My genealogy days - 11 and 12 March 2012

We're only two months away from our Legacy cruise now.

1)  Sunday, 11 March:

*  Read email and blogs, finished up the Best Of post.  Went off to church at 9:30.

*  Home by 11:30 a.m. to read, add more to Best of the Genea-Blogs - 4 to 10 March 2012, and then had lunch.


*  Added the finishing touches to the CVGS Newsletter, and printed it out ready to print off on Monday.  Edited the OASIS handout and printed off the corrections.  Reviewed the presentation and practiced a bit on the Learn Web Skills site.


*  Got into the database and found more persons with no info, so wandered through WorldConnect, Google and AMTs to find info on them.  Probably added content for 50 persons.


*  Went in for dinner at 5 p.m., and read the paper and watched TV news.


*  Online again at 6:30 p.m. to read, start the new Best Of post, check Facebook, write two blog posts for Monday, do a batch on FS Indexing, and didn't write a post for here.


Genealogy today was 8.0 hours.


2)  Monday, 12 March:


*  Read email and blogs, then packed up and headed off to OASIS class at 9:15 a.m.  Noted that 

Amanuensis Monday - Administration Papers for Alpheus B. Smith Estate posted.

*  Got to OASIS at 9:40, got set up, and class started at 10:15 with all 10 eager students.  Showed them how to input data to RootsMagic, how to use Learn Web Skills site, talked about online data by topic, commercial database sites, and some search tips for census records.  Two hours non-stop.  

*  Stopped at McDonalds for lunch on the way home, stopped at the library for awhile to see the CVGS team, and then to the UPS Store to publish and mail the CVGS Newsletter.

*  Home by 2:30 p.m. to read, note that Ten Reasons Why I Use a Genealogy Software Program posted.  

*  Wrote What I learned about the 1940 U.S. Census. 

*  Went in at 5 p.m. to read the paper, take a nap, and watch TV news.  We ate dinner, then watched more TV news.

*  Back online at 6:30 p.m. to read, email the CVGS newsletter to the members, check Facebook, did Seaver in the SSDI with birth years of 1905 and 1906 (only about 10 of 51 in my database), did a batch of 1871 UK Census for Wales (the place names are tough...), updated the Best Of post, and wrote this post.  

Genealogy today was 9.5 hours.

Genealogy Journal - 01/13/09

I woke up in Salt Lake City at 7:25 a.m. after the best night's sleep in six nights. My cold is finally over, I think. I jumped up, cleaned up, checked my email and blogs in a hurry, went over for breakfast, came back and packed, checked out of the hotel before 9 a.m. and waited 15 minutes for the shuttle to come for me. I was to the airport by 9:30 a.m. or so for an 11:15 flight back to San Diego. I read my Dean Koontz book all the way, and Linda picked me up just after noon.

We went for lunch at In-N-Out, and were home by 1 p.m. I checked my email and blogs, then wrote I didn't do it... Ancestry and Rootsweb are down right now and Leland is keeping score about the TGN visit. Ancestry came back up after 3 p.m., but Rootsweb is still down at 10 p.m. I wrote an email to the CVGS list about the Research Group meeting, and then checked in on Facebook and Twitter, then gave up the keyboard to Linda at 4:30. I went in to watch the news, read the paper and take a nap. We went out to dinner at 5:30 with our elderly neighbors to Panera Bread, and were home by 7:30.

I checked email, blogs, Facebook and then started writing the Genealogy News of the Month for the CVGS Research Group meeting on Wednesday. Then this post and I'm done for the night.

Genealogy today was 6.0 hours - 0.5 hour doing email, 0.5 hour reading blogs, 1.5 hour writing blogs, 0.5 hour on Facebook, 1.0 hour messing around on Ancestry.com, and 2.0 hours doing the Genealogy News email.

Genea-Journal - 11/01/07

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.

Genea-Journal - 10/31/07

I really made little genealogy progress today - but I did clean up my desk a bit and caught up on some paperwork.

8:30 AM: Read my email and Bloglines. I changed my Genea-Musings blog colors from red and blue to Orange and Black for Hallowe'en. Then I found the Hallowe'en Personality web site and took the test, then posted "Your Hallowe'en Personality" to Genea-Musings. I thought up the idea of doing these daily journals and wrote up the last two days.

