I’ve finished my graduate degree, and I’ve started a new challenge. I’m sure I’ll continue to learn more about my new position in the coming weeks and months – 6 weeks of training start next week. I’ve been able to help out so far by watching some editing and asking a few questions about style, grammar, and jargon. It’s a great way to learn.
In the meantime, Franchise and I have welcomed a new member to the family – an HP laptop. My files have been migrated and I’m doggedly pursuing one of my New Year’s resolutions – being more organized – by getting rid of duplicates and unnecessary files. Once that’s wrapped up, you’ll see me on here a lot more.
Jessica always has ravioli for the holidays
The daily calendar that sits on my desk is getting thin. Another year is wrapping up. Jess suggested including our blog addresses in the Christmas letter and writing our own notes online. You must have liked the idea.
As I first starting writing this post, Jessica and I just finished making ravioli for Christmas Eve. You can see some of our results pre-clean-up. The homemade goods are a family tradition that we’ve kept up – along with my family’s meatballs when we put up the tree.
This past year has been one filled with hard work. I dove into the remaining coursework I had to do to complete my graduate degree – finishing almost 60 percent of my classes this year. I’m looking forward to reading for pleasure again – and tackling projects that aren’t due at the end of the semester.
We cut back on trips – visiting Washington, D.C. twice, Columbus once, and Atlantic City once. We also returned to St. Marys for Thanksgiving. Yes, that’s a light year of trips – only five states, counting the one where I live. This might be the fewest number of states I visited in a year since high school.
I completed my second term as president of the local chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution. My final meeting brought out the largest turnout of chapter members in the last decade. We elected a new slate of officers, and they’ll do a great job taking over the chapter. I’m glad that I was able to stablize the chapter’s finances, recruit a new team of officers (and provide them with all the relevant information about the duties of their office), and overhaul and update the chapter roster. I’ve also continued and expanded my work with the Lackawanna Historical Society. I produce the Society’s quarterly newsletter, and I helped organize a database of previous newsletters as well as preparing program brochures for several events this past year.
Want to see more of what we did this year? Check out Jessica’s holiday post.
A recent death in my wife’s family sent me searching through files of genealogy. That reminded my of an unfinished project with those files. Half of her records are digital scans and the other half are photocopies. Some items are copies of relatives’ files and others are borrowed materials – things people will come inquiring about at some point.
I’ve tracked the items I hold and those I’m looking for in a spreadsheet. It functions like a checklist. When I find a census record, I delete from one spreadsheet and add it to the other. It lets me keep a running list of what I have on each person and what I need to find. It also lets me keep a list of all documents – I can quickly find all the birth records or grave locations that I’ve recorded.
This works, but I’m sure there are other, better ways to track what I have. I recently found this post about journals, logs, and calendars. Question for genealogists out there: what do you use to track the documents you’ve located. I’m not inquiring about different forms of ancestry charts necessarily – just different ways of keeping your “to-find” and “found” lists.
I’m not a golfer, but here’s something new I’m trying out. A few links for the weekend reading.
Bad customer service at Target. (I walked down to the aisle in time to catch the stock boy take the sale sign down. He told me he took it down. Not shopping there anymore.
What’s up with the Haiti seeds in Farmville?
You’ll have a long walk if you go to the Penn State game.
A worthwhile experiment – if you can remember to do it for a full month.
Pennsylvania’s new budget cuts funds for environmental projects.
