Hobbies, or fleeting whims?

I've been trying to find some things that interest me so I'm not sitting on the couch as much this summer. I also need more reasons to keep myself outside getting sun before the I get hit with the brutal, tropical August insolation during the cruise next month. Of course, I can't be outside all the time...and usually I can't even SEE the outside from my windowless sarcophagus of an office.

Anyway, I am playing softball in the Science Park softball league at Raytheon. I'm trying to ride my new bike farther and farther to burn some fat and get some sun. I'm puttering in the garden here and there, but not keeping up with the weeding like I should. But I'm realizing that the things I'm interested in are typically boring to other people my age.

For example...

Everyone knows that 1.) I'm a scientist (at least by degree), and 2.) We have been geocachers since 2004. But I also like things that are relating to genealogy...which I guess isn't typical of people my age. So how do I tie those interests together? I'm volunteering to take measurements of old marble headstones to examine the effects that weathering, pollution and climate have on them. Here is more info on the Gravestone Project for the two people who might be interested. So yes...I drive around, find cemeteries, and take measurements of marble gravestone thicknesses with calipers, and mark their locations with the GPS. Yeah I know...it's not terribly exciting, but I enjoy it for whatever reason.

Continuing on the genealogy theme, I have also recently realized that Family Search is digitizing a TON of records so researchers can get access to them. The issue is that someone needs to input the data from the images so they can be searched. So I decided that I should volunteer to do that too. This is partially motivated by the fact that I like researching family history, and partially motivated by the ridiculous fees that are charged by Ancestry.com and other online genealogy sites to search their databases. When a particular set of images is finished being indexed by the volunteers on Family Search, the searching and document images are available to the public for free. That's something I would like to see. I think charging for public record access is ridiculous...even though it is a convenience thing. I've had a discussion with Karen before about the "price of convenience," but I guess that's a more in-depth discussion on the matter. I just started the record indexing thing yesterday, and so far I've indexed about a hundred records from the 1905 NY State Census, and about seventy Delaware birth records. It's small progress, but I think everything helps.

Also, I've always been interested in how people who call themselves bird watchers could possibly be entertained by their hobby. To me, that sounds almost as boring as indexing genealogical records. The other day, while at a retirement party for one of our superiors, he listed twelve things he was going to attempt to do during retirement. One of those things was to identify one hundred bird species just by sitting on his patio. I thought that was a rather far-fetched goal. Certainly there can't be one hundred species of birds in Central PA that would all be visible in one location. So I'm making it another goal of mine to identify as many bird species as I can while I'm doing other things out in the yard. I'm not going to do anything special to see them...but if I notice something new while I'm puttering around, I'm going to take note of it to see if I can come anywhere near one hundred. Of course, I think being in a more "suburban" setting here, compared to the other guy's more rural locale might put me at a slight disadvantage, but we'll see. If anyone is interested, these are the birds I've noticed so far (because I don't feel a post is complete without a bulleted list).

• American Robin


• American Goldfinch


• Northern Cardinal


• Mourning Dove


• Blue Jay


• American Crow

Not a very impressive list thus far. There are other birds that I know I've seen in the back yard since we've been living at our current residence, but I won't officially count them until I see them again. Another problem is that a bunch of the finches and sparrows I can see flying around move too fast for me to positively identify them. And when they're sitting still, they're roosted too far into our neighbors' trees so I can't see them. Anyway..

If any of you have actually read this all the way through...I'm sorry. You probably thought I was lame before, and now you think I'm REALLY lame. Sadly, I'm ok with that. As noted in the title of this post, I'll probably grow bored of doing these things, and move on to another "hobby" that I won't do long enough to actually call a hobby. That's typically how I operate.