Surnames

I would like to figure out how to make this post linked on the side for easy access?  Try permalink?

Updated finally:  February 6, 2016.
Will add more later

Biological Maternal Side:  

Peters
Domer  (Brick Wall)
Coleman
Casteel
Batting
Battung
(Kearns)(not DNA match)


Paternal Side:

Martin
Small
Chesshire
(McMinn)
Provance
DeHaven

Unknowns:
Cazier

Other family names:

McSorley
King
Ide
Chapin

Progress!

I can manage to amass the most amazing piles of "Figure this out."  I normally dread going through these piles because they may be a grandchild's school work misplaced in my office,  the junk mail that was collected by others and not immediately put in the trash.  Paperwork that belongs in my husband's office because that's where it's home is but if I move it there nobody will be able to find it!  You know.. junk.

The problem comes during the holidays.  Toward the end of the year I take the time to manage what absolutely needs to be done in my home office and then just set the rest to the side until I have more time.  My time in the last months of the year are taken up with office work,  archiving the old to make room for the new,  Christmas shopping,  Christmas shopping, babysitting,  filing,  making records for the accountant that are legible.  (He loves me.. his work is done for him!)  Shifting furniture from the living room to.. where else? My office.  This makes room for the coming Christmas tree.  And we clean house, decorate, Christmas shop (must find bargains!)  Start researching medical insurance options as this will renew, make phone calls to get questions answered regarding high cost of medical insurance,  sit on hold and while on hold find out the subcontractor's pay isn't adding up in the accounting software.  Damn!   Must hunt for that mistake that coincides with the coffee meets computer disaster.

As you can imagine,  the paper load in my office which is actually a small bedroom turned into an office is beyond overwhelming.  So, I want to go paperless in my office.  Consequently, I've been testing various software and apps that seem to be good options.

I have a scanner I want.. a ScanSnap I believe it's called.  Of course the more expensive one so I can easily put papers of various sizes in it to scan at once.  DevonThink Office Pro I like as well.  Receipts, contacts, layouts all can be scanned directly into this nifty little document manager.  Yes.. that is what I'd like but since our business didn't do so good this year.. in fact I was ready to close the business at one point,  we don't have the money for that fancy stuff so,  I am doing it the economical way.

I did spend money on PDFpen.  It was half off one day so I got it for it's OCR capabilities which seem lacking in OSX Lion and HP 8500.  So I can scan a receipt with PDFpen and run OCR and it becomes searchable.  I scan one page at a time because I don't have to spend money on a new scanner.  It just means that if I have alot of scanning to do (you know, those time when I pay bills and my husband collects up all the receipts out of his wallet because it's hurting his backside to sit on it?)  then it just means I get a lot of exercise going from the scanner to the desk and back again.  I never said it was a perfect system but thus far we are off to a digital start!

So, I spent the better part of this morning when I really, really need to be doing laundry and going through piles of paper collected on top of my desk for the last month and putting it in different "archive" boxes.  The one to keep in the attic for ten years,  the shredder or the trash can.  Now I can move on to other projects,  call the accountant and move on with my life returning periodically to shred paperwork from years past.

What's it like to go totally digital?  Not sure if we'll ever know because remember the aforementioned coffee meets computer disaster?  The thing that would have prevented it would have been to anticipate that my grandaughter was going to come in my office and need help with homework,  plop it down on my desk sending the full (and tall) coffee cup into a spinning trajectory that wasn't stopped by her homework because she yanked it off my desk and saved her homework.

We cleaned up the mess and tried to restart the computer and both of us where in tears when after trying everything to get the hard drive to show up we came to the conclusion that it was toast.   A new computer was ordered,  the toasted one runs off an external hard drive for the children's reading lessons now.   And it was the PAPER copies of everything that got me mostly back on track.  What had been backed up to the external hard drive still lacked one week of work.. the work I was finishing that day to be backed up to the external hard drive...paper filled the rest.  And I'm okay with that but my husband.. not so much.  So it'll take a couple years before he's okay with me shredding receipts that currently clutter my office but we'll get there!

Blogging

I love to write.  I quit writing for many reasons and I'll be honest.. one was Farmville.  But, even with that I have time to write.  I am undecided as of yet what direction I want to go in.  I had thought genealogy but I started one of those blogs.  Politics.. Well,  that seems safer left to my own thoughts.  Or talk to my husband we pretty much agree!  My kids used to give me more subjects to write about than I could keep up with but they are adults and do we really need another Mommy Blog?

So,  here goes nothing.   I may just start and see which direction this goes.  Already I can see the header image doesn't work with the black background I tend to prefer to read on.  Call it a dyslexic thing.. but since Dead Journal I've had to type on white.  So,  I imagine I can change my background back to white.

Either way,  I need to get the blankets out of the dryer so I'm going to leave it here with the feeling of.. "Hear goes nothing!"

So...

I started a blog.  And that's about it for now because I really have to actually accomplish something today!