Marriage records added

Slowly going thru all the Pine Castle records as part of the project mentioned in yesterday's post. Slowly. I did get the Marriage Records portion up and running. Still need to do some additions, corrections, etc. But, the bulk of the material is there, if ye socks are interested in checking it out: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~oldpinecastle/marriages/index.html

New digirecords project

No doubt inspired by the latest techno gadget in this little corner of heaven, yours truly has embarked on a project that has been "in the works" for longer than anyone cares to remember.

That is, I plan to digitize all the old records I have on file related to the ancestral stomping grounds in Pine Castle.

Just getting started, so bear with me.

So far, all I've completed is page one from the 1935 state census enumeration:
click here to travel back in time

More to come later, so stay tuned!

New Toy

Yours truly is pleased to report the arrival of a new gadget in this little corner of heaven: an iPad 2.

The plan is to get acquainted with Apple's latest attempt to improve the quality of life for the masses.

Said plan got a little off track today when it was determined that a new wireless router would be needed in the humble abode.

Would ye socks believe it if I told you that entering the phrase "wireless router" in a google search, that the top result is a link to WalMart?

Seriously.

I'm sure that revelation may spark conspiracy theories. So be it. The bottom line, though, was that the dastardly box store did in fact have the most competitive prices and convinced me to make the rare trek to the nearest gateway to Dante's inferno.

Long story longer, I got everything up and running with a minimum of foul language and am actually tossing this post in the dryer via aforementioned iPad2.

But, I'm sure ye socks were able to tell the difference without me pointing out the obvious. . .

Missing any socks?

Apologies to ye socks who were accustomed to daily posts in the dryer over the last few years.

Several pressing things in this neck o' the woods kept yours truly from keeping up with regular blog entries.

Mostly, any spare time that I might otherwise have been able to devote to improvement of the blogosphere was consumed by the massive planning and staging of the 2011 Pine Castle Pioneer Days festival.

For more info on that, check out the event site at http://www.pinecastlepioneerdays.org or join or Facebook group. (LOTS of great new photos are posted on the latter.)

At any rate, I took another month to recover from Pioneer Days before making the commitment to getting back to The Sock in the Dryer.

Have you read any of these books?

I'm sure a large number of ye socks will be relieved by today's item of a non-political nature! It was forwarded to me as a sort of slam-post:

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Instructions: Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read an excerpt. Post your results on your blog or FB page and tag a few other bibliophiles.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albon
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Get unplugged!

After watching Bruce Willis' recent release "Surrogates" on DVD (thanks be to our friends at Netflix), allow yours truly to encourage ye socks to get back to reality.

Power-down the computer.

Put down the iphone.

And, yes, step away from the boob tube.

The "futuristic" view of our society portrayed in this flick was more than a little disturbing, because we're really not that far away from the day when these little devices become our primary means of human interaction.

Kinda scary.

This I point out in the form of a blog post?!

Ye olde mailbox overfloweth!

Yikes!

Yours truly didn't realize until today that he had been ignoring his Yahoo email inbox.

(Thanks to the dear one in the Show-me State for pointing it out!)

The only explanation I can offer, feeble as it may be, is that I got a new work email address several months ago and have been primarily using that plus my old AOL address to keep in touch.

I thought I'd let everyone know that, but the 993 messages I found waiting for me today prove that is not the case.

Apologies to all who thought I was ignoring you. I am in the process of replying to all that require replies. In the mean time, though, please start using the AOL and dmc-cfl addresses!!

Word Nazis

Wow, yours truly was somewhat taken aback by the response to yesterday's post about the British elections.

Ironically, none of the emails received in this little corner of heaven had anything to do with Gordon Brown, David Cameron, or Nick Clegg.

Rather, every single one of them was an indictment of my use of the adjective "reckless."

I was told in so many words to invest in a new spell-checker, that said descriptor should have been preceded with a w. ("wreckless")

That just didn't sound correct to me, so I did some research. "Wreckless" implies the lack of a collision or some other disastrous event. "Reckless," on the other hand, is apparently an abbreviated form of "reckonless," to be used in describing something that can't be reckoned (calculated).

All that being said, I have to stand by my use of RECKLESS.

Oh, and David Cameron will be the next British PM, too!

Apologies in advance

I got tagged by one of those Facebook quiz thingies, so here goes . . .

The phone rings. Who will it be? FB or Twitter update

When shopping at the grocery store, do you return your cart? yes

In a social setting, are you more of a talker or a listener? both...depending upon the person and situation

Do you take compliments well? at times...

