One more thing

I forgot one more thing I've started doing. I've started doing indexing for the Family history center and I really like it so far. Its very challenging to try and figure out the handwriting and also scary because I really want to get it right. To index you download a document that has been scanned in such as a census or a draft notice and then they give you the categories to type up so that people can then search for words and find the document or their family members. After you index a document and send it in they have someone review it and send you the results of how well you interpreted vs what they got and I got 90% accuracy on my first one. The big mistakes that counted for a lot were in the race category I wrote mix (as it appeared on the document) but it needs to be written as mixed and a few errors like step son needed to be stepson. Now that I know those little tricks I think I'll keep doing better. I was pretty proud I did well because it's actually a lot harder than it looks. I had to google quite a few things like counties in Illinois to figure out what county the census was from because I couldn't read the handwriting. It's also hard because the documents are usually from the 1800's so they use different words for things and the handwriting is very different. I've done 3 documents so far and they usually take about 30 minutes to an hour depending on how hard they are or how distracted I am (I usually watch a TV show while I do it). I learned about it when I read an article about it in the Ensign a few months ago and got the distinct impression that it was something I could and should do. I told Brandon I wanted to do it so that when I didn't (which usually happens) he could remind me about it. After I read the article I put it out of my mind until last week when Brandon reminded me I had said I wanted to do it and this time I didn't waste anytime following the prompting. I feel like its a good way I can help with family history that doesn't take a ton of time and a good start to it because we all know how daunting family history sounds (which I'm sure it's not once you do it but just one of those things we all go grudgingly into) It's also helped me not feel like a lazy lump and that I'm doing something productive because I often get down on myself when I'm not working. I really hope it's something I can keep doing in the future even when I get back to Idaho and start working again. If you want to see more about it just go to https://familysearch.org/volunteer/indexing/ where you can read about it and do a sample document. It's pretty cool