TIME -- LOTS of TIME THINGS

This week we actually had a couple of days of substantial rainfall. Today happens to be extremely spring-like, and there is even the possibility of more rain tomorrow. Our lawns in the neighborhood are probably as green as they will be for the season as there is  mandatory water rationing in effect.

In the meantime just driving into town is like driving under blossom-laden trees which makes everything scream SPRING.

Every year we are treated to these displays, and it is so refreshing even though we recognize that other parts of our country are still blanketed with snow -- they will really enjoy Spring when it arrives.

Events This Week

Last Sunday we recorded most of the Oscar-related shows as we enjoy hearing about the movies that we managed to miss this year -- and this year we saw none of the movies nominated for the Oscars. But after watching the show we have a better idea of some of the movies we would like to see.

Not enough to actually go to a theater though, we will watch them at home where we can better enjoy them and we do not mind at all if we are among the later viewers.

Above are the movies nominated for best-picture this year, and we saw glimpses of all of them. Actually there are several from other previous years that we would like to see also. Eventually, we will get back into the movie-viewing routine and partially catch up.

While watching the Oscars we have had a tradition of enjoying pizza -- it was fun to see some of the Oscar attendees also enjoying pizza this year. But this year we decided to make our own pizza instead of ordering-out.

So we bought two portions of fresh pizza-dough (at Trader Joe's) and then loaded up on a variety of toppings. About an hour before the main Oscar show we started fixing the pizzas:

Starting top left, we put cornmeal onto the pizza stone and then rolled out the dough for one regular and one whole-wheat crust. We put the tomato sauce on and then added the topping ingredients and covered all of them with two or three kinds of cheese. 

The oven was preheated to 450 degrees and within 10 to 15 minutes we had two pizzas ready (almost) to eat. They actually tasted very good -- we do have some "tweaking" to do for the next batch though.

Next time we will make sure that the dough is rolled out thinner as we like "skinny" crusts. And we need to make sure that we can slide the unbaked pizzas from the prep board to the stone in an easier way . . .

All in all, Oscar Sunday was a nice event.

Next Week Dates from our Tree

We came close to having a day without a birthday, but just managed to find one for Mar 10th. The marriages still are somewhat sporadic -- it must be the winter months.

Clicking on the above hopefully you'll find folks from your branch. For me next week is the celebration of the birthday of my Grandson -- Caleb Michael Dayton Hiles -- Happy Birthday!

Other Activities This Past Week

I have to say that every day this past week I have continued to "go through" the accumulated screen shots of the past few years . . . I have dealt with well-over 5,000 such pieces of information. I feel good about getting much of this stuff either filed or dumped.

What is amazing is that a lot of the screenshots are very pertinent to different branches in the tree. There are a lot of old newspaper articles and documents that put details into the lives of our relatives and humanizes them.

I did manage though to again attend two webinars this week:

The first one was on Wednesday, and it was presented expertly and professionally by Lisa Louise Cooke all about using Google Earth. I have seen some of the information before, but this presentation was so well done using live examples. It is truly amazing what can be done using Google Earth.

The second webinar was also very professionally presented by Geoff Rasmussen (on Friday), and it dealt with a subject that I struggle with -- citing sources. I am guilty of not citing sources especially in the early years but even now I fight the task

The Legacy 8 software that I have (along with Family Tree Maker and Rootsmagic) actually has a program that will assist in citing sources and makes the process sooo much easier to use. I learned a lot via this webinar.

On the Nightstand (continued)

Last week I mentioned that we had started a new read -- Clark Gable -- and we are still reading that very interesting book. Since the book is about someone who lived in my parent's generation there is a ton of genealogical information available -- so I thought that I'd do a little "looking" in Ancestry.com:

The above documents pretty much where we are in the book -- that is starting with the birth date and then into about the next twenty years. The first census that I could find Clark in is the 1910 census as he was born in 1901. In that census he is about 8 years old and living with his father and step-mother (his birth mother died shortly after Clark was born).

The second census shown above is the 1920 and Clark is living in a boarding house type of residence in Akron, Ohio. He was 18 or 19 years of age and was starting to get interested in the acting business.

It is fascinating to follow the book via actual documents found in Ancestry.com. I know there are many more that will substantiate what we will be reading in the coming chapters.

It's That Time Too

Apparently the Romans did not always use consecutive day numbering when referring to a given day of the week. Often the individual days were in reference to a certain time of the month e.g. Ides was one of the reference points, and it referred to the 15th. In this case March 15th.

In my high-school Latin class I remember learning about the significance of "beware the Ides of March".

It happened to be the day that Julius Ceasar was assassinated and ever since,  the warning about the Ides of March has stuck . . . next Saturday . . .

Lastly, One More Time Thing . . .

Again this timing has just snuck up on us -- we barely have time to react and change the settings on the numerous time-pieces throughout the house . . .

For us here on the West Coast it seems to make good sense as the kids playing baseball behind our house will have evenings in which to practice and the other outside activities will be enhanced by more reasonable daylight. For the folks back East, I don't know if they really want more daylight at the end of the day to exhibit snow piles and icy streets . . .

And so, that is a part of our week. This being Saturday night it is Slider Saturday! See you all in a few!