Epson Stylus NX625

I made a decision and stuck with it, not like that whole not renewing Ancestry.com thing. (I may or may not have renewed it at 11:30pm last night. I’m weak.) After researching too many printers then I should have the other day, I finally found my replacement. I decided on the Epson Stylus NX625. At first I was going to get my first choice, but in the time I took to think about it and when I decided to get it, the website had taken it off sale. Having decided that happened for a reason, I went back to the drawing board and was going to get the Epson Stylus 420. Upon further review, I noticed that the 625 was actually only $20 more expensive and I knew I had $10 in reward points I could use. So I went with the 625.

Here are the things I like about it:

• It set up wirelessly so easily. It gave me a little trouble but I ended up hooking it up temporarily with a USB and setting it up. Once it was installed, I unplugged the USB, set up the wireless and nothing could stop me! All my computers now print to the one printer and I can have my desktop off and print from my laptop. That’s a big thing for me because I like to shut off my desktop and use my laptop when I want to actually focus on genealogy.
• The print quality is much better then my previous printer! I didn’t see anything wrong with my previous printer’s quality. However, the new one is much crisper and faster then the old one.
• The paper loading is much easier. There is a paper tray on the bottom that pulls all the way out so I can load the paper. My old printer didn’t have a tray. You just kind of laid the paper in place and hoped it was correct.
• Double sided printing. This is by far my favorite thing. I can print on the front and back of the paper without doing anything but clicking a box! It’s beautiful and marvelous and fantastic all in one.

There is no better way to jump back into these prompts then with my childhood bedroom story!

Week 19. Bedroom. Describe your childhood bedroom. What furniture did it contain? Were there curtains, wallpaper or paint? Was it messy or clean? Did you share a room with your siblings?

I did indeed share my bedroom with a sibling. When I was in Kindergarten, the trailer we were renting was hit by lightning. I don’t think I remember much except my My Little Ponies burned up and that I was sharing the room with my sister and maybe even my brother. I can’t really remember and I’d have to ask my mother.

After that happened, we moved into the trailer that we would live in for the rest of my childhood. It was only a 3 bedroom trailer and not very big at all but it was what we had. I shared the middle bedroom with my older sister for many many years. I remember that we had stuffed two beds into the room but there was practically no room left after that. There was a built in dresser and closet. Part of the room was taken up by the hall “closet” which housed the furnace. I don’t actually remember our furnace ever working though. We always used kerosene heat from what I remember. A few years after we moved in, our neighbor was getting rid of his bunk beds and we immediately forced him to give them to us… Okay, so he was my brother’s best friend and he offered them. We needed them desperately though! So that’s when I think we started getting some breathing room in our shared environment.

The whole trailer had wood paneling on the walls the whole time we lived there. A few years before the trailer was taken out by a tree, we had started rehabbing it. Taking the paneling down and putting up sheetrock. We never painted the paneling, but I will admit to wallpapering them at one point… with my Teen BOP posters. I’m pretty sure Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Devon Sawa were my wallpapers. Every month I’d rip some down and add some new ones. I was obsessed!

Sometime when I was in middle school, I think about the seventh grade, my brother made a huge decision and moved to Miami for love. He did it quietly and quickly. He bought his ticket and said I’m going! He packed his clothes and said goodbye to his bedroom… I let him get a mile down the road before I said, “IT’S MINE!” You have to understand. We were two teenage girls living in the same space, it was a necessity! I had to do it or one of us was going to kill the other. There was of course a hold on the room. If my brother came home with his tail between his legs, then the room was still his. Luckily for both of us, things worked out for him in Miami. Not the love thing, but life did and that’s just fine too!

I got even luckier when he left his room as he did, because he left it with his stereo, television, and computer. I had a computer all to myself! I remember when the internet hit our house. My brother was kind of a genius with computers from the beginning. He built his own first computers. Now he finds it easier to just buy them and upgrade them, but at the time it was extraordinary. We were all relieved when he built his computer because he was always on our family computer. Of course, I didn’t know what to do on a computer at the time anyway. There wasn’t much out there. I actually think when he left for Miami was right around the time I first started making websites on my own. Just flying by the seat of my pants, learning as I went.

So that’s the story of my childhood bedroom(s)!

I’m so late with this, and I apologize for that! I swear forgetfulness didn’t use to be a part of my daily life. I just get so caught up in what I’m doing that sometimes until I find a little post it note to remind me, some things get set aside for a bit. I’ve been busy preparing for Grandpa Moore’s arrival next week, and I’m going to have jury duty within the next month. I’m trying to get myself back on track and on schedule!

Recently, I was awarded the One Lovely Blog Award by two fellow bloggers! First from Joanne at Keeper of the Records and then from Jennifer at The Erudite Genealogist! I can’t express how excited I am that other people are enjoying what I put into this blog. My main reason for starting this blog was to keep my family connected on the things I was doing. Having others enjoy it is a great side effect! It’s also great because I enjoy both of their blogs!