10:30 AM: Decided to go to the library to find the obituary for the CVGS query. I got there just in time to watch the toddler costume parade through the library - it was really cute. Some of the staff had great costumes, especially Queen Ariachnia (Kim). The microfilm machine was in use by someone else, so for the next two hours I shuffled books into their right places in the Genealogy collection, reviewed the stuff in the file cabinets and read the new issue of Everton's Genealogical Helper. I never did get to the obituary. Dropped my November CVGS flyers to the library staff. Off to McDonalds for lunch.

1:30 PM: Read email and bloglines. Worked on the Genea-Musings post "Trick or Treat?" I decided that I should try to thin my "in-box" paper stack so I input many bits of genealogy info into my databases and transferred the papers to my bookcase stacks. Such is the filing system of a geneaholic too lazy to file stuff away. This took quite awhile, and I discovered several useful things that I've been missing for awhile. At 4:30 PM, I stopped and went to watch the news.

7 PM: After dinner, I decided to write up the "Five Questions - Favorites" post on Genea-Musings. Read email and Bloglines. Then I figured out that I want to answer the question posed to me at the seminar about the future of genealogy. I Googled [future genealogy predictions] and got over 100,000 hits. Reading the first page, there were articles by Howells, Eastman and Myrtle, so I decided to review those. I wrote a blog post for tonight "The Future of Genealogy - Part 1 (1998 Version)" for Genea-Musings, and a second one for tomorrow (see, I occasionally do work ahead). Then I decided to change my blog colors to Orange and Light Blue - on Genea-Musings - do you like? Those are probably my favorite colors. Finally, I reviewed my blog statistics. Genea-Musings has the highest number of Visitors (over 6,600) and Page Views (over 10,500) ever for a month, according to SiteMeter. Woo hoo - I care, but not that much. OK, I do care a lot. So much for humility. Off at 10:30 to do dishes and read a bit.

Why are Family Trees depicted wrongly?

Something that has bothered me for a long time has been the depiction of our ancestors perched in a "family tree." As an example, here is a nice graphic from http://www.nalw.org/.

To fill this tree out, you put a living person or a recent ancestor at the bottom position on the tree, and then add parents above them, grandparents above them, great-grandparents above them, and so on. The earliest ancestors are higher up in the tree. Descendants are shown below the ancestors higher in the tree, which has some logic to it. Of course, the graphic above doesn't even have all of the boxes in the right place!

But then we talk a lot about "ROOTS." Our family "roots" are these same ancestors that we perched high up in the tree. To me, the "family tree" should be depicted with "roots" (ancestors) below the selected person and "branches and leaves" (descendants) above the selected person.

There are some graphics like that available, like here, that put the ancestors below the ground. Isn't that where our ancestors really are? Almost all of them are below the ground, not up in the tree!

I haven't looked for graphics in software programs other than FTM 2005, so there may be some more graphics out there that depict ancestors below the ground and descendants above the ground. I guess maybe I should stay away from graphic depictions of "family trees" that don't show "roots."

Why do they depict the tree this way? I think it is because we want an ordered graphical depiction of our ancestry. Branches and leaves are brown and green and pretty, roots are dark and gnarled and semi-ugly. We know how many people are in each generation and so the "family tree" above the ground can have a set number of branches and leaves. If we put descendants above the ground in the graphics, then each tree would be different - some families have many children, and some have only one or none.

It would be difficult to show 4 or 5 generations of ancestors below the ground and 4 or 5 generations of descendants above the ground on one piece of paper without small print. Perhaps an hourglass chart with a family tree graphic (leaves, branches, trunk and roots) as a background would be the best we can do.

Perhaps the better terms would be "progenitors" for ancestors" and "progeny" for "descendants." Then we aren't (I'm not) confused by "ascending" and "descending. "

I guess it is my scientific, engineering and Presbyterian mentality that requires "order" above all. It has always bothered me for some reason.

Is this a symptom of geneaholism? Probably. Who me, worry?

Someone who gets it

I'm not the only one writing about Geneaholism and recovery...

I don't know why it took me so long to discover ... GENanon, a blog by Thomas Hamburger Jnr who describes his blog as:

"We are a not-for-profit group that exists to provide succour and support to anyone, anywhere, anytime who has become addicted to the pursuit of their family history. "

He, of course, demonstrates his proclivities by writing a serial genealogy story at http://harrymcfryinvestigates.blogspot.com/ - where Harry McFry is the intrepid hero. There are 130 chapters so far - I'm not sure that is enough for a true Geneaholic. We'll see!