Do you play Sudoku? yes, but it's not playing. Sudoku is serious stuff.

If abandoned alone in the wilderness, would you survive? yep, ask me about Order of the Arrow some time . . .

Did you ever go to camp as a kid? often, see preceding answer

What was your favorite game as a kid? escape and evade

Use three words to describe yourself? looks for humor

Do any songs make you cry? plead the 5th

Are you continuing your education? daily, but not formally

Have you ever taken pictures in a photo booth? yep!

How often do you read books? daily

Do you think more about the past, present or future? present

What is your favorite children’s book? anything by Richard Scarry

What color are your eyes? blue

Where is your dream house located? I live in it

If your house was on fire, what would be the first thing you grabbed? the cat

When was the last time you were at Olive Garden? YEARS ago

Where was the farthest place you traveled today? Conway

Do you like mustard? yep

Do you look like your mom or dad? good combo of both

How long does it take you in the shower? depends on what I'm doing in there!

Can you do the splits? never tried

What movie do you want to see right now? 500 Days of Summer (just arrived courtesy of Netflix)

What did you do for New Year’s? went to EPCOT with my sister & niblings

Do you own a camera phone? yep

How many hours of sleep do you get a night? shoot for 8, often succeed

What do you buy at the movies? usually just a Diet Coke

Do you wear your seat belt? always

How many meals do you eat a day? 1 real good one, and graze the rest of the day

Do you like funny or serious people better? appreciate both

Ever been to L.A.? nope

Did you eat a cookie today? no, but I did have a cracker which is kinda close . . .

Do you hate chocolate? no . . . who really "hates" chocolate?!?

Are you a gullible person? probably

Are you easy to get along with? as long as I get my way 100% of the time!! :P

Surname Saturday

In keeping with yesterday's genealogy theme, I give ye socks the following list of surnames that appear in my direct ancestry (at least as far back as 9 generations):

Airey Anderson Andrews Arnett
Barker Barnard Blakesley (3x!) Blount Bonnell Bonner Boyd Brown (3x!) Burton
Cameron Cartwright Coats Cocke Conner Cox Cullen
Daly Davis (3x!) Dean Dees
Evans Everett
Flake
Gaines Gallagher Gleeson Griffin
Hall Hanna Harris Hendricks Hill Hollinger
Irving Ivey
Jackson Jernigan Jones (4x!) Judd
Kellogg King
Leary Lighthall Lorance Lowry Lynch (twice!)
Macy Madison Marriott May Meachum Miller Mizell Morgan
McClure
Norton
Patrick Pleasant Portis
Reid Robertson (twice!) Rowan Rushton
Selman Simmons Smith Sponable Stith Stockdale (twice!) Swan
Taylor Timmons Touchstone
Villipontoux
Walker Webb Wilder

More details can be seen on my ahnentafel: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~oldpinecastle/ahnentafel.html

Let me know if you see any points of possible kinnection!

Follow Friday

For ye socks who care about such things, here's a list of the genealogy-related blogs that I follow on a regular basis:

blog.eogn.com

geneabloggers.com

genealogyblog.com

ancestryinsider.blogspot.com

geneablogie.blogspot.com

blog.familytreemagazine.com

genealogygemspodcast.com

blog.dearmyrtle.com

genealogy.about.com

One day of blog silence

For the victims at Fort Hood, Texas.

Getting to know each other

If you've been tagged or you are reading this, you have the honor of copying all these goofy questions, writing your own response, and tagging 25 other victims.

You have to tag me so really you just need 24 more people. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you - but not in a creepy stalker kind of way.

To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your title as "Getting to know each other!", tag 25 people including me (tagging is done in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.

