Writing a Family History

I've been involved in genealogy research since the early 1990s. Lately I've been thinking about picking one of my lines to concentrate on putting together a book. So, I decided to pick one line from my dad's side (Burdine) and one line from my mom's side (McCauley) to focus on. I've discovered that, especially with my AncestryDNA and 23andMe test results in, it's easy to get distracted with other family lines, but it's all good, really.Sometimes it's good to "go with the flow," especially when it includes getting in contact with a "new" cousin!

Joining the DAR?

Since recovering from ankle and knee injuries, I've been thinking about ways to get involved in the community. One of my favorite hobbies is genealogy, so I decided to look into joining the Daughters of the American Revolution, also known as the DAR. No one else in my immediate family is a member, and I'm not aware of any more distant relatives who are members either. So, it's going to be a bit of a stretch to prove my lineage, but I think it'll be worth it! I also think it'll be a nice way to meet more people in the area.

I'm not sure which of my possible Revolutionary War ancestors I should use for my membership lineage. Someone from the local chapter will help me decide. It's pretty exciting to think about!

The Gift of Spit

Earlier this month, I visited my parents in Alabama. It was a long drive for a short visit, but I'm glad I did it. They're getting older, and it's much more challenging for them to travel.

A few weeks before I left home for Alabama, I ordered two extra AncestryDNA kits, one for each of my parents, in hopes that I could get spit samples from both of them. My mom wasn't able to do it, but my dad was willing to do it. I was so excited, that I mailed the test out on my way back from Alabama to North Carolina! AncestryDNA estimates 6-8 weeks for processing, but I'm still checking practically every day!


I'm so thankful that my dad was willing and able to spit into the little plastic tube for me. I can't wait to see how his results compare to mine and tell me more about our family tree!

A Busy Sunday

I've had a really busy Sunday, but I'm so thankful for it! I'm feeling tired, but satisfied!

First of all, I was the Worship Associate today at ERUUF. This is my second year in the Worship Associate program, and I've really enjoyed it. The service was about secrets, inspired by Frank Warren's PostSecret art project and books. I met with the minister last weekend to start talking about today's service, and wrote a 2-page "reflection" about my personal observations about secrets, to present during both services 9:15 and 11:15). For the reading today, Rev. Southworth and I alternated reading several secrets from the PostSecret books (there are four out right now). It was a nice service, I thought, and I got some good feedback. (After the 11:15 service, I got to catch up with a friend I met while I was on the Rice Diet, which was a real treat!)

My sister, Lisa, and her family are in town, as daughter Emily is on Spring Break, and they're doing the college tour. (Emily has interviews at Duke tomorrow and Wednesday.) So Lisa, as well as Mom and Dad, came to the 11:15 service at ERUUF to hear me do my thing (though they stayed for the whole service!).

Afterward, we all (the churchgoers plus brother-in-law Craig, Emily, Laura (Emily's big sister and a Duke sophomore), and George, met at Watt's Grocery for brunch. I'd been there once before, lunch with a co-worker during the week, but never for a weekend brunch. I had an omelet with asparagus, caramelized onions, goat cheese, and spinach. This may well be the best omelet I've ever had! I kid you not! Awesome!

Once we'd finished eating, Dad and Craig headed out, but the rest of us stuck around to coach and encourage Emily on her upcoming interviews. Time just flew, as we had a lively conversation in the quiet of the restaurant, which had cleared out by the time we looked up! The staff was very patient and let us stay on, not even interrupting us with the offer of drink refills. We were too engrossed in the conversation to care or notice!

George and I got home around 5:00, give or take a little, and I'd been going since 6 AM, when I got up to get ready for a 30-minute workout (shorter than usual, but my leg is still healing, so that was fine), then get ready for two rounds of church services.

George needed to run some errands, so after we got home, he headed out again. I decided to stay home and soak in the solitude. Being an introvert by nature, today was a bit draining, to be honest. I loved doing the church services today, and lunch and the ensuing conversation were stimulating and fun, but I felt drained on the way home.

