Updates and Ancestry

I do have another trip in the works, but I had to get some stuff done to my car first (and almost ended up buying a new one in the process...I came "this" (mimicking a teeny tiny little finger squeeze) close! In the end though, the vehicle I was looking at (the same as mine, only newer and a couple of steps up), wasn't silver, so I passed. Yes, I am THAT shallow that the color of my vehicle matters that much, but I do have several conditions that would make my life hell if I wasn't happy with the color of my car, so I guess it's not all about selfishness. They are, however, looking for a silver one, so it ain't quite over with yet.

Anyhoo, since I was waiting on my awful dealership's service department to "fit" me in to their busy schedule of overcharging and fixing things that probably weren't broken in the first place (the sales department is great...service sucks), I broke down and got the Ancestry.com kit with the three month subscription and have been working on that ever since. The Blair line has been easy...Scottish history is easy to document, so I've got that back to the 13th Century and am still going, it's the rest of the family I'm having issues with.

But, on the Blair side, I hit my 8th great grandfather (which I knew was the personal priest to Robert the Bruce), but my 9th great grandfather was apparently the true inspiration for a romance novelist named Elizabeth Laird (some distant relative of mine), so I bought that book (haven't read it yet and a bit scared to read a romance book involving a grandfather, but oh well). After that, then I get into the Lords and Lady's of the family and I found some Stuarts in there (although I haven't dug into that branch yet, but I know where that line leads, ha!).

I was getting annoyed by all the date descrepancies, but then I remembered the Julian to Gregorian calendar change, so now I'm not sure if I should try to figure out the real dates, keep both dates, or what. I think I'll just keep both dates and let sleeping dogs lie. Just trying to keep up with what I'm finding, plus adding it to my own family tree software isn't making me happy and is wearing me out (and I don't like how it imports from Ancestry...I'm using MacTree and I really like it, but Ancestry formats wrong, and I can't have wrong formatting).

I figure that my DNA results won't come back before my 3 month trial is up, so I'll have to continue on a few more months, which is fine because I'm pretty obsessed right now. There are so many lines to follow and I don't want to be restricted to just one. I want to follow every branch I can. It's all pretty interesting. It does feel weird to get information from other family members trees. It feels like I'm leeching off of their work, but I'm finding issues there too and I'm having to double-check it all (but again, once I remembered the Gregorian calendar issue, that solved a lot of problems).

Have any of you guys done any geneology research? How did you find the best way to do it? Do you have any interesting stories? I figure my DNA will get me the interesting stories since not a single relative has reached out to me (yet...mine are the type that would need proof of who I am...my Asperness comes from that Blair line). Do you guys have any tips for me? Honestly, I'm probably just finding another way to avoid editing videos, but this is really exhausting stuff!