Philias and Phobias

It might be that we geneaholics can be called by other names - here are several (from here):

* Nomatophiliac - one with an abnormal affection for names

* Syngenesophiliac - one with an abnormal affection for relatives

* Taphephiliac - one with an abnormal affection for cemeteries (or for being buried alive)

* Mnemophiliac - one with an abnormal affection for memories

* Patroiophiliac - one with an abnormal affection for heredity

Somehow, "Syngenesophiliacs Anonymous" just doesn't light my fire...

Two good genealogy days

I finally was able to get two full days of doing fun genealogy efforts today and yesterday - a full 10 hours on Wednesday (I had to go to a memorial service in the morning) and I expect a good 10 hours today.

On Wednesday, I worked on my wife's friends ancestry - and blogged about it here. The effort included digging out census and vital records from online databases, putting the information into a FamilyTreeMaker database, and printing out a report. Then last night I found info in online databases for several of her ancestors. I also wrote an email to her asking her for the names of her mother's parents and siblings, and where they lived.

Today, I got the answer to my questions and now I have more research to do. Great! More fun! Maybe tonight.

Because I have gotten lazy (frankly, I'd rather do the survey type of research) about reducing my paper piles, I realized I had better put the Rhode Island probate record data I collected two weeks ago into my FTM database. I worked on the probate records of Nathaniel Horton (1730-1819) of Foster RI a week ago, and posted them here. This morning, I entered the probate records of Richard Pray ( 1683-1755) of Scituate RI into the database, including transcribing the will, the court orders and the itemized inventory. This afternoon, I am going to start transcribing the probate records of Nathaniel Wade (1709-1754) of Scituate RI.

I need to enter the new data for our friend's ancestry into the database, then start on finding her mother's ancestry. I'll start that tonight (no Padres game again!) but it might stretch into tomorrow.

It amazes me that we can do a significant part of the survey phase of the research process online in hours - it used to take weeks or months to find the county books, the census records, the vital records, etc. Of course, that doesn't help a true geneaholic recover, does it? S/he (hmmm, I!) can get more work done in a shorter period of time.

Latest Roadblocks to True Geneaholism

Life conspires against the addicted geneaholic to deprive him of his needed research time. In the last month, the following have happened to me that cut into my research time:

1) Jury Duty - four days, from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM, of sitting in a courtroom listening to attorneys and witnesses, and the judge's jokes and restaurant recommendations. I coulda been home finding more cousins or putting data into my database.

2) Grandchildren come visit: five days, from 6:30 AM to 8 PM, of feeding, diapering, clothing playing, chasing, helping, loving, laughing, sharing ice cream, bathing and reading to a 2 year old. I wouldn't give that up for any genealogy work in the world.

3) Furniture shopping: we only did this three times, and for about 2 hours each, but the hassle of it all is debilitating. We found a nice leather couch set with two recliners, two other seats and two storage/drink holder areas. When it was delivered, one of the recliners was damaged. Now they can't find another one to replace it. We have to make more trips back to the store to decide if we want something else or stick with what we have. Arrgggh. I hate shopping - I'd rather be in a library.

4) Watching baseball games: We have a Padres 20-game ticket plan, so about once a week we go to the game. It ruins a whole night - from 5 PM to 11 PM. When we don't go, we watch the game on TV, which takes only 2 to 3 hours. I get the paper read, and then the current book read, so it isn't a total waste of time. I'd rather watch them all on TV, but all genealogy and no outside time makes Randy a pale wretch.

These aren't cures at all - they are roadblocks to consistently enjoying my addiction! But some of the roadblocks are very enjoyable!

What are your roadblocks to your geneaholism? Or your cures? (And don't say "take your wife to Hawaii for a week" - that's coming soon!).

Getaways are a sure cure...

Well, there's nothing like being away from home to give yourself a break from the rat race of genealogy.

We were in New England from Thursday to Sunday last week attending my aunt's funeral service. I managed to do a bit of research - I found the ancestral homes they lived in in Leominster MA, plus talked to many cousins at the service and reception - some of them I hadn't seen for 25 years. The highlight wasn't the adults - it was the 4 little grandchildren of one of my cousins! I had a great time talking to them and playing with them.

Over the weekend, I was presented with my aunt's papers and photo albums to take home and sort out - another task, but a welcome one. There are some treasures in this lot and I will probably post about them sometime on Genea-Musings.

I had the laptop with me over the weekend, and was able to post some notes about my exploits in Massachusetts.