So, I read for a while, but got restless, so I got on the computer for a while, and was drawn to my genealogy research again. I get a lot of satisfaction out of working on my family tree, though it's a hobby that fades in and out, depending on other time commitments. That's one of the great things about genealogy, I can put it aside and pick it up again easily. I've been working a lot on my McLamb line of late, and the past few days, I've been putting a little more time on it. (Okay, "more" is relative here, since I've been busy getting ready for today's worship services as well.) A little while ago, I printed out a "book" of all my McLamb relatives. (I do this periodically to have all the information I have on a given line in RTF format, and to see what needs editing or correcting.) The information, with sources listed, for my McLamb line comes to over 1200 pages! And I'm not even done entering the information I have on the McLambs! This really excites me! (I'm grinning as I type!) I'm not the type of amateur genealogist who prefers quantity over quality, by any means. This is not a contest. It's just exciting to see the fruits of many years of research, and know that there's still work to be done! I love putting the pieces of the puzzle together, doing research and verifying information, meeting and communicating with relatives. Part of what inspires me is that I'd love to organize a family reunion for the McLamb line someday, and the more (and accurate) family tree information I have, the better.

George has come home since I've been typing, and I've just noticed it's heading toward 10:00! I'm still "hung over" from today's experiences, so I think it's time to turn off the computer and head for bed a little earlier than normal. (Maybe it's too late for that!)

I just love a day when I have quality time with people and quality time alone! Today was one of the best.

Shaking My Family Tree

Earlier today I drove over the Clinton to do some genealogy research at the public library there. They have a quaint little local history room, which shelves and shelves of books, as well as a cabinet of microfilm, which I have yet to explore like I should. I took my laptop with me, and it was fun to be able to look up people in my database, to see whether or not I had information on them, and to add information right into the computer. I felt very "green" doing that too. I used to go home after a genealogical research trip with copies galore from books I'd found, and sometimes it was hit or miss as to whether or not the information would be useful. Some of the information I found today was a little iffy---I wasn't sure if some of the families I found were related to me, but I suspect that they are. I was able to go ahead and plug the info into my database, ready for when I DO find the missing links! So much fun! One of the things I love about genealogy is gathering the puzzle pieces, then seeing how they fit together!

I've been thinking for years that it would be fun to become a professional genealogist, even as a sideline. It would probably take a while to get the certification and such, though. Even still, with the internet and all the great genealogy websites out there, who hires a professional genealogist these days? So lately, I've been wondering if there's a market for a "genealogy tutor," someone who shows people how to start climbing their own family tree. With so many genealogy programs and websites out there, I wonder if there are people out there who want to do some family history research, but don't know where to start. If so, maybe I could help fill that niche. Food for thought.

Old Habits, New Habits

A few weeks ago, I started posting weekly goals here, and then reporting on my progress. I haven't done that in a while, but some of those weekly goals have continued to become habits. Some of the other items have fallen by the wayside, for some reason or another, so perhaps it's time to reassess.

On the plus side, I've continued to finish at least one book a week. If I push a little, I'll complete more than one. I've continued to have fun tracking my reads on the site Goodreads.com, which has helped me to keep on going with this goal. Since it's a social networking site as well as a book-tracking site, I've "friended" several friends on Goodreads, and it's been fun to see what they're reading as well. When I go to others' homes, I'm often drawn to their bookcases--to me, the books on someone's bookshelves tell me something about them.

I've also continued to increase my running mileage as I train for the Coach Bubba 20K in Durham in February.

I'm keeping up with my family tree data input on a weekly basis, even if it's just a few names a week. I know I'll never totally be done with my family tree, but making progress brings me satisfaction.

Meanwhile, my weight loss plans have plateaued, and I haven't kept up with trying a new dish (cooked by yours truly) each week. I've also unsubscribed from the FlyLady emails (for apartment cleaning), which got to be too much to keep up with. So, these are things I'd like to concentrate on in the future. Maybe the trick is to integrate things more slowly, or to try different approaches.

Goals Revisited

Since George and I will be heading to Boone in the morning for a short vacation, I decided to go ahead and recap my goals for this past week.

This Past Week's Goals:
1) Cook one new recipe this week.

I tried some low-fat pumpkin bread (see previous post), but it didn't turn out very well. I decided not to take it to work, but George said it was okay, and ate some of it. Perhaps he was just being sweet. :)

2) Start my Control Journal notebook (see FlyLady.net)

I found the Control Journal I started a couple years ago, and tore out the outdated pages. I haven't gotten any farther than that.

3) Continue with reading, weight loss, genealogy, and getting-to-bed goals, as a habit takes about a month to take hold, I've heard.

