Now I'm in a rhythm - three days in a row! I find that I can remember a lot better at 9 PM today rather than at 9 AM tomorrow what happened today.
This was a day of blogging, corresponding, transcribing, PDFing and reminiscing. All great genealogy activities, right?
8:00 AM: Read email and Bloglines. Posted my second article about what Dick and Myrtle predicted for The Future of Genealogy on Genea-Musings, then wrote and posted the third - "The Future of Genealogy - My Turn." That was fun, but challenging. I'm not a visionary it seems - kind of a glass half-full guy.
10:30 AM: I almost went to the library to do the obituary lookup, but figured I can go tomorrow. Why do something today that I can do tomorrow when I'm going out anyway? So I answered an email from a distant Seaver cousin who saw my genealogy reports on my web site at www.genealogy.com/users/s/e/a/Randy-Seaver/ - I made a report for his Lucy Seaver ancestry and sent it off. Lunch time - soup, cookies, apple - all set for a heavy transcribing session!
12:30 PM: Read email and Bloglines. Wrote two more posts for Genea-Musings on NARA and Footnote from email information. Found the probate record files that I brought home from the FHC last Saturday. I labelled the files "John Pray - Smithfield RI," "Job Card - Charlestown RI," and "Susanna Barber - Charlestown RI" with a page number from the microfilms. Then I opened my FamilyTreeMaker file, found John Pray, and put the Notes page on the top half of my screen. I opened the TIF files of the John Pray probate record pages in my photo program, and put each enlarged page in the bottom half of my computer screen. Then I transcribed the five pages of handwritten information into my Notes from the enlarged photo file. This file was fairly easy to read, except the right margin on two photos was cut off on the microfilm image so I had to guess or use ??? for parts of words on some lines.
3:00 PM: Read email and Bloglines. Opened the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe blog and posted the 411.com article and wrote the "CVGS Events for November 2007" post. Did a Google search on the Scism family in Dutch Colony New York trying to find Elsje Scism's ancestry - she is a great-grandmother of my Cornelia Bresee. Didn't have much luck - there is one mention of her in a message board post. I need to check some of the databases. Nap time.
7:00 PM: Tonight I need to make PDF versions of my four "Genealogy Online" seminar presentations and the syllabus so we can put them on CDROMs for people who have ordered them in CVGS. This took a long time because the OpenOffice files were 10 to 20 mb in size, and that translated to 2-0-40 mb in PDF format. I essentially crashed the computer by having too many things going on - had to shut down, reboot and work on only one thing at a time. That really worked - I could have saved a lot of time by having only one thing going on in the computer.
While I was doing that, I decided to review some of the stuff that I got from my Aunt Geraldine's estate. I promised my cousins that I would scan all of the papers and pictures and send them a CDROM for Christmas. I need to get started on that! I went through the papers, her photo album and the loose pictures, and there is quite a number of things to scan. There were several pictures of my father as a boy, and of my family when I was a boy, and my family when I was a parent. She essentially saved everything anybody sent to her and put them in envelopes by family. Unfortunately, they are sort of mixed in together in some cases. There are also nice photos of Gerry as she grew up, and some, but not many, photos of her parents and grandparents.
9:15 PM: Now it's time to journal for the day, hoping I can remember what I did. How long will Blogger keep this stuff online - anybody know? What? Forever? Or until the lights go out at Blogger. I guess I'd better save the monthly archives, eh? Off to read my book and watch ER tonight. I'll check statistics later.
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