Friday, October 17, 2008

I'm almost ready to cruise

I mentioned several months ago that Linda and I decided to go on the Wholly Genes Conference and Cruise this fall as our major vacation of the year. The cruise is aboard the Caribbean Princess (Princess Cruise Lines) which departs New York City on Sunday, 26 October, sails to St. Kitts, Antigua, US Virgin Islands and San Juan, Puerto Rico, ending there on Sunday, 2 November. We hope to take tours at all of these places.

We are leaving San Diego on Wednesday, 22 October, and have hotel reservations in Queens - we hope to tour New York City a bit (I've never been there, Linda has been there once). At the end of the tour, we are staying in San Juan for several days, returning on Wednesday, 5 November. We're going to miss the World Series on TV (at home), the last two weeks of the election campaign and the election returns (at home), which isn't all bad, I guess!

The Wholly Genes Conference is three days of lectures, some on The Master Genealogist in the mornings, and on genealogy topics of interest by John Titford, Megan Smolenyak, Elizabeth Shown Mills, Barbara Vines Little, John Grenham, Craig Scott, Tony Burroughs, Cyndi Howells, and David Allen Lambert. Dick Eastman, Sandra Hewlett, Robert Charles Anderson, Bob Velke, John Cardinal, Lee Hoffman, Barbara Grempler, and Kent Riggins are also on the faculty. Isn't that great group? In addition to the three days of lectures, there are opportunities to attend hosted breakfasts with these folks and to have one-on-one consultations with some of them.

My plan is to take my laptop on the vacation. The hotels in Queens and San Juan say that they have wireless Internet access - I can only hope! I know that the Internet access on the cruise ship is real expensive, so I probably won't be blogging extensively from the ship. However, I plan to write a daily genealogy journal about our activities and will post them when I can access the Internet. I

just downloaded The Master Genealogist software to my laptop - Wholly Genes offers a 31 day FREE trial for the software. I can take the classes and practice using it with my own databases during the cruise, and hopefully during the lectures themselves.

I really look forward to hearing the lecturers, meeting and sharing with other genealogists, and discussing some of my elusive ancestors (I'm thinking of Thomas J. Newton, Elizabeth Horton Dill, Martin Carringer and his wife Mary Hoax, John Richman and his wife Ann Marshman, Russell Smith etc.) with experts in the field. The only people that I have met in my genealogy work that I know are on the cruise are Dick Eastman and Megan Smolenyak, both of whom I met at the SCGS Jamboree.

If any of my readers are going on this cruise, please let me know and we can get together and share experiences and talk about the genealogy world. Linda loves to share with others, and I know that everyone will enjoy her stories and take on genealogy. Hopefully, there will be spouses of other genealogists that she can get to know and hang out with at the pool, the dinner table or the bar. Me - I'm going to be almost all genealogy almost all the time. I think... unless spousal attention is demanded by someone I love dearly.

If any readers would like to get together in Queens or in San Juan :) for an evening meal, please email me at rjseaver@cox.net and we can try to work something out. I would also appreciate any tips on tours to take in New York or San Juan, or sights to see. Linda is not real mobile right now, so we can't take the subway or probably the bus - we'll end up taking bus tours and cabs, I think.

2 comments:

Sheri Fenley said...

You ought to see the lovely shade of green I am right now. I am so jealous I could just scream! What a line-up of speakers. The Cream of the Crop. But I am not so envious that I can't wish you Bon Voyage!

Sheri

ps Group D will expect an exclusive report before anyone else gets one. Make sure to plug our group to the Genea-Royalty!

M. Diane Rogers said...

You will both have a great time on the cruise I'm sure, Randy. I, too, am envious!
I'll be interested to see what you have to say later about 'The Master Genealogist' software. I'm using it now, along with Legacy.

Have fun!