I didn't finish a book this past week, but I made progress on the one I'm reading. I should get even more reading done this next week.

I'm up .8 of a pound since last Sunday, but I had a large weight loss last week. I was down for the previous week at this past Wednesday's Weight Watchers meeting. One thing I've learned is that weight loss is a fluid process, and requires persistance and patience. Sometimes the body reponds in quirky and unexpected ways. I'm continuing to log my foods and exercises in FitDay.com, which has been interesting and motivating, so perhaps that will show me some patterns in time.

I continued to get in bed by 11, but may need to do better than that if I continue my running ways after the City of Oaks Half Marathon a week from today.

I made some good progress on my genealogy database this past week, mostly in the cleanup catagory. Several months back, I accidentally merged someone else's gedcom file in with my own, and had a lot of database clean-up to do, including deleting duplicate people and editing all the occupations from the other file that ended up in location fields. (For example, someone who WAS a doctor looked like he/she had a practice IN Doctor.) Now the database is a lot more normal looking, and I feel like I can move forward without worrying about that clean-up anymore.


Since George and I will be on vacation this week, I won't make any goals except to have fun and relax!

Goals for This Week (and How I Fared Last Week)

This Week's Goals:
1) Cook one new recipe this week.

2) Start my Control Journal notebook (see FlyLady.net)

3) Continue with reading, weight loss, genealogy, and getting-to-bed goals, as a habit takes about a month to take hold, I've heard.


Last Week's Goals:
1) Check out FlyLady.net and see if I can buy into.
I decided to work on some of the things FlyLady incorporates, but not go "whole hog" yet. I plan to start with the "Control Journal" first, which consolidates a number of things into one notebook, like schedules, routines, emergency numbers, and an address book.

2) Get in bed by 11:00 every night
Accomplished this goal Sunday through Friday nights, though it was right on the dot one night, and I felt it the next day.

3) Finish at least one book.
I finished two books again this week, a book of poetry called Sea Level, by Angela Leighton, and a current events book, The Return of History and the End of Dreams, by Robert Kagan.

4) Plan mountain vacation with George.
We've decided where we're staying and some of the things we'll do. Can't wait!

5) Lose 1.3 lb. this week.
Lost 3.8 lbs this past week-wohoo! I'm not surprised, really, as I had some interesting dieting revelations and activities last week, which I blogged about on my running blog here.

6) Add at least 5 names to my genealogy database.
Input about 15 names this week.

Goals for the Week (and How I Did Last Week)

Goals for this week:

1) Check out FlyLady.net and see if I can buy into (Bigger goal here: become more organized)

2) Get in bed by 11:00 every night (Trying to establish a habit here.)

3) Finish at least one book (Trying to form a habit here too, and also working on decreasing the number of library books I have stacked up in my home office! )

4) Plan mountain vacation with George

5) Lose 1.3 lb. this week (See last week's goals below to explain the oddball number!)

6) Add at least 5 names to my genealogy database (Again, another habit former. I had fun with this one last week! Bigger goals here: maybe putting a family tree book together or one or more lines, maybe joining DAR)



Last week's goals:

1) Lose 2 lbs. Well, if this didn't backfire! I actually gained 1.2 lbs this past week! Yikes!

2) Get in bed by 11:00 each night through Friday. This was a success! The lastest I got to bed was 11:01 one night. I noticed a difference in how I felt at work.

3) Enter at least 5 new names into my genealogy database. I ended up entering 30-40 names between a couple of different lines, and did some database clean-up along the way.

4) Finish at least one book. I ended up finishing two books, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami, and Death in North Carolina's Piedmont: Tales of Murder, Suicide, and Causes Unknown, by Frances H. Casstevens.

I enjoyed the running book a lot, especially since the author is a distance runner, and he wrote from personal experience. He also made some interesting connections between running and his work as a novelist.

Death in North Carolina's Piedmont was is a collection of true and locally "famous" stories of deaths in the North Carolina Piedmont region. The two people I'd heard of before were Tom Dula, who was originally from Wilkes County, where I have relatives, and Z. Smith Reynolds, who was from Winston-Salem, where I used to work. I especially enjoyed the story about Smith Reynolds, as I'd heard he'd died under suspicious circumstances, but I'd never learned how.