1. What time did you get up this morning? 6
2. How do you like your steak? medium
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Good question. Usually wait for the DVD
4. What is your favorite TV show? Survivor
5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? Right here in good ol' Orlando!
6. What did you have for breakfast? skipped it (don't tell Mom!)
7. What is your favorite cuisine? Mexican
8. What foods do you dislike? avocados
9. Favorite Place to Eat? home!
10. Favorite dressing? Ranch
11.What kind of vehicle do you drive? Chevy Blazer
12. What are your favorite clothes? blue jeans, t-shirt, ballcap, and vans.
13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? Ireland
14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? 1/2 full
15. Where would you want to retire? see #5 above
16. Favorite time of day? crack o' dawn
17. Where were you born? Arizona
18. What is your favorite sport to watch? Gatorball
19. Who do you think will not tag you back? not sure
20. Person you expect to tag you back first? not sure
21. Who are you most curious about their responses to this? everyone!
22. Bird watcher? yep, particularly the cranes & herons around Lake Ivanhoe
23. Are you a morning person or a night person? both, it's that big stretch in the middle that gives me fits.
24. Do you have any pets? 1 meezer
25. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share? Doing some interior painting at ye olde abode.
26. What did you want to be when you were little? I've never been little.
27. What is your best childhood memory? Going to see Empire Strikes Back
28. Are you a cat or dog person? Lean toward cat, but can deal with well-behaved dogs that don't smell.
30. Always wear your seat belt? Yes
31. Been in a car accident? Yes
32. Any pet peeves? people with a false sense of entitlement
33. Favorite Pizza Toppings? chicken
34. Favorite Flower? orange blossom
35. Favorite ice cream? Publix Premium Key Lime Pie
36. Favorite fast food restaurant? Burger King
37. How many times did you fail your driver's test? 0
38. From whom did you get your last email? Mayette
39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Home Depot
40. Do anything spontaneous lately? Yes.
41. Like your job? What's not to like?
42. Broccoli? sure
43. What was your favorite vacation? pre-Katrina roadtrip to Biloxi
44. Last person you went out to dinner with? banquetroom full of people
45. What are you listening to right now? Sinatra
46. What is your favorite color? Orange . . . no, Blue . . . no, Orange . . . no, Blue . . .
47. How many tattoos do you have? 0
48. How many are you tagging for this quiz? haven't decided yet.
49. What time did you finish this quiz? 8:19pm
50. Are you a coffee drinker? yep!

15 movies

In keeping with the recent tradition of posting something light-hearted on Mondays, I was tagged in yet another of those list things. So, here goes . . .

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen movies you've seen that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including the person who tagged you:

1. War of the Worlds
2. Forrest Gump
3. Gangs of New York
4. Shrek
5. Raiders of the Lost Ark (and the rest of the Indiana Jones series)
6. The Patriot
7. Gods & Generals
8. Field of Dreams
9. Kingdom of Heaven
10. Dances with Wolves
11. Braveheart
12. Casablanca
13. Dead Poets Society
14. Glory
15. Gladiator

Where I've been

OK, something light for a Monday. I got tagged with this, so here goes . . .

Put an X by the states you have been to.......
Put an O beside the states where you have lived.
Airports don't count!

Alabama -XO
Alaska -
Arizona -XO
Arkansas -X
California -XO
Colorado -X
Connecticut -
Delaware -X
District of Columbia -X
Florida -XO
Georgia -X
Hawaii -
Idaho -
Illinois -X
Indiana -X
Iowa -
Kansas -
Kentucky -X
Louisiana -XO
Maine -
Maryland -X
Massachusetts -
Michigan -
Minnesota -
Mississippi -X
Missouri -X
Montana -
Nebraska -
Nevada -
New Hampshire -
New Jersey -X
New Mexico -X
New York -
North Carolina-X
North Dakota-
Ohio-X
Oklahoma-X
Oregon-X
Pennsylvania-X
Rhode Island-
South Carolina-X
South Dakota-
Tennessee-X
Texas-XO
Utah-
Vermont-
Virginia-XO
Washington-
West Virginia-X
Wisconsin-
Wyoming-

The 3's of Me

OK, apologies in advance, but I got tagged in another one of those survey things. So, here goes:

You have been tagged. You are supposed to write a note with the 3's of YOU.

Three names I go by:
1. William
2. Little Billy (yeah, I know. that one even cracks ME up!)
3. #*()&^#*(

Three jobs I've had in my life:
1. pizza delivery
2. camera shop slave
3. salesman

Three places I've lived:
1. Orlando
2. Springfield, Virginia
3. Lubbock, Texas

Three favorite drinks:
1. Diet Coke
2. coffee
3. Malbec

Three TV shows I watch:
1. Survivor
2. Big Brother
3. NCIS

Three Places I've been:
1. Atlantic City
2. New Orleans
3. Mexico

Three people who text me regularly:
I don't normally get texts (because my plan doesn't allow me to respond anymore) but my last three were from
1. Joanna
2. Howard
3. Aunt Diane

Three of my favorite foods:
1. Mexican
2. Italian
3. Chinese

Three things I'm looking forward to:
1. tap dancing on plywood (those who know, know what they know)
2. January 20, 2013 (hope and change!)
3. The end of this recession!!

