I should make that more accurate, I love the Ancestry.com DNA test.  I've taken it.  I had my husband take it.  Then I gave it as gifts to my paternal grandparents.  Then I got my Dad to do it.  And my maternal aunt.  Then my son wanted to do it.  I got my husband's parents to do it. And now my younger son has done it.  We adore finding out what % of whatever we are.  I enjoy connecting to other cousins with family trees.  I look at it as a way to kind of verify and validate that our family trees are accurate--or if they are wrong we are all wrong together.

Now what to do with this new data?  I am not at all versed in DNA sequences or chromosomes or anything technical at all. I finally got around to loading my raw DNA data from Ancestry.com up to www.gedmatch.com   Now, I just did this today and I've only loaded a few of my kits since it takes a while for each one to process; but I've had some fun with making sure none of my subjects have parents that are related.  I didn't expect them to be, at least not closely, as the family lines branch back in different directions with little to no surnames in common.

I've played around with the eye-color predictor and so far it's been mostly correct.

But back to my question.  What am I to do with this DNA data?  I've used Ancestry.com cousin matches to locate cousins and actually connect with them.  I've used it to try and do a descendant line trying to desperately figure out if my great great grandmother Louella (Ella) was actually a Ledbetter; but I've not really gotten very far with that.

What do you do with all of this DNA data?