Friday, September 13, 2024

On to the charting

I worked with my Legacy program and the charts are coming along nicely (all black and white) and the size should not be a problem as I am working on the third to the fourth generations now and the size of the file is 407 KB so I am looking at a fairly small book although likely 100 pages as I am up to 10 pages now. 

It was interesting that not long after my new neighbour arrived (in 1978!) she asked me to work on six years of income tax that her husband had not filed. I did think at the time it was a strange request but I was in a new area and one of my many skills was doing income tax having done it for a very long time already so I agreed to help her. With seven children I could understand the need to do that of course. Perhaps where they were posted before was not convenient to do the taxes no ideas on that I do not ask a lot of questions just provide the knowledge. Besides it seemed like a nice thing to do to help someone out. A few neighbourly acts like that and being volunteered as volunteer secretary for the new United Church I was very busy albeit at home. It was nice to work at home especially because I was there 100% of the time with my children and when the proofreading came along that really filled a niche and pretty much all at home - just had to go in three times a week to pick up my work; I can verify that and likely there are lots of jobs still that let you work primarily at home; one just needs to find them if that is your keen desire. It was at that point that I realize looking back I became a recluse for the most part having initially been involved in a welcome program for new people on the street. It just wasn't me; some people are excellent at that but I am not one of them. I could always be counted on to help out with community efforts but individual welcoming no; that just wasn't me.

Now I work at home once again (and even more reclusive than all those years ago) but I am the boss and I decide when to work or not to work and being a workaholic I do work quite a bit of the time. God gave us brains to work with and my philosophy has always been to go with that and do what you can do. Does my work have any meaning? Depends on what you need and some people do benefit from the work that I do. I regularly receive emails from people with questions on one or another of my blogs. A few want me to help them with their research and I seldom do that; I can not do other people's research - I am too old. But I do give them pointers if I am able to do so. You need to fit into my family somewhere for me to help to any extent as I do not do other research that does not fit into my family lines. 

I already have 35 boxes of Edward's research that I need to work through and although I helped him a lot through the years I do not know his families; I only know a few of the current family members to whom he was close so doing anything new is not going to happen but preserve what he did I am working away at that. 

So today is a working day and I will continue with the Companion Book and also preparing my Errata page for the Revised Siderfin book published six months plus ago. I will likely produce a new copy which I will put on my website with the link that still exists on my blog site. The number of changes will be slight but I guess that is one of the luxuries of the modern world to be able to correct a book although I will likely add the Errata page to the new book directing individuals to the changes that were made. I will also include the Errata page in the Companion book since it will directly link to revised and updated book as well as to James Sanders' original book on the Siderfin Family. 

Soon I will begin the two newsletters that are late as well. My finger is doing quite well as I type away. I have an exercise ring that I will start to use when I am not working starting with perhaps five repeats and work my way up. I would like to do therapy perhaps but my time always get swallowed up with things and I suspect that unless it creates problems for me that will not happen. But it is a really good idea. I should do it but at 79 nearly my should do attitude is slowly being replaced by I really would like to just work quietly away and get all this stuff done!

Breakfast next and then Latin. I am into the second year of Latin and we are doing the lessons I am most familiar with in Latin talking about the various gods of the Romans. It should be interesting. I hope that they keep expanding the Latin course but I am getting comfortable with declensions and need to do more work on them but do have old Latin textbooks that I could turn to and just keep on practising with the Latin drills to keep my vocabulary intact. I need to continue with my French as well. I want to get back into my son in law's French Canadian studies. My Heritage has just purchased a large French Canadian depository which looks interesting for some of those areas of research that can be difficult. 

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