15 Books

OK, after getting tagged yesterday, my fellow FHS alum Michelle got me with this one today:

List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you -- list the first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes. Don't take too long to think about it. Here are mine, in no particular order:

1. The Bible. (kinda obvious, but this one gets cracked on a daily basis)

2. Like the Cats of Kilkenny: A True Story of the Civil War. (can't remember the name of the author, but he is a brilliant writer)

3. Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. (deserved its Pulitzer prize)

4. Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth and World Without End.

5. The Bastard, and the rest of the books in that series, by John Jakes.

6. Clan of the Cave Bear, and the rest of the books in that series, by Jean M. Auel.

7. The Great Brain, and the rest of the books in that series, by J.D. FitzGerald.

8. Undaunted Courage, by Stephen E. Ambrose.

9. Gotham, by Burrows & Wallace. (history of NYC)

10. The Hobbit, and the rest of the books in that series, by J.R.R. Tolkien. (better than the movies)

11. Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell.

12. The Forgotten Man, by Amity Shlaes. (everyone should read this one if they want to understand what really happened during The Great Depression, and how dangerously close we are to going down that road again . . .)

13. Here be Dragons, and the rest of the books in the series by Sharon Kay Penman.

14. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. (dark, but worth it)

15. Personal Reminiscences, by William H. Morgan. (memoirs of my great-uncle)

Tag, I'm it?

Just got tagged by one of those online "getting to know you" quizzes. So, bear with me . . .

1. What time did you get up this morning? 6
2. How do you like your steak? medium
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? can't remember
4. What is your favorite TV show? Survivor
5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? right where I am now!
6. What did you have for breakfast? skipped it (don't tell Mom!)
7. What is your favorite cuisine? Mexican
8. What foods do you dislike? liver
9. Favorite place to eat? home
10. Favorite dressing? ranch
11. What kind of vehicle do you drive? Chevy Blazer
12. What are your favorite clothes? jeans & t-shirt
13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? Ireland
14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? yes
15. Where would you want to retire? see #5 above
16. Favorite time of day? morning
17. Where were you born? Williams Air Force Base, Arizona
18. What is your favorite sport to watch? GATOR FOOTBALL!
19. Who do you think will not tag you back? not sure
20. Person you expect to tag you back first? again, not sure
21. Who are you most curious about their responses to this? everyone
22. Bird watcher? yes, especially the water fowl along Lake Ivanhoe
23. Are you a morning person or a night person? morning
24. Do you have any pets? 1 meezer
25. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share? fixin to go to lunch . . . .
26. What did you want to be when you were little? Jedi knight
27. What is your best childhood memory? summer camp at Lost Pines
28. Are you a cat or dog person? cat
29. Are you married? no
30. Always wear your seat belt? yes
31. Been in a car accident? Yes
32. Any pet peeves? yes (too many to list)
33. Favorite pizza toppings? cheese
34. Favorite flower? orange blossoms
35. Favorite ice cream? Publix Premium Key Lime Pie
36. Favorite fast food restaurant? Taco Bell
37. How many times did you fail your driver's test? never
38. From whom did you get your last email? Melissa B
39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? would never do that!
40. Do anything spontaneous lately? bought some cherries at a produce stand
41. Like your job? love it!!!
42. Broccoli? sure, got any melted cheese?
43. What was your favorite vacation? Biloxi (before the storm)
44. Last person you went out to dinner with? Valda & Howard
45. What are you listening to right now? Tim McGraw
46. What is your favorite color? blue, no orange, no blue AND orange!
47. How many tattoos do you have? ZERO!
48. How many are you tagging for this quiz? don't know yet
49. What time did you finish this quiz? 11:37am

Ephemera collection

For ye socks who give 2 hoots about such things, I have created a new blog space about all the odd items I've collected at flea markets, estate sales, etc., over the years.

They include series of old letters, diaries, and photos.

I like to keep my genealogical sleuthing abilities sharp by trying to identify the writers and posers, and sometimes even succeed in reuniting the ephemera with surviving descendants.

Check out the first post:

http://ephemeracollection.blogspot.com/2009/05/union-diary-1884.html

What's so fascinating about that?!

Ye socks who are as geeky as yours truly and are maintaining blogs of your own may want to check out this site:

http://feedjit.com/

There you will find a cool widget that allows you to keep track of who is surfing thru your posts.

I just got done browsing the latest data on this little corner of the blogosphere, and can't figure out why so many folks out there end up on my old post about Miss Chiquita Banana . . .

Ah, well, to each his or her own, I suppose . . .