Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: "The Other You"

I knew this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver sounded familiar.  I looked back through my blog and found he posted this theme last year on May 14.  But it's good to revisit these themes and see how things might have changed.

For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), I challenge you to:

* Tell us about your "other" hobbies or interests outside of genealogy and family history research, writing, speaking, etc.  Be mindful of your family's privacy, though!

* Write a blog post of your own, respond with a comment to this post, or write a Facebook status post or a Google+ Stream post.

Well, I still don't have much of a life outside genealogy.  It's what I do for work and volunteer activities; it keeps me up in the middle of the night when I'm on the hunt for answers.  But I do a few other things, at least occasionally.

I was on disability for three years, which recently ended.  During that time I didn't have much of a budget for doing anything.  Something I have done more of during the past year is cooking, though.  I took that as an indication that I was finally starting to feel better.  I again didn't host a seder this year, but I did a lot more cooking meals for myself.  It has felt really good to cook.  Now I need to get back to cooking for other people.  In other food activities, I attended two academic talks on food history, which were really interesting.  I also volunteered with a food justice organization.

I still enjoy historical costuming and reenactment events.  I participated in a couple of events this past year.  Not a lot, but enough to keep my toes in the water.  One of the events was a Victorian house tour, where I dressed in period clothing to be a docent.

After not having done anything musically in several years, I participated in two drum circle events.  I love percussion.  The events were pretty low-key, but it was fun to play a drum again.  In a related area, I volunteered at three local opera events so I could attend the operas for free.

I have continued to do editing for a culinary/lifestyle magazine.  It's nominally a "job", even though I've never been paid.  But I get to attend local food events, I'm taken to lunch every two to three months, and I stay involved with editing on some level (outside of genealogy, that is, since I edt three genealogy journals), so it works out ok.  The bad thing about being an editor is that I don't read for pleasure anymore, though.

I still love to travel, and I was able to do a pretty good amount during the past year.  I attended something like six genealogy conferences and found relatives to visit in most of those areas.  I saw my grandchildren over the Christmas holidays, and that's always a good thing.  And I have four genealogy conferences coming up this summer!  I didn't take any "vacation" vacations, but I can live with that.

I don't have much of a social life where I just hang out with friends, but it does happen occasionally.  I go out to lunch every now and then.  A few months ago I won free tickets to an opera and invited a friend.

I almost forgot — I've been taking American Sign Language classes for a little over a year.  I'll never be fluent, but I'm getting better.

So not much has changed since last year.  Almost my entire life revolves around genealogy.  But I'm working on it!