I caught the genealogy bug nearly 20 years ago. Not a typical thing for a single guy in his (then) twenties. Now married, my wife tolerates but does not share my obsession. Shame, since she has some really potentially interesting family lines to research.
The thing about searching for your family tree is that you never know quite what you might find! I saw a great blog entry today on The Genealogue that I had to share. It quotes an article in the Saturday Times about one such search:
Maurice Kellner, a county officer for Genuki, the genealogical body for the UK and Ireland, reports how he helped a woman in Tasmania seeking facts about her family connection to the village of Wappenham, near Towcester. He found that one of her ancestors had been sentenced to be transported to Australia for committing unnatural acts with a cow. “I’m not sure if she was grateful or not because she never contacted me back,” he says. [Link]
I may have some characters in my background, but that's not something I've yet found!