Monday Genea-pourri, Week of January 28-February 3, 2019

Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great documenting our own. I’ll write about what I’ve been doing the past week. This idea came from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing, who started this meme.

Genealogy

Blog Writing: I wrote the following blog posts this week:

• 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks For week 5, I wrote about my first trip to Sutro Library viewing census records and finding my grandfather’s family. This trip hooked me for life.

• Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: We were to write about Super Bowl LIII and about our favorite teams. I wrote instead about the San Francisco Giants.

 Webinars/Study Groups Attended

I attended three webinars week by Family Tree Webinars:

• Family Gatherings: Dragging Genealogy Information Out of Your Family by Melissa Barker
• You Can Do This: Photo Organizing and Preservation by Thomas MacEntee
• Focused Research VS Information Overload by DearMyrtle & Cousin Russ

and participated in one study group:

• AmericanGen Study Group, Chapter 18

Our Cert Peer Group meet for the first time this year and spent lots of time checking in and discussing our experiences at SLIG. It was so good to see each other again.

Family Writing & Research.  I'm working on writing the story of my parents' lives. It's hard to begin so I decided to start with brainstorming. Writing down all the thoughts I have about them at different times in their lives might give me a place to start. I will also ask my sisters to give some input. 

Other Activities

I went on my first bird watching trip with the Mt. Diablo Audubon Society. It was in my backyard. We first started at Waterbird Regional Preserve, where we viewed McNabney Marsh with binoculars and scopes. We saw all kinds of ducks (three different teals) and shorebirds. The best was watching a peregrine falcon land in the marsh. We traveled in carpools to a spot next to Copart. There we were hoping for the Golden Eagle that the leader had seen the previous day, but did not. A merlin was perched at the parking lot. Then we traveled to the other side of McNabney Marsh and scoped from there. Finally we drove to the Martinez Shoreline Park and walked around fields and ponds at the east end behind the ball fields. Lots of shorebirds there, both avocets and black-necked stilts, along with many killdeer.

Mt. Diablo Audubon Trip to Martinez sites

Bird watching at home included woodpeckers, goldfinches, robins, titmouse, flickers, and more, coming to the feeders and feeding in plants at the backyard. They were pretty active on Saturday after the many rain showers.

Two doctors’ appointments helped determine that I have a pulled groin muscle. Will have to take it easy for a while.

I attempted the written test at the Walnut Creek Model Railroad club, a prerequisite to operate on the layout. I missed 20 out of 101 questions and passing is missing only 10. Can try again in two weeks. I get mixed up on Open and Shorts but someone explained them to me. I also missed the parts about the proper speed in particular locations. I will have to study those. Next time I should do better.

I attended the final performance of Onstage Repertory Theater's "Red Herring" at the Campbell Theater with friends, Jamie and Mary. Funny play and very enjoyable. Also ran into some BART employees, Dave & Gina, whom I hadn't seen in ages. It was great catching up.

Copyright © 2019 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.