Genealogy Journal - 03/03/09

It's a square root day! 03 x 03 = 09. The next one is in 2016 (04 x 04 = 16). A cynic would say that the square root of 2009 is 44.822, so who cares! I digress.

After reading email and blogs, I posted Tombstone Tuesday - Aaron Smith in Medfield MA from my collection of ancestral tombstone photos. I wrote the Celebrate Your Name Week post, and scheduled it for later in the morning, then I went in and got cleaned up. I came back and wrote Genealogy Search Engines: FamilySearch Record Search - Post 3: Specific Database Search and scheduled it for the afternoon. I ate lunch at my desk, posted Genealogy Days in Chula Vista - March 2009 on the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe blog, and answered some emails, reorganized some computer files, and at 12:30 p.m. I left for the dental cleaning at 1 p.m. I was home soon after 2 p.m.

I read email, blogs and Facebook, tweeted about the FSRS post, then decided to work on my sources in my database some more. I have almost all of the (VR) references modified now, but still have the actual "sources" to do - I need to go through the notes and pick out the vital, land, probate, etc. sources hiding in my database for thousands of persons. It seems like an endless task - 20 years of poor sourcing coming home to roost! I called the OASIS lady and said I would do the Beginning computer Genealogy class in May, and emailed the ProGen homework to my group before dinner. At 5 p.m., I went into watch TV, read the paper and eat dinner, then read the latest NGS Magazine.

I was back to the desktop by 6:30, and decided to think about a Beginning Genealogy summary and lecture series for CVGS and other opportunities. I searched my computer files for what I've already written, and collected from online sources, and reorganized my file folders to get everything for Beginning Genealogy in one place. I have a good concept of what I want to do for the summary lecture, but the series will take a lot more work. I want to tie lecture and demonstration to homework and class participation, but cannot use the Internet in many venues. I checked Facebook, read several of Tom Kemp's presentations, wrote See You at the Escondido Family History Fair?, wrote up my newsletter articles and emailed them to Shirley, sent some screen shots to a correspondent asking for military records of a Seaver, then wrote this post.

Genealogy today was 10.0 hours - 0.5 hour doing email, 0.5 hour reading blogs, 0.5 hour on Facebook, 3.0 hours researching and writing blog posts, 0.5 hour doing CVGS newsletter articles, 0.5 hour on Seaver correspondence, 2.0 hours on database sources, 0.5 hour on OASIS, 1.5 hour looking for Beginning genealogy stuff, and 0.5 hour looking at Tom Kemp's presentations.