5) Run at least 21 miles this week. I ended up running 26.02 miles last week, and am a little tired. I'll probably scale it back a bit this week.

Goals for the Week

I've decided to start something new, having goals for each week and posting them here. I'll also post my progress (or lack thereof), either along the way or at the end of the week.

My goals for this week:

1) Lose 2 lbs. (I'll start with my weigh-in this morning, and no, I'm not sharing!)

2) Get in bed by 11:00 each night through Friday. (I'm tired of complaining about being tired!)

3) Enter at least 5 new names into my genealogy database. (I have so much info to enter, and I want to get back into it.)

4) Finish at least one book. (I have so many books checked out of the library that my shelves are overflowing. I've started several of them and am ready for some closure.)

5) Run at least 21 miles this week. (Last week I dipped under 20 miles for the week, and want to catch back up.)

Rewards

I decided last week to start rewarding myself each time I get lose weight and surpass a number ending in 5 or 0. Earlier this week I passed a number ending in a zero, so I ordered three books from my Amazon.com Wish List. They arrived yesterday, and I've been having fun with them already!

One book is called Start Your Own Newsletter from Scratch, by Jim Terhune. I got this book because I'm planning to start a newsletter for my McLamb family line. (Genealogy is one of my favorite hobbies.) It's a fairly short book; in fact, I finished it last night! It has lots of good suggestions, even if it is a little dated in terms of technology. (It mentions modems for getting online.) I got the last copy in stock, so I'm glad I went ahead and ordered it.

One of the books I got is a cookbook called 366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans, And Grains. I've already earmarked several recipes I want to try! I love the fact that nutritional values (including sodium) are listed at the end of each recipe. Sodium is often left off of nutritional charts of recipes, it seems, so I'm thankful for it in this book.




The last book I got is about running! It's called Marathon Woman: Running the Race to Revolutionize Women's Sports, and it's an autobiography of Kathrine Switzer, who was the first woman to register and get an official number for the Boston Marathon, but the race officials didn't know she was a woman until she was running in the race (a race offical actually tried to run her down!). This was in 1967,when women weren't allowed to run in marathons! I'm a couple of chapters into this book, and I think it'll be a good read! I'd love to run the Boston Marathon someday, and am thinking about signing up for a marathon training program (thanks for the link, Susan!) that starts next month.

Sick Day

I started getting a sore throat yesterday afternoon, but I tried to ignore it (hoping it was allergies or something). This morning I woke up convinced I had strep! I slept in, and got to the doctor about 8:15. They did a throat culture, which came back negative for strep, so she said it's probably a virus. (They did a second culture to send to the lab just to make sure.) I was relieved not to have to take more antibiotics! I stopped by the store on the way home and stocked up on items to relieve the symptons, and have been puttering around for the rest of the day.

Although I hate being sick, and there's much to do at work, I have enjoyed getting the extra rest, and eating soft foods (though I've stayed away from ice cream, one of my old vices!). I've also gotten some reading and genealogy done, as well as laundry.

I just hope I'm good to go for the weekend, as we have a busy one. Saturday we're scheduled to help paint a building at church with our covenant group. Saturday and Sunday night we have Passover dinner with George's family, and Sunday afternoon we have tickets to see "Spamalot" in Raleigh.

Part of Why I Do It

I just noticed an article on Yahoo about the various celebs and politicians that Obama, Clinton, and McCain, can call cousin. I find this stuff interesting, how people are connected, and it's part of why I'm interested in genealogy. I started working on my family tree some seventeen (count 'em!) years ago, thinking I'd be finished with the tree by Christmas for my parents' Christmas present that year. Funny thing is I've never stopped, at least not for too long.

Last fall, when I got a new computer, I test drove a couple of genealogy programs, picked the one I liked best (RootsMagic), and started researching and entering data again. In January, I accidentally merged someone else's whole database with mine (instead of just one family), and since I'd done too much editing without backing up when I did that, I've spent the past couple of months cleaning up my family database! Yikes! It has helped me get familiar with my larger family tree again, never a bad thing, and now I have a little over 21,000 names in my database, covering both my parents' sides of the family.

