PowerPoint

Ok, for those of you who have been following me from the start or have gone back and read the posts I wrote earlier I have news.

For those of you who are new to my blog here's a short re-cap.

I AM NOT A TECHIE. I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO LEANINGS TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING TECHNOLOGY OR HOW TO APPLY IT.

That being said I have been attempting (with many failures and quite a bit a comic relief along to way) to stumble into the 21st century. (Ok, I admit it, some of it hasn't been stumbling...some of it I have been dragged kicking and screaming into.)

I now can fake my way through Twitter, can Facebook with some assurance, I skype to some small degreee, and I can now (drum roll please) do a presentation on PowerPoint.

Right now I am visualizing most of you shaking your heads and/or raising your eyebrows...what? you ask...she didn't know how to use PowerPoint? Where has she been under a rock?

Not exactly...just in Galt, CA.

But I digress.

I had no need of it. I had quit teaching. I was not working as a lecturer/teacher in Genealogy, I was doing research. But about a month ago my local Family History Center asked me if I would teach a class, so I took a deep breath, and admitting nothing, said yes.

Let me tell you something. (For those of you on the same Non-Techie cruise ship I'm on) PowerPoint was a breeze to learn. I just had to get over my fear and preconceived notions that it would be hard. (That's always the hardest part anyway, right?)

One of my slides

Being the procrastinator that I am, and with everyone assuring me PowerPoint was easy, I put off doing the work until after I came home from NGS, which left me about 3 days to prepare. (I see those raised eyebrows again.) Yes, putting together an hour's presentation took me about 30 hours to prepare but not because the program was hard to learn. It took me 30 hours because it was FUN. I had fun picking out the pictures I wanted to use and the design of it. Although I knew what I was going to say in the lecture I still had to put it in order (think create an outline) so my slides would follow along with what I was saying. And I needed to find examples of the ideas I was trying to get across. At the completion I ended up with 41 slides. Wow, I didn't think I had that much to say.

The lecture went well, the only problem was when I got a notification that I was about to lose power. Luckily there were people present who are more tech savvy then me and they determined that the power cord was at fault and changed out the cord. (I would have panicked but thanks to my husband and one of the organizers I was able to just keep yapping away until I could move on to the next slide. Thanks guys.)

So I guess I really learned two things...how to use PowerPoint and to always have a techie with me to fix the little glitches...glad I married one.

Starting June Out Right

Normally this time of year I'm sitting by the pool, working on my tan and catching up on my reading every morning. Not this year. The weather sucks. So I'm inside, bundled up. Forced to do unseemly things such as clean out my file drawers and digital files (photos files, Ancestry Shoebox, e-mail folders etc.)

These are all worthy chores, but they are CHORES. In addition, I need to clean house. My house looks like a cyclone hit it with all the clutter. When I came in from NGS (National Genealogical Society) I had to "hit the floor running" (as my mother used to say) and prepare a lecture for my local FHC (Family History Center.) So all the papers I had gathered at NGS ended up on the dining room table along with the books and papers I used to prepare the lecture. My suitcase remains on the bedroom floor, half unpacked; laundry is almost caught up, but sitting in sorted piles waiting for a turn at the washing machine and my to do list is slightly overwhelming.

So...what to do? Why sit down and write my blog of course.

I have given myself a challenge to write my blog every week for the month of June. That's only four posts; I should be able to meet that, right?  But it seems as if every time I have a great blog idea and am moved to write I'm in the middle of one of those pesky chores, and I just can't stop in the middle of cleaning out my file cabinet, can I? Please give me permission.

So even though I had no great insight to write about and no special theme I sat down to start June off right. I considered writing about the lecture I gave last week. I considered writing about how yesterday (Memorial Day) hit me stronger than usual with memories of my dad. I considered writing about Southern California Genealogy Society's up coming Genealogical Jamboree. I even considered just picking an ancestor at random and writing about them. Then I tried signing into my blogger account and was told my blog no longer existed. SAY WHAT?

Is it like when you don't use your muscles....they atrophy? Is that what happened to my blog? I didn't write in it for more than a week and, poof, it's gone? Or did Blogger feel my last post was too controversial and wiped me out? Did some hacker pick me at random and banish all my hard work? No...just a computer glitch. All is well. Whew.

But it made me realize a couple of things. Number One, how important my blog has become to me and Number Two, how irritated I become when things don't work the way they are supposed to, and Number Three, just how much I don't want to clean up my files.

But, I've started June out right...I wrote my blog.