Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Another distraction...

So I didn't end up watching another movie last night, as I got distracted with genealogy instead. Yet another one of my hobbies that many people might think doesn't quite fit in with my outward appearance (crocheting being the big one).

I've actually been working on genealogy for a while though. My family is at least 75% German, so that means that for most of my family, I can get them back to their arrival in the mid-1800s, and then I'm stuck. That's my dad's entire side of the family, and half of my mom's. The other half of my mom's came from maybe Ireland, or maybe somewhere else--she swore it was Ireland, but I've found enough information now that I can't be sure.

Any rate, after getting as far as I could on my family, I worked on my brother-in-law's family for a while. But his family is also very German, and while I've found good information on his dad's side of the family, his mom's is a really difficult puzzle, and there are too many "Smiths" for me to do much with it. I'm supposed to work on my sister-in-law's family too, but I still haven't gotten anything back from her... I should pester her, I think.

So I'm working on Jerome's family now, which is alternately super rewarding and super frustrating. I feel like I'm accomplishing a lot, because I'm finding ALL kinds of information. Then I tell him about it, and he's like "oh, yeah, we knew that." This is the same boy who when I said "what do you know about your genealogy?", he kind of looked at me blankly for a while and then told me some random and assorted things back to his grandparents. Turns out he knew more, he just doesn't remember it till I find it. :)

But genealogy will eat your free time for breakfast, and then demand more! I love doing it, I just need about 5 more days each week to have enough time to get anywhere on it. Sooner or later, I'm going to have to start breaking it down into manageable chunks, and then only work on one chunk at any given time.

P.S. I don't know if anyone else is interested in this, but let me know if you are. I have a TON of links I could share, though I will warn you that most of my really good ones are for the Midwest--Missouri, Illinois, and Kentucky are my big three.

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