Now it's off to Santa Cruz on Tuesday, returning on Sunday, to see my daughter's family, including the 1 year old and 3-1/2 year old grandsons. Oh boy! The little one is walking, and the older one is finally talking intelligibly. I will have the laptop with me, so should be able to read my email and post on the blog occasionally, but I doubt if I'll do much research.

My sure-fire way to put the little ones to sleep is to recite their ancestry in a monotone voice - I usually get back 5 generations or so before they drop off. The older guy wants stories, so I tell him about his ancestors (especially his grandfather!), but I embellish them a bit. Who knows what he will remember!

I can get back to the genealogy rat race next week - this week I'm going to play with the boys and enjoy myself.

A typical genealogy day

Today was pretty much the kind of genealogy day I really enjoy. I stayed home after minor scalp surgery on Tuesday (had a basal cell carcinoma removed - have a 1 inch stitched cut at my RH crown - a big bandage, no pain), so I was on the computer from about 8 AM to 4 PM.

After email and reading the blogs, I posted two blogs on Genea-Musings about my online wish list and the effect of online databases on the future of genealogy. Then I found a Boston 1775 post really interesting so I posted about that also.

After lunch, I transcribed the will and other probate records of Joseph Champlin (1758-1850) of South Kingstown RI, which names my ancestor, his daughter Amy (Champlin) Oatley. I even calculated the shares given to his children in his will - Amy was supposed to receive about $396. I thought that was pretty interesting, so I put all of the records into a Genea-Musings blog post.

Then it was off looking for two Seaver database items in order to answer email queries. I found them both, and created genealogy reports to send off attached to my replies. I even spent some time later looking for the elusive parents of one of the wives in the 1880 and 1900 census.

Linda came home, and I took a short nap while she worked on her email and read the paper during the evening news. After dinner, I watched the Padres beat the Giants, 4-0, and read almost 100 pages in my John Lescroart crime/mystery novel. During baseball season, I watch the game and read books or magazines - sometimes crime, or politics, or genealogy.

So - it was a pretty well-balanced day, don't you think? Only 8 genealogy hours, with a good transcription completed and entered into the database, 4 genealogy blog posts, and some email queries satisfied. I won't have as much time on Thursday - we are off to the SD Zoo Wild Animal Park in Escondido to go on a Wildlife Safari amongst the rhinos, gazelles and giraffes - it was a Christmas gift from the kids.

Vacations are great tonics

Linda and I have been on holiday since Saturday when we checked into the Omni Hotel in downtown San Diego for a Padres' weekend. Petco Park is next door (the hotel has an entrance to Petco). We attended the Friday and Saturday games and will go to tonights Padres game. We went to the Midway aircraft carrier on the Bay yesterday. We will go home on Tuesday after three days of rest and relaxation. See the pictures here.

I did bring the laptop and have checked email and Bloglines and my favorite web sites several times a day, but nowhere near like I do at home.

The only overt genealogy activity has been spending an hour or two at the San Diego Public Library today. Oh, I did dream about the 1880 census last night for some reason - I guess my brain went into withdrawal and decided to remind me of my addiction. The dream was recurring, but I can't remember the details now.

We usually spend some time on genealogy research or visiting family during our vacations, and this one is no exception. Now I'm a bit recharged and will get back in the genealogy saddle and charge off into the Ancestry sunset hoping to find the missing Thompson families in the census and other records. That, plus the income taxes! And blogging...and doing CVGS work...and...and...

I recommend taking a vacation if you are finding yourself in a manic or depressed attitude relative to your genealogy research. Life is bigger than genealogy.

Achieving Life Balance

Jasia tagged the whole Genea-blogosphere to write something about "Life Balance." The questions to be answered include:

How do you achieve balance in your life?
What is your biggest challenge in balancing your life?
What are your priorities?
How have your priorities changed over time and why?
What advice can you share to help all of us balance our own lives?

Asking a Geneaholic about achieving Life Balance is dangerous! My initial off-the-cuff response was "well, standing up and walking is my best example of achieving a life balance." I'm reminded of my 13 month old grandson who teeters as he stands...but he will be running soon.

Jasia noted that people with a single-mindedness struggle to achieve a life balance. I am the ultimate multi-tasker - I have the printer going on a document, there are 6 windows open to the Internet, the clothes are drying and I'm eating my pre-lunch cookies as I type this.

Life Balance to me means understanding what is important to living successfully - having and nurturing relationships, achieving financial security, being healthy, enjoying entertainment, sports and hobbies, serving my church and community, being a good citizen, etc.