I haven't found any politicians that I'm related too, but I do have a Huckabee line that I haven't researched in a few years. Who knows, maybe Mike Huckabee is a cousin! The closest thing to celebrity that I've found is that I'm related to Sarah Ann and Adelaide Yates. Wondering who they are?! They were sisters from Wilkes County, North Carolina, who married Eng and Chang Bunker, the conjoined twins from Siam--the "original" Siamese Twins. The sisters are my first cousins, 6 times removed, as well as second cousins, 5 times removed.

I have a lot of double cousins in my family tree! In fact, my sister and I are also fifth and seventh cousins! :)

Don't Let This Happen to You

Some of you know that one of my favorite hobbies is genealogy. I've been researching my family tree for over 15 years, and it's been a fun and fascinating journey. Several of my lines settled in North Carolina, some in Wilkes County and the surrounding area, and others in Sampson County and the surrounding counties. I've been fortunate to live in the middle of the state for a number of years, so I've been able to take numerous research trips to local libraries, courthouses, and cemeteries, as well as to the State Archives and State Library in Raleigh. I've also met several cousins I first met online, and have been included in an annual reunion in Sampson County, which has been fun.

Computers and the internet have really expanded my ability to search for and organize my family tree. I've tried several genealogy software programs, and my current favorite is one called RootsMagic. I've had a lot of success lately with a website called Rootsweb.com, which has a section called WorldConnect, where people can submit their family trees to share with others. The quality of submitted research varies, so I consider shared research as nice leads, and it's up to me to verify the information as I see fit.


Well, a few weeks ago, I decided to download a file (someone's family tree) from Rootsweb that was a treasure chest of information about one of my lines. I had had a lot of luck extending a number of families in that line in my database, as well as adding extra information about some of the ancestors and cousins I already had in my family tree. I'd been typing all the new information in manually, but I figured I could create a separate database for this file, and in usual Windows fashion, do some dropping and dragging. Doing that individually, one by one, was successful, but I could tell it was still going to be time consuming, and I was getting a little impatient! Next, I decided to start dragging family units over and connecting them to my own, and that was a hit too. I was excited! Next, I found someone in the other database whose ancestors and descendants I wanted to add to my database, so I clicked on the option to add everyone in that person's family tree (both up and down) intomy database. Well, that was the wrong thing to click, because it added that WHOLE DATABASE into my own! I suddenly had an extra 30,000-40, 000 names in my database, some kin to me, and many not! Of course, a good number were duplicates I'd already added to my database, but there were still thousands of extra people I didn't want mixed in with my information! It had been way too long (several hours, maybe even a day) since I'd backed up my database. I should've backed up just before I did that, but I assumed it was an innocent click. Ugh!

So, I decided to start cleaning up my database, bit by bit. A lot of the early deleting was easy. I was able to delete some families pretty quickly, others after doing some double checking. I'm also having to clean up some data fields, mostly the place notes. For some reason, the occupations field in the other person's database came over into the occupations PLACE field in my genealogy software. So, a person who was a cotton mill worker in the other database looks like he did an occupation IN Cotton Mill Worker (some place). So, I'm fixing all of those by hand, which is fun, fun! I'm glad to say that I've made a lot of progress, and am almost done with getting rid of the extra people in my database. Cleaning up the place names will take a little longer, but I'm making progress on that too.

Meanwhile, this has given me a chance to do some clean up from the conversion of my old database (from another software program) to RootsMagic. It's also given me an opportunity to learn my greater family tree a lot better, and that's a great thing, considering the fact that I've taken a 2-3 year break from this hobby. It's fun to be back in it, but I didn't expect this big bump in the road so early on.

Worse things have happened, though! It's a lot better than having deleted the whole thing without any backups! And now I take the time to back up my data a lot more frequently! I also keep backups on different drives, including a flash drive, and another online periodically.

Vacation's Over

Well, it's back to work this morning. I'm curious about what's going on at work and am looking forward to gettng things done there. I've got a busy week ahead, with three nightly meetings, but it'll be fine.

Highlights of this time off have been:

*Time with George
*Time with George's family, both local and from New Zealand, Boston, and Atlanta
*Having George's brothers and cousins over to play Apples to Apples and Zombie Fluxx
*Visits to Raleigh and Clinton to do genealogy
*Running outside in the Brier Creek area with my new Garmin Forerunner , and learning how to plug the Forerunner into my computer to download my workout info
*Working on genealogy at home on Rootsweb.com
*Christmas Eve service at ERUUF

Winding Down

My two-week vacation is winding down, and while I've thoroughly enjoyed it, I'm looking forward to getting back into the routine of work and normal things. I didn't do any excursions this week, as I'd hoped. Today and yesterday were too chilly to enjoy getting out and taking pictures in the places I would've visited, and I didn't really want to go just drive around, with gas prices going up again. Good thing I'm not on a deadline, huh?

