A little more about me (...and it's probably about time)

I have for so long used the same old, short little blurb about how I caught the genealogy bug. 

I enjoy family history in my spare time. This hobby of mine began with a history class assignment in 1999 and the discovery that my grandparents and great-grandparents had all worked with their family trees. I took their research and expanded it using the web.

After reading several other genealogy blogs, I've learned a bit about those other bloggers that helps me understand where they're coming from and what they have to offer.  My little blurb doesn't offer any great insight or wisdom.  So I offer this updated About Me:

I caught the genealogy bug in 1999 during a high school history class assignment.  Yep, that makes me one of the younger genealogists.  But I come from a family that has a knack for history.  In my younger days my family re-enacted the Civil War era and my dad, uncle and some cousins still re-enact various time periods.  That was all fun, but as I got older I also got busy with school, extra-curricular activities and work. 

It was during that history class assignment where I rediscovered that I really did enjoy history.  I started asking grandparents for the required information and learned that most of my grandparents and great-grandparents had been collectors of family history.  I had within my reach names, dates, pictures, news clippings ... all the good genealogy stuff.  This wasn't enough for me, I needed to organize it on the computer ... 'cuz I can be pretty handy with a computer.  So I bought software to start my family tree and started plugging in all the data.  Then I discovered the plethora of online sources including Ancestry.com, Rootsweb.com, and Cyndi's List of references.  One thing led to another and I caught the genealogy bug.

Then I graduated from high school and went on to get a degree in Information Technology.  This led me into my current full-time position as an "Enterprise Content Librarian", which in English just means that I figure out what documents the company is storing and what data needs to be stored with those documents to ensure they can be found again.  It was this position that made me realize that I hadn't really taken the time to make the information in my family history collection easily found again.  Thus came the web site "Penny's Genealogy Pages" and my blog "Penny's Genes".

I think that is much better and offers more insight on the road that got me here.