Even with all of my talk about being a geneaholic - I think I do these things fairly well. I enjoy my wife, my daughters and their families. I/we have a wide circle of friends, we are relatively well off, we go out to dinner, to plays, and to sports events occasionally, we go to church regularly and serve actively, we vote, we stay up on the news and issues, we watch some TV and listen to some radio. I do genealogy research - perhaps spending too much time online in my Genea-cave and not enough with my wife and friends. I serve as President of a genealogy society and lead a research group in addition to my genealogy research activities.

I try to achieve balance by paying attention to the people and things in my life. If my wife needs a hug, she gets one (if she tells me - I'm not overly perceptive!). If the grass needs to be cut, I do it someday soon when it is cool out and I have nothing better to do (usually when Linda wants to do her email).

The biggest challenge is to juggle the genealogy responsibilities (mainly the meetings) with taking vacations and visiting the grandchildren.

My life priorities may not be today's priorities. I love doing genealogy work, but if my wife was sick, or the grandkids needed help, I could change my priorities immediately. The life priorities have changed - 20 years ago it was raising two daughters and working toward financial security. Now it is more staying healthy and enjoying life - with friends, family, hobbies, entertainment, etc.

Advice? From a Geneaholic? Who would listen? Or care?

My advice is to do all things in moderation, do them well, stay true to your principles, be happy and forgiving, love well, learn always, get a good nights sleep, eat your vegetables and fruits, and follow your dreams.

I practiced Geneaholism yesterday

Yesterday had all the marks of a great Geneaholic day. I was on the computer by 8 AM, read my email, read my politics web sites and genealogy news, and posted a note on Genea-Musings. I received three queries through the CVGS web page recently, and I worked on them for awhile.

My plan was to go to the Family History Center and read the microfilm that I ordered a month ago. I got there at about 10:15, and immediately realized that I had left my RI Probate notes at home. I decided to read the first three volumes of Westerly (RI) town records on the film anyway, which include probate records. I remembered that I was searching for Champlin and Kenyon probates, and reviewed my ahnentafel for the names and death dates. The original records have a lot of bleed through, cramped writing, and some blotches and dark pages. After an hour of scrolling through the film, I had identified the important pages and took the film to the microfilm scanner/printer. I scanned and saved 24 pages and copied them onto my flash drive for printing at home later. I ordered two films on the Bresee family and headed for home, eating my lunch (an apple and cookies) on the way.

When I got home, at 1 PM, I checked my email again, grabbed some baloney for lunch, and wrote a blog post about my concerns with FamilySearch Indexing. Then I remembered that Thursday at 1 PM is the time for Family Roots Radio, so I tuned in at about 1:30, just in time to hear the end of the Dick Eastman interview. I listened to the rest of Kory's program, then listened to the program from the week before, featuring Leland Meitzler. Afterwards, I blogged about that too.

While listening to the programs, I worked on finding Minerva. One of my colleagues at CVGS had talked about her Minerva --?-- problem, so I decided to see if I could find a Minerva, age 7, in Indiana in the 1860 census, with a father born PA and a mother born IN. There were 116 Minerva's, and I checked all of them for their parents birthplaces. There were 12 with the father born in PA, but only one of them had a mother born in IN. I'm not sure that Solomon and Juliet Dye are the right parents, but they might be.

My colleague had stated that Minerva (--?--) Crosby had died before 1930. I found her in the 1920 census in Riverside CA with her husband Thomas, so I checked the CA Death Index (at www.vitalsearch-ca.com) for 1905-1929 and found a record for Minerva Crosbie that was probably the right Minerva. I emailed my colleague with this find, which was new information for her, and suggested she obtain a death certificate - it might have Minerva's parents names on it. If not, then she should check her children's marriage and death records, and may be their Social Security applications, to see if her maiden name is listed.

Feeling pretty good about that, and since my wife had come home and wanted to check her email, I went in and read the rest of the newspaper while watching the news. We had dinner, and afterwards I came back to the computer after 6 PM and did a bit of research for a future post for April Fool's Day. Then it was time for Survivor Fiji and CSI, and I started my latest Catherine Coulter FBI novel. See, I do have some semblance of a life!

CSI was too gruesome, so I read the book, did the dishes, and checked my email, political news, and blog news one more time before going to bed at about 10:30.

Whew - about 10 hours of genealogy. Cool. That's pretty typical for me - I usually spend at least 6 to 8 hours each day doing something genealogy related, unless we are away from home. That will change soon when the Padres season starts and we either go to the games or watch them on TV.