I have enjoyed working a lot on my family tree while I've been on vacation, though. Between trips to the State Library and the Clinton, NC, library last week, and a wealth of good fortune on Rootsweb this week, I've made a lot of progress, especially on my McLamb and Tart lines. One thing I've been reminded of is how important documenting sources is. Thoroughness has helped me out in other ways too. When inputting spouses of related people, I've been including parents, grandparents, etc., of spouses when provided. It's been fun to discover connections to some of those families from other sources. It's reminded me of the phrase, "What goes around, comes around." Never underestimate the power (and fun) of a sliver of information!

NC Odyssey Project: Sampson County

Today I went to Sampson County to do some genealogy research. My mom's mother, a McLamb before marriage, grew up in the town of Newton Grove. I've been to Sampson County numerous times since I started working on my family tree, and it always feels like a historical "home" whenever I drive through the county! The picture on the left is a plowed cotton field along Hwy 421. There are lots of farms in Sampson County. The picture on the right is for Spivey's Corner, home of the National Hollerin' Contest.

The county's most famous resident was William Rufus King, who was a US Representative from North Carolina, a Senator from Alabama, and the 13th Vice President of the United States! He was born in Sampson County, graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1803, and practiced law for a bit in Clinton. He had a long career in Congress, and was elected VP under Franklin Pierce. He was in failing health by that time, though, and was inaugurated in Cuba, where he's gone for health reasons. He eventually returned to his Alabama home, where he died, and was buried in Selma, Alabama, where I grew up.

I enjoyed working in the J.C.Holliday Library in Clinton this afternoon, in the North Carolina Local History Room.

Sampson County is the second largest in the state in terms of square mileage behing Robeson County. One of its most unique town names is Turkey. While driving through the county heading northwest toward home, I passed the Coharie Tribal Center on Hwy 421. I wished I stopped and taken a picture.

An Afternoon in the Library

This afternoon I spent several hours working on my family tree in the State Library on Jones Street in Raleigh. They have a whole room devoted to the Genealogy Collection, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. This was the first time I've taken a laptop with me to do genealogical research, and it helped a lot. I used to make lots of copies or write things down until my fingers hurt, and enter things on my desktop when I got home. (They have a couple of tables reserved for laptop users, with power outlets in the floor.) It also helped to be able to look up people on my genealogy program immediately, rather than wonder if I had them in the system. They've expanded the room where the Genealogy Collection is located since the last time I was there, and it's laid out much better now.

I can't wait to return, and to check out the North Carolina State Archives again too. I've transcribed some old wills there--a very neat thing to see the handwritten wills of my ancestors!

Tracing My Roots

I've enjoyed getting back into my genealogy work this weekend. I'm on my second genealogy software program since getting a new computer back in August. The first, The Master Genealogist, is supposed to be for serious genealogists. I found it to be a bit tedious, to be honest. Granted, I had a busy semester with school in addition to work, exercise, the Rice Diet, Junior League, church, etc, so I didn't have the time I'd hoped to spend learning the program.

I finally bit the bullet and purchased a second genealogy program, RootsMagic, the succcessor to Family Origins, which I used to use. (It was discontinued and support ceased.) It was such a relief to install and pull it up on my computer! It was as if I'd come home! It reminds me a lot of the Family Origins software, but I can tell it's been updated. Needless to say, it's been much easier for me to use.

I've spent some of my free time this weekend entering data on my McLamb line, and it's been a treat. One of my projects for 2008 is to put out a McLamb family newsletter. It's nice returning to work on my family tree!

New computer!

I purchased a new computer last night, an Acer Aspire 5770z, at Best Buy! At $500, it seems like a good buy for my first laptop. I've spent the afternoon and early evening between a couple of coffee places, getting on wifi and doing coursework for my computer class. Now I'm just finishing downloading a genealogy program and my old ged file, so I'm back in business with one of my favorite hobbies (though not as much time to work on it now!)!!