Saturday, December 15, 2007

Genea-Journal - 12/15/07

Once I got going, I was a blogging fool today! It was fun. I like laughing.

The morning started early with breakfast at 7 AM at Carrow's with Linda's swim buddies - this is a monthly occurrence. It was their Christmas gift giving party, so there were 10 in attendance, including 4 spouses (who don't get gifts, but can munch the goodies anyway). It was also Linda's birthday month, so she got birthday gifts too - what a haul! Then I went to my Men's Bible study at Jimmy's, but didn't eat. I got home about 9:30 AM.

I started reading my email and bloglines, but quickly got sidetracked by Thomas MacEntee's blog post about the "12 Daze of Christmas." I laughed really hard! Before I knew it, I'd Googled to find the lyrics and posted them, plus several more "12 Days..." songs, plus some YouTube videos on my Randy's Busy Life blog. Two hours flew by pretty quickly...back to Bloglines, and then I wrote my Advent Calendar post about "Christmas at School" on Genea-Musings, and quickly followed it up with my own "12 Days of Genealogy Christmas". That done, I spent almost an hour writing my book review of "The Genetic Strand" trying to remember the details without re-reading it - I finished it last week.

By now it was lunch time, so I ate lunch and then answered an email - the one about the cemetery vault architect - I sent three pictures to my correspondent. It turns out that she lives near where my Seaver and Read families lived in Sudbury MA in the 1700s. I went in and took a nap, then Linda came home and did her email, so I watered the plants in front for the first time in two weeks (it has rained several times in that period, but the entryway plants are under the eaves of the roof - they were dry!).

I was back online around 4 PM. My email correspondent wondered how her architect grandmother got together with the rich Keck family in San Diego, so I started to trace both lines back to see if I could find the intersection. I found 1930 census records for both families, but in different places. I also found a WW I draft registration card for the architect's husband, who died in 1922. Then I found an obituary for the grandmother in 1964 and for her mother in 1950 (but it didn't give the mother's first name, only that she was Mrs. William ...). Frustration! Time for dinner, so we went out to Panera in Otay Ranch and ate, then shopped for an hour at Wal-Mart.

We were home at 7 PM, and I worked a bit more trying to find the families in the records with little success. I emailed the CVGS roster to remind them of renewals and such, plus wished them all Happy Holidays. Linda worked her email at 9 PM so I watched the PBS Doo-Wop fundraiser special and read my CIA book. At 9:30, I got back to the search, and didn't find much new, but I had fun doing it. Now it's 10:30 and I'm done for the night.

Genealogy today -- 5.5 hours total, including 1.0 hour genealogy blogging, 0.5 hour doing CVGS work, 1.0 hour reading email and Bloglines, and 3.0 hours doing research for my correspondent. I didn't count the fun time finding and posting "12 Daze..." songs.

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