Keen observers will recognize that I didn't really advance my own genealogy research during the day, except for copying the data at the FHC. I didn't enter any data into the computer, or search for information on the Internet. That's the main behavior that I need to change - do more to advance my own research in order to meet my goals for the year.

I Didn't Feel a Thing!

I haven't posted for a week - life has been busy here with the two grandsons and their parents here last weekend (put them on the plane on Tuesday) and on Wednesday we went north to visit my granddaughter and her parents.

While I was at their house, I did a bit of genealogy research, but was unable to log into the wireless network and therefore could not easily access my genealogy files. I did make one or two posts a day at Genea-Musings, but did no real research.

It is apparent that one tonic for Geneaholism is to spend more time with your spouse, friends, children and grandchildren. When the little ones are as fun, and as cute, as my three are, it is easy to do this.

We got home on Sunday afternoon, and I had to spend several hours getting ready for the CVGS meeting today - making a flyer, program agenda, and editing the speaker's handouts to minimize page count. I also posted twice to the blog. I still didn't do any real research, but I feel the NEED for it soon - I have films at the FHC waiting for me - maybe tomorrow!

What tonics for Geneaholism do you have?

Discovered at last

Jasia at the Creative Gene has discovered my new blog tonight, and earns the grand prize of a beautiful suitably inscribed certificate to proudly display on her wall at home, or anywhere else she chooses to place it. Now I have to come up with the certificate!

She even broadcast her find to the genealogy blogging world, and this site received a few more visits today (11 so far) than yesterday (1).

That means that I have to delve into my geneaholic personality more and post about it. Maybe some day-by-day accounts of my genealogy escapades will work.

Today was easy - I had an hour online after I woke up from my nap before lunch
and I posted two notes on Genea-Musings. Why did I have a nap before lunch? Because we had the grandsons overnight by ourselves. I got the 1 year old who wakes up frequently in the night. So I got about 6 hours in three sessions, and stayed home from church to take a nap. Then tonight, I spent about an hour going through the 1790 census records on Ancestry to find Bresee (and variants) families in New York, plus email and reading my favorite blogs and sites.

Blogging will probably be light all week - the grandsons go home on Tuesday and we go to my granddaughters house on Wednesday until Saturday. Life is fun - the Geneaholic is learning to spend time on productive and fun things outside of genealogy.

Feeding Geneaholism?

This weekend will be a real test of my ability to feed my geneaholism. My daughter and my two grandsons are coming to visit and my time to do genealogy research, and blogging, will be limited to nap times and late evenings.

I call the boys, and my granddaughter, the "14th generation" when I post about them, since they are the 14th generation from the immigrant Robert Seaver who settled in Roxbury in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634.

See you next week!

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Feeling Guilty

A real Geneaholic will always bite off more than s/he can chew. For instance, my genealogy "life" currently includes:

1) Finding primary information material in original sources for my ancestral families (for instance - vital, probate, land, military, church records). I usually try to work on one locality at a time in order to make complete surveys of the available data and not have to order microfilms more than once.)

2) Entering all of the biographical and record material into my databases. I have a fine stack of papers waiting to be abstracted or transcribed.

3) Reading the magazines and journals I receive and try to apply lessons learned or information gained to my own research.

4) Listen to genealogy podcasts and downloaded conference talks, tune into Family Roots Radio each week, and check Roots Television occasionally.

5) Lead the Chula Vista Genealogical Society effectively at board meetings, Research Groups and program meetings - and attend committee meetings, Computer Group, and other functions. Keeping several balls in the air to make the society work seamlessly is almost always the norm.

6) Attend genealogy society meetings and seminars in San Diego when they occur.

7) Create presentations and programs for the local genealogy societies. I try to create three a year in response to perceived needs for program topics.

8) Help friends, colleagues or correspondents with their family history when or if they want help.

9) Write blog posts that inform, amuse, or stimulate my readers. I have used my blog posts to provide articles for the CVGS newsletter.

Why am I feeling guilty? Mainly because I don't seem to spend enough time on items 1 and 2. The rest of the items are part of my normal daily or weekly routine now, for better or for worse. I don't want to give them up. I like doing them. They makes me feel competent and admired.

I also feel guilty that I hide myself away in my genea-cave for several hours every night while my Linda watches TV or talks on the phone. She enjoys hearing about my genealogy journey and really enjoys meeting people and going to new places on vacation.

How about you - do you feel guilty doing genealogy research and the other activities related to genealogy? Does genealogy work interfere with your work or personal life? or Tell me about how you deal with this.