Yes, I Am Alive!

Just in case anyone is still reading my blog, I am alive. It seems like I write these posts more and more in the last year and a half. I guess life gets in the way of genealogy and blogging, especially since I started studying for the CPA exam in September 2010.

The good news is that I *think* I am done studying. I took the last part of the exam on 11/21. I should hear something tomorrow about my score (or at least within the next week). I think I did okay. I don't feel 100% confident, but I think I did well enough to pass. For those of you that don't know, there are four parts of the exam: Financial Accounting & Reporting, Business Environment & Concepts (economics, cost accounting, finance), Audit and Attestation, and Regulation (tax and business law). They can be taken in any order and as many times as you need, but they must all be passed within a rolling 18-month window. The Regulation test was the last one I took and the hardest for me because I do not deal with taxes or business law on a regular basis at my job. I primarily work in financial accounting and audit, so those two parts were my easiest.

I have now moved back to Louisiana. I am so excited to be back with my husband and the rest of my family and friends. I really did like North Carolina, but it's not about where you are. It's about who you're with. I am working for the same company but on a contract basis. Instead of working in the accounting department, I am working in the operations area of the company on a contract that monitors federal funds received by the state of Louisiana through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. I like the people I am working with, I work less than half the hours I used to work, and I make twice the pay, so life is grand.

In genealogy land, I am still cleaning up my RootsMagic database. I am primarily cleaning up the sources, but I am also fixing a few other things, such as how I enter events.

The sources were somewhat jumbled when I converted my Legacy 7.0 file to a RootsMagic 4.0 file two years ago (i.e. author's name in wrong position in source citation). They came over in free form, and I am transferring them to the RootsMagic source template forms based on Elizabeth Shown Mills' style.

Also, some of the dates that contained ranges in Legacy 7.0 (i.e. born bet 15 Apr 1886 and 15 Apr 1887) did not transfer properly. The second part of the date range was cut off, so those have to be fixed as well.

Overall, I feel that my research skills and experience have increased greatly over the last 3 to 4 years, so that adds to why I have a lot of clean up to do. I have a lot of events sourced with undocumented WorldConnect trees, and I want to remove those sources and put their information in the notes instead until I can verify the data.

As I do cleanup, I am also adding a few events and people on collateral lines that can be easily found online in Ancestry, FindAGrave, and FamilySearch databases. Sometimes I feel like I should be focusing more on the cleanup, but it does get a little boring doing the cleanup at times.

I started the cleanup with my own parents and then moved through the generations (primarily in order of Ahnentafel), including collateral lines in each generation. Currently, I am on my great-great-grandparents, Lovell Hugh PEMBERTON and Alvina Mary LESPERANCE. I am going through their children first, beginning with the children that died in childhood since they have the least amount of sources. Then I will go through their children that married and their collateral lines (and then their children's collateral lines). Sometimes as I am doing this, I realize I have way too much info on a collateral line. Then again, is it possible to have too much info on a collateral line? I typically struggle with how much info to research on a collateral line. Most of my collateral line research is stuff I've found online and stuff that was within easy reach at the courthouse while I was researching my direct lines.

I have not yet made it to the library or archives here in Baton Rouge since I've been back. I was busy studying the first month I was home, and then I've been busy with unpacking and holidays the last two weeks. I hope to get to the library before Christmas.

I start my first course in the National Institute for Genealogical Studies American Records Certificate program tomorrow. That was my gift to myself for passing the CPA exam (I know that some of you may be thinking I am crazy to reward myself with more studying...LOL...but this should be fun studying). It is the intro to genealogy course. It should be interesting since I've been doing genealogy for several years now, but I browsed through the first module (there are six total) today and noticed that they do have tailored suggestions on the assignments for people who have been doing it for years. For instance, one of the assignments was to start your pedigree chart using only resources in your home and your family members' homes until you get stuck. Well, I did that about 15 years ago. I believe the suggestion for experienced genealogists was to document where you got stuck after using resources in your family's home when you initially started doing genealogy years ago. Luckily, I still have my first pedigree chart (I can't seem to part with it), copies of both of my grandparents' and my parents' records that I found in their homes that are sourced in my database, and I've got a pretty good memory, so it shouldn't be too hard of an assignment.

Anyhow, my new goal is to blog at least once a week for the next 2 months. Then maybe I will be able to get back in the habit. Let's keep our fingers crossed.