New Hobby

Well, as you have noted over the past few months I have been blogging about my obsession with short stories. And I hope that I can continue to blog about them. But, I am now turning my blog to address a more interesting and rewarding hobby: family history. Believe it or not, genealogy is the #1 hobby in America today. For Christmas I received a fabulous book The Essential Latter-day Saint Guide to Finding Your Family on the Internet. Not only that, but I also received a donation for a subscription to Ancestry.com. I now have a worldwide 3 month membership. I have unlimited access to information and sources to not only verify information already put into our family history file but also to explore deeper into my past ancestors lives. In my spare time, (usually on Sundays) I sit down at my laptop to do some indexing. I prefer the term "indexing" over "extraction" as the latter term seems anachronistic and outdated. My current stake extraction director informed our stake members via familysearchindexing that in 2006 our stake indexed a mere 39,000 names. This past year our stake indexed 168,000 names; that's 4 times as many names as in 2006!!! Through my indexing and family history work I will be able to share ideas, insights, failures, and breakthroughs as they happen. It won't be in real time, but I do plan on blogging at least once a week. Now sit back and enjoy the show!