Genealogy Journal - 08/07/08

Tomorrow's the big day of all 8's - 08/08/08. Will anybody find 8 new ancestors? Or post 8 blog articles? There's something to shoot for, eh?

I was up and at the computer by 9 a.m. this morning, after working in the side yard to help prepare for the fence painting. After reading my email and blogs, I pondered what to write, and settled on the UGA Conference announcement, because it sounded interesting. I went on Facebook for awhile and read the GB Games directions. I knew today was the deadline for the GBG flag, so I made my flag and posted my event selections on The Genea-Blogger Games are ON! I'm calling it the Genealympics, but no one else is yet.

I decided I'd better get cracking on my Project O (shorthand for a surname starting with O), and reviewed everything I did before and the OpenOffice Impress presentation file. I decided to write my report in Impress also, so I started adding text pages around the pictures and screen shots. Lunch time came and I had baloney, grapes, and choc pudding and came back for more research. I read email and noticed the article about the Neanderthal-Sapiens link back 660,000 years ago, so I posted They Found Ydnar, my 24,880th cousin, 1,520 times removed. Who's Ydnar, you ask? Ask Randy C, he told me it was copyrighted. Back to Project O for most of the afternoon. Eureka (or is it Yreka?) -- Footnote has a needed naturalization record that may crack this case wide open. Drat - I can't get to it, I'll have to go to the FHC on Saturday to capture it. In the search process, I found a glitch in Rootsweb's Message Board search function, and wrote about it here. 5 p.m. - where did the time go? I went in and had dinner, watched the news and read the paper. I went out and watered the front plants, then came back to the computer.

My email has piled up, and I have several CVGS queries to complete. I emailed three queryists with the results of my investigation. I went on Expedia and Travelocity to check airfares for the October cruise trip, and they're still pretty reasonable, $179 San Diego to New York, and $230 San Juan to San Diego. Hotels in NYC are really expensive - we're thinking of four nights there, but I'm not sure I want to pay $1,000 for a small room, queen bed and no wireless Internet. At 8, I went for a walk to clear the cobwebs. When I came back, I attacked my email list again, and whittled it down pretty good. I did some online investigation for two correspondents who are probably cousins, but we can't find the connections. Time to wrap this up and go read my mystery book.

Genealogy today was 11.0 hours - 1.0 hour doing email, 0.5 hour reading blogs, 1.0 hour on Facebook, 1.5 hours writing blog posts, 4.0 hours on research project O, 1.0 hours on other research projects, 1.0 hour on CVGS queries, and 1.0 hour looking for flights and hotels. Ah - a full and varied genealogy day. I actually got a lot done!