Here are the rules that Joanne posted on her blog.

1. Add the logo to your blog.
2. Link to the person whom you received this award.
3. Nominate 7 or more blogs.
4. Leave a message on their blog, letting them know they are “One Lovely Blog”!

I’m going to add the logo onto my sidebar sometime today but now it’s time for the fun part. My 7 picks!

1. Begin with Craft – Love her blog! Valerie’s blog is what I hope mine also is. Just a little way of sharing how I’m learning and an “as I go through it” look at learning this whole genealogy thing.
2. Little Bytes of Life – My favorite part is her weekly posts with little tidbits from different spectrums. News, Blogs, Pop culture. She follows it all!
3. Marian’s Roots and Rambles – It’s rare that I don’t learn something or at least feel like I’m engaged in what Marian Pierre-Louis is writing!
4. Nutfield Genealogy – I love all Heather’s posts. I’m fascinated by the aspects of history that I never learned in school. I love the way Heather takes news articles or historical events and relates them to her family.
5. The You Go Genealogy Girls – This is such a fun blog to read. I was reading some back entries here when I realized, “Hey she has a research notebook, I should make a research notebook!” That sounds simple, but I’ve never made a list or grouping of what I’d like to research. I was flying by the seat of my pants! Well, not anymore, the notebook is now being constructed with an Excel file to boot!
6. The Family Recorder – Audrey Collins is a great resource for British genealogy. I should hope so since she works at The National Archives of the UK! Since I’m just learning about some English roots, I’ve often referred back to some tips and information she’s written about.
7. Greta’s Genealogy Blog – Last but not least by any means! Greta’s blog is a lot of fun. I particularly enjoy her What I Learned Wednesday posts. Most times, it’s something that I can stand to learn or acknowledge too!

So there’s my 7! If you aren’t already reading these, what are you waiting for?

Here are some pictures from the cemetery at Historic St. Mary’s City.

Not only did I learn about the past this weekend, but I learned about the present too. It seems our Maryland House of Delegates member, John Bohanan, can say his family has been in this county for a very long time!

Week 12: Movies. Did (or do you still) see many movies? Describe your favorites. Where did you see these films? Is the theater still there, or is there something else in its place?

Movies are probably the thing I’ve loved the longest. We’ve always been a movie family. We celebrate birthdays and holidays by having movie nights. My first job was actually working with my Mom in a locally owned video rental store. That store eventually sold their business to Movie Gallery, who subsequently got rid of all the stores. That’s alright, the video rental business isn’t going to be around much longer. Everything is going digital and I guess our original owner was smart enough to get out while the getting was good!

Yes I even made a scrapbook when I was leaving, I wanted to remember my special friends! Sadly, a lot of my regular customers are no longer living so it’s really nice to have a piece of them still with me!

There is a downside to working in a video store though. Eventually, you kind of burn out on watching the movies. Don’t get me wrong, I still love to sit back and watch a good movie. Only now, I tend to watch them less often and from the comfort of my living room. Usually through pay per view or I’ll buy the DVD. After so many years of feeling the need to know all the movies and trivia, I’ve kind of gone on movie hiatus. Don’t get me wrong, I was good at it! I had customers coming in for recommendations and I was able to know what movies they were looking for by the very fragmented details they gave. Once I left the job though, I kind of backed away from that. It is a little sad, but gosh I really appreciate movies more now.

As for actual movie theaters, we do have a small 6 screen theater “in town”. I remember seeing a lot of movies in that theater. However, it’s gotten very run down and it’s not in a great part of town. Over the years, I don’t think much maintenance has been done either. For some reason, this over-populated town hasn’t gotten a new theater though the citizens are screaming for one! Literally. No one quite knows whats happening there, but it’s sad. I might see movies in a theater more often, if I had a more comfortable theater to go to. Right now we trek all the way to the Arundel Mills Mall movie theater which is close to two hours away. We really only go that far for the big ones, like Harry Potter.

My favorite movies haven’t changed. I used to watch them at work all the time. Newsies, The Little Mermaid, Empire Records, American Outlaws, Gone with the Wind, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Sound of Music. I could really go one. That’s another side effect to having seen all those films. You really grow attached to them. Right now what I really love are mini series. I don’t understand why they aren’t more popular. When I first got into Genealogy, Mom bought a used copy of Roots so I could see that. Since then I’ve replaced it with the anniversary DVD. I also love North & South, Band of Brothers and Taken.

I guess I should have warned you I can tend to run on about movies!

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2011) that invite genealogists and others to record memories and insights about their own lives for future descendants. You do not have to be a blogger to participate. If you do not have a genealogy blog, write down your memories on your computer, or simply record them on paper and keep them with your files.