I figured out that I was smart enough to do a complete image backup of my Vista-based PC before I reverted to XP. And luckily, I imaged the PC to an external hard drive. And luckily, Vista's image backup utility creates VHD files - which are used by Microsoft Virtual Server. And more luckily, one can download Microsoft Virtual Server (for free) which includes the vhdmount utility.

The upshot of all this is that I was able to get back all my previous genealogy work!

Well, I've been here. Lots of stuff going on in the household the past few weeks. Karyn had surgery and convalesced here. Then, Steph's Mom and Grandmother came for a week. While they were here, the kids decided to get ear infections. And, on top of that, Steph had to prepare for her mid-term exam (which was today).

Me, meanwhile... well, I haven't been doing a whole heckuvalot. I've started brewing my next batch of beer, since the RooBroo Honey Pale Ale is almost gone. Next up is a Belgian-style White beer, but I haven't come up with the name yet. I've also started a couple of other homebrew projects: I'm doing some liqueurs, wines, and breads. I've perfected a Cinnamon-Raisin bread, which I've named "CinnAhhh Man! Raisin Bread". I haven't quite figured out what liqueur flavor(s) I'm going to do just yet. I'm thinking maybe a pear or peach.

In other news, I've also started doing my geneaology research again, after a disappointing discovery that all the work I've done since last February is somehow "gone". I think I accidentally wiped it when I uninstalled Vista and went back to XP (did I mentioned that I did that? If I didn't: I went Vista, but the video drivers for my particular graphics card weren't up to speed on Vista for gaming, so I went back to XP. Otherwise, I kinda like Vista). Anyway, I think what happened was I installed Vista, and then decided to uninstall, which basically was a wipe and install. But I actually had a separate hard drive that I used for that process, so I'm hoping that it's sitting on that drive - I just have to reinstall Vista and "restore" the image from the drive. Here's hoping that's where my scanned images are!

The response to my genealogical enquiries has been, in a word, pretty fantastic. It seems that all branches of the family are quite interested in the branches that are somewhat buried in time.

Some branches of the family have quite a bit of history available. Steph's grandfather's side, for instance, had family history done by some scholarly fellow back in Germany around 1976. Said fellow documented back to 1600s - so there's not much to do there. My mother's side also had a book done, although I haven't been able to lay a hand on it yet.

But, for example, my dad's paternal side didn't have a lot of family history - so I've had to do a bit of digging on websites like ancestry.com. There's all sorts of information there: birth, death, and marriage records, census records, military records. Sometimes it's a treasure trove...and of course other times it's a dead end.

What's been most interesting is trying to uncover stories and piece together the past. It can be daunting sometimes, but it is rather neat. Perhaps someday this will all come together in some fantastic Alex Haley-esque epic, but for now, getting nuggets here and there is good enough.