Thursday, July 19, 2012

Drives me nuts

I promise I won't write about the weather.  OK?

I thought I had my genealogy stuff pretty well organized, and then I found an entire box of miscellaneous records for all 4 lines I am researching.  All scrambled together, wrinkled, staples coming loose, bad photocopies, now what do I do with them?  So I came in here and decided to ruminate on my blog.  Just like my subtitle, better living through denial.  Manana. I have found some stuff my dad would have been interested in, but I found it after he passed, it's been 10 years now.  I found that his dad Floyd, of whom very little is known due to an early and bitter divorce, is in fact illegitimate.  The family name is Floyd's mother's maiden name (is this too confusing?) and her name changed only after she married another man and Floyd went to live with his stepfather.  The mother was a housekeeper in 1850 for the family next door to her parents, a man of 30 with a wife and 3 small children.  It isn't hard to speculate as to who was the father of Floyd, but of course no records to prove this.  It is just interesting.

I have a friend who is also into genealogy.  Several years ago she discovered that her ancestor who was a Revolutionary war soldier of some status was black.  She just thought it was interesting and was glad that a good bit had been written about him and his 12 children, back in those days when WV was VA.  Her mother, however, was appalled, and insisted that my friend keep this as a secret.  I mean, what would she do with this information, go on Dr. Phil?  Anyway, the scoundrels and ne'er-do-wells are the interesting members of the families, as long as they are far enough in the past.  All of my ancestors were farmers, drat it.

I ran across my old report cards when I was sorting through old papers.  My mom kept everything, even a receipt for a spring for 25 cents.  Old cancelled checks from 60 years ago.  Everything.  Anyway, I read the "comments" part at the end of each grading period, and most all of them said that I started projects and then didn't complete them.  And I thought, what else is new?  I STILL do that.  Like that kiln sitting in my garage, all wired up and empty.  Or that guitar in my living room, tuned, but I can't play it with long fingernails.  Etc.  Anyway, I threw the report cards away, I don't want them and for sure the kids won't either.  I threw away a lot of stuff.

Today I mailed off three 3.5 inch floppy disks to a company that transfers them to a CD for $1.99 per disk.  It turns out that when N transferred these files to a CD back in the day, there was some error and the CD is blank.  There are only 4 jpg files on them, but no other way to get them, luckily I had kept the floppies.  I am my mother's daughter.  Hope it works.

Bumper sticker(s) for the day:  "Master of obsolete technology." and also "Grandmas ~ the original laptop."


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