October TBR & Updating the Goodreads To Read collection... 1,070 books y'all!

Working on the previously mentioned book planner, I also reconfigured my current Franken planner... Again. I found a list of 20 in 20 that I had started prior to the craziness that is this year, and saw a couple things book related on said list.

Book Journal and September Wrap-Up

I’m not a BookTuber (yet...) but as I have been working on my planner collection this year, I found that trying to include my reading habits in my daily planner was just too much. And the collection wasn’t all together in one spot, making a quick glance at the total record for the year near impossible.

Freak Rain Downpour

I posted to Facebook a very, very short video on August 14, 2020, sharing a freak rain shower in the bright August late afternoon sun. My soul sister made a comment along the lines of at least we were able to get inside quickly and get into fresh clothes. Which we didn’t do. We just air dried. HA! We’re at a stage in life where we don’t care about things like dry clothes. Lol

I started to reply and it suddenly turned into this crazy comparison thing that just didn’t belong in a comment. She has a young son and I have a teen son, so we’re naturally at different parenting stages and what we notice first about and in our lives. We are also extremely different people and always came at situations and circumstances from different viewpoints.

Blog Thoughts: Human Compassion

If you haven’t noticed, I love television and movies. I love the art that allows people to be different from who they really are in order to entertain us.

But I also recognize the reality that they are just as human as we are. They can suffer from the same insecurities and maladies that we do.

That being said, I absolutely hate waiting in grocery check out lines. You might be saying, “Lizzie? What the actual f does grocery lines have to do with actors???”

Voyager Notebook

I've been a little MIA here on the blog the last few weeks, but there was a very valid reason. A couple very good reasons actually. First, it's the holidays. You know how things can get away from you during that time? Well, I'm no different. 😆 Second, I started a new job, interviewed for and got a second, which I start tomorrow. I'm really glad now that I started the planner journey last year and have some semblance of a handle on it so I can keep up with everything I have to do, and schedule time for what I want to do.

The Voyager Notebook

Which brings me to the title of this post. A couple weeks back when I was shopping for Pop at Meijer, a Midwest US store similar to Walmart, I had to swing past the stationery/office section as usual. I was debating on getting another Piccadilly dot grid journal for 2020, despite my work the past six months on my collection of traveler's notebooks.

History, the Present, and the Future

Tonight I launched a very bare bones Facebook page dedicated to my blog. It is my hope that people not on my friends list who come across it will enjoy it as well as allowing people on my friends list who are not interested in my blog to avoid having to see posts about it.

Now on to some thoughts that occured as a result of my past few weeks of research and redesign.

iPhone Keyboards

Just a quick note to share...

I love all the iPhone keyboards!!!

Since I’ve been spending more time on genealogy and using my phone to help in my research, the ability to type names of people and places properly on a computer and on a mobile device has become crucial. At this point in time, I have added 4 extra languages for ease on my iPhone. As I go further in my research, I’m sure I will add more. Some are for fun, like the Greek, Icelandic, and Norwegian languages, but this morning I added French because of all the time I’m spending on my BERTHOULIER line.

With names like François BERTHOULIER and Montigney-lès-Cherlieu, quickly accessing the non-English letters is important. The letter variants are typically available on the English keyboard, but when you switch to the appropriate keyboard, spellcheck enacts and words that would have been flagged as misspelled in English are no longer flagged. I don’t know about you, but I really detest seeing all those red squiggly or dotted underlines. I still get them when a surname is all caps, but that’s the nature of the genealogical beast. Lol

TealNotes.com and New Year's Resolutions

This is a long post today, so don't say I didn't warn you!

Email Overload

If you're anything like me, you sign up for newsletters willy nilly and it soon fills your email inbox to capacity. Many people I know, and you might be like this too, very rarely check their email inboxes. We input our email addys into the form and forget about it.

I know I certainly have a difficult time keeping up with it. I thought I could sort it out a bit more, by creating mail filters and multiple email accounts, each covering a different aspect of my life. If you thought a single account was difficult to keep up with, try seven!

The Bartaway Rabbit Hole Strikes Again! (Part 2)

This evening I wanted to share a bit of methodology before jumping into the two eldest children of Adolphus BARTAWAY and Adalina HAGENBUCH. Researching genealogy and blogging about it seem to be mutually exclusive tasks for many of my genblogging contemporaries, but I use the two in conjunction. Blogging as I research and researching as I blog tends to be how I roll.

I also have started to use some emojis and unicode to add quick glance capability into my bulleted data lists. The Legend (which will develop into a reusable graphic) is as follows:

🍼  Birth (of self or children)
✒️ Census Record (pen nib)
⚭ Marriage
⚮ Divorce
💀 Death

The Bartaway Rabbit Hole has Struck Again!

The Berthoulier Confusion

My 3rd great grandfather Adolphus C. BARTAWAY (BERTHOULIER) has been a pain in my tookus. Tracking his heritage down is a big goal in my genealogy search. Pop heard stories as a child that Adolphus had attended the Chicago World's Fair and had his own booth. My father fancies himself a bit of a mechanical engineer and truth be told he's wrangled together some handy tools and projects over the years. It would be nice to find out the truth behind those stories and let him know if this branch contributes to his mechanical inclinations.

