Cousins

We have had unseasonably cool, wet weather for the last few weeks. Jenna went to the elementary school a couple of days during the last week of school to help out with their field day and said everyone was cold because the temperature stayed in the 50s all day. We wound up turning the heat back on for a couple of nights. Now the last couple of days the temperature has bounced back up to the 80s.

FAMILY FUN. Vicki and the kids headed out to visit the Jones family the Sunday before Memorial Day (the 24th), returning last Thursday (the 28th). I didn’t get to make this trip with them. They sounded like they had a great time. The enjoyed tennis, shopping, playing games, swimming, watching movies, and, of course, eating.

Jim, Dianna, and their boys arrived at our house Tuesday afternoon. We were the last stop on a two week vacation for them. As soon as they got settled in we noticed Nerf projectiles flying all around the house, which was a frequent occurrence for the duration of their visit.

When they weren't having a Nerf battle the boys were playing video games. Our kids recently pooled their money and bought a Wii U so they're still in the novelty period of their new game. One evening the sound track from one of their games was getting a bit loud so one of the adults good naturally hollered upstairs, “Could that be a little louder?" Ben answered, "Yeah, I've already taken my shower."

We also made the rounds to several local restaurants, meeting Jim and Judy at the Catfish House as well as enjoying a lunch at Thomas Drugs and supper at True’s Barbecue. Thursday evening we brought pizza over to Mom's house and ate at the picnic table. It was a very pleasant evening. We also enjoyed a game of Jeopardy! that Jim and Chris had created using PowerPoint. The boys dominated, even though Nate called the Periodic Table the “Patriotic Table.”

ARCHIVAL. Speaking of memories, we all have pictures and home movies from holidays, family visits, and every day living. A few months ago I wrote that I had digitized all of our home movies from VHS and miniDV tape and have those files backed up on several hard drives.

Since that time I have been working to sort through all our digital pictures. We got our first digital camera in December 2003 and have never missed film. The nice thing is that a digital camera timestamps all pictures without placing a date on the picture like some old film cameras did. Organizing these has been pretty easy assuming the clock on the camera was correct when the picture was taken.

I am organizing these along with our videos. That way when I look up an event on a given day (e.g. Christmas on a given year) I have all the snapshots and videos in one place. I am also keeping track of events in a text file. You may be wondering why I don't use any photo management software. I did for several years, but changes in software with updates would periodically make me have to go back and reorganize everything. Eliminating the management software eliminated this problem and made things more future proof.

I am now sorting through pictures from last year. At present my archive has well over 37,000 files and takes over 227 GB of space. When I get caught up to the present I'll start seriously scanning and organizing our old film photos.

I've noticed some interesting trends. First, we tend to take more digital pictures than we did with film. We do this knowing we can delete bad shots which is really handy when trying to pose the family for an important shot. Turns out this is something we don't do like we should. And since Vicki and I got smart phones a couple of years ago the number of pictures we snap has increased again.

GARDEN. We’re a little late getting our garden out seeing how we we didn’t get it done until today. We have a small plot of ground behind the shop where there’s a few tomatoes, peppers, squash, zucchini, cantaloupe, and watermelon.

The strawberries Jenna set out last year have done well. She plans to return to Haiti next February and has sold about $200 worth of strawberries toward her trip. I have to admire the industrious streak that girl has.

Joe