Hi All, Well I just spent a lovely part of my Friday meeting Mari Burke who is traveling through the St. Louis area. I think she may have been a little taken back by the heat. We had a spectacular spring and up until about 4 days ago, fabulous weather. Then the heat just took off. Driving home from the library today my car said it was 102 outside .... but it had been sitting in the sun.... so maybe that was part of it. I told Mari that St. Louis gets the temperature extremes of the top and bottom of the US. It can be as hot in the summer as New Orleans and Florida and it can be as cold in the winter as Minnesota. We get it coming and going! Mari and I worked together in the Genealogy department of the St. Louis County library all morning and then walked down the block for lunch. I think she got a kick out of seeing the binder which contains all our Degruy records. Believe it or not, we have a stack 5 inches high of Degruy records in protective sheet covers. It's enormous. And... all of it is online at your disposal. I have to get ready to make another order for Judy Riffel... but first I have to be sure I'm not listing any duplicates. I also have some will/successions that could be uploaded, but there are so many pages in each that I haven't figured out how to handle it logistically. A couple of days ago I spent some time on the phone with David Perrin. He warned me that there are many mistakes in Gilbert's Degruy pedigree chart. Do any of you have that chart? It's a big chart filled with little rectangular boxes with Degruy names in them. I'm sure Bob Patout has Gilbert's chart and I know David does. My copy was mailed to me by Mary Agnes Degruy [whom no one seems to know]. I told David it should be our project to start at the top and work our way down the chart correcting all the mistakes. I'll try to scan the chart whenever that little job is finished [could be 2008]! But it's so big I know it won't fit into my scanner.... so not sure how to handle that. Mari said that those of us who can should try to meet in New Orleans in late October.... I'd love to do this. I know I'll try to be there around my Mother's 90th birthday on October 16...but a lot depends upon how my husband does when he has his foot surgery at the end of the summer. So that October date is very iffy at this point. What we'd like to do is just pick a time and a place that would accommodate us and just put a message out on Degruy-L saying .... we'll be at ..... [place] and ..... [time]... Try to join us. It would be great if it was somewhere where we could order refreshments individually so we wouldn't have to get into all the red tape involved in menus and price lists. If we each can do our own thing regarding refreshments, that would greatly simplify things. So..... if any of you NO folks know of a venue.... maybe not downtown with all the parking problems.... let us know. Would enjoy hearing your thoughts on this... I finally sent in my papers for Evans line to the DAR... so, after having been distracted by getting all that together, I can now turn my attention back to the Degruys. It would be good to hear from some of you.... how you're spending your summer, etc. Renee in St. Louis