How I Organize My Genealogy Research Files

As I have mentioned in the past, I've been working on my genealogy off and on for about 16 years. The past four weeks have seen a lot of progress in organization and filling in huge gaps close to my end of the tree. In between applying for jobs and running errands for my father, I've decompressed by working on organizing the mounds of data, both digital and tactile.

(On a side note, I am quite disappointed that FamilySearch has had to change the availability of census pages. I used to be able to download and save the image that showed the page with my family member on it. The ability to download and print those images is now unavailable. I can only surmise that the US Census Bureau has renegotiated the contract and FamilySearch can no longer allow us that kind of access. Such a bummer.)

The KRAUSE Conundrum, Part 2

Conundrum

I call this family group The KRAUSE Conundrum because they have been so difficult to track down. The parents of the family are my 2nd great grandparents Ferdinand and Amelia. Their children are Gustave, Max, Charles (my great grandfather), and Catherine. Peripheral family members are documented as a way to gather additional information about Gus's movements and an attempt to find out about where Ferdinand and Amelia came from.

I focus a lot of my research on Gus because he seems to be the most interesting of the group. He didn't plunk down and settle in one place and he lived life by his own rules. There is also a lot of information on him, or at least the group of men known as Gus C. KRAUSE. When I couldn't figure out why each piece of information seemed to be at odds with the rest, I went to the world stage at the time to figure out why he would purposely disseminate false information. It has been an eye opener.

The KRAUSE Conundrum, Part 1

The German Brick Wall

One of the most frustrating parts of genealogy research are what genealogists call 'brick-wall ancestors'. I've come into contact with many such ancestors, and I'd say the prevailing nationality of those ancestors is German. What is it about the way Germans from the 1850s-1950s were raised that caused them to be so tight lipped about family matters? The majority of the issues I am dealing with lately come from my biological paternal side, but I have run into a similar problem with my maternal side as well as my adoptive paternal side. It's like they were trained from birth to keep a secret to their graves. I guess it's Gibbs' Rule 4 (NCIS); Best way to keep a secret. Keep it to yourself. Second-best, tell one other person—if you must. There is no third best.

How I Plan a Blog Post (or How my Attention Deficit Disorder Rules Everything)

Today gets really heavy folks. I apologize up front, but there is a point to the story. And thank you for taking the time today to read it. You really didn't have to put in the effort, but I'm thankful you did. Maybe it will help you today. Maybe it will help you with a friend or stranger you encounter. Maybe it will distract you from whatever is bothering you. In any event, remember you can get through anything. 💗

Today's Rabbit Hole: Genealogy and Gilbert Bartaway

Today's post is long and multi-faceted, spanning different aspects of genealogy, so bear with me as I relate my current frustration and my reasons for coming to this point.

My Story

Ever since meeting my biological father in July of 2003, I've been an intermittent genealogist. For the past 16 years I've occasionally researched my family history. If you've never heard my story before, here's the short version.

Unplanned Blurb #499: Unemployed Productivity

As I am now officially and unfortunately unemployed, it is amazing how much around the house is actually getting done, both in our home and at my father's house. When you haven't a job, all those things you were too tired to do while you were working are getting done. But who can afford to live this way for very long? Definitely not my family.

Reading Challenge 2019 Update

I have thoroughly failed this year’s reading challenge. With 10 weeks left in 2019, there is no hope of reading 82 books... unless I read a bunch of children’s picture books... but really? I can’t stoop THAT low.

Granted, quite a large majority of the books I read are geared towards the YA crowd, but frankly, the stories are far more interesting usually. The stuff geared towards adults... ugh. So strict in genre adherence it’s gaggable. For example, I walked completely away from The Dresden Files this year; Harry just wasn’t Paul Blackthorn in written form. Sorry Jim Butcher. I just couldn’t keep going. Nonfiction is... *snore* what was I talking about again? Oh yeah. Books. I mentioned nonfiction didn’t I? Yup. That’ll make me snooze in a heartbeat.

Fountain Pens

Quite awhile back, I went into the attic of my father's house and rummaged through some of my grandmother's crafty stuff. My grandparents bought the house in 1959 so there's a lot of accumulated stuff. My grandmother was an artist, and an amazingly crafty woman. After seeing some old photographs for sale $1 each at the Johnny Appleseed Festival today, I thought of the upstairs bedroom filled with decades worth of old family photos. Here's some of Grandma before she married Grandpa.

45th Annual Johnny Appleseed Festival, 2019 Edition

Oh my goodness! It was a day!

I didn't snap photos today, although I intended to, but I couldn't even think about letting this gem pass by without sharing it.

This antique has quite a bit of wear and tear, but you know what? It's the freaking Santa Maria! As in 'the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria'! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Christopher Columbus was a royal jerk and he's the one primarily responsible for the rise of ethnic-based slavery in the Americas. But it's also a direct line between his supposed discovery of America and most of our American existence. Don't worry. At a price tag of $125, it definitely did not come home with us. I just had to share it.

Work: Aggravatingly Rewarding

As annoying and aggravating as today went at work, and by that I mean that I didn't get much of my workload relating to my position as department lead accomplished, today was also a day that reminded me of how rewarding working in retail can be.

While helping out at customer service I took a phone call from a woman who wanted help shopping when she came in to the store. In the course of the conversation, she relayed that she is blind and since she had now heard my voice and I was so pleasant with big energy, she wanted me specifically.