Fifty Years

In case you've been wondering where I've been the past two weeks, I've been getting ready for my parents' 5Oth wedding anniversary.

Congratulations, Nick and Sonia!

I was put in charge (well, assigned) by my sister-in-law of flowers and entertainment. Well, not so much entertainment as the now obligatory (in my family at least) slide show retrospective of the couple's life. And, being the overachiever that I am, I figured this would be as good a time as any to fully digitize our family's photo archives.

I had no idea what I was getting myself in for. My mother has inherited my grandparents' and my uncle's photo albums, and my uncle was quite a shutterbug. So not only do I have lots and lots of photos, but I have many of them in (minimally) triplicate. And I have discovered that my micro-organizational skills do not come from my mother, who is wont to stick photos into albums "because there was an empty space there."

So while her albums are somewhat chronological, they really aren't. Add to that the fact that, sometime in the late 60s to mid 70s, many photofinishers quit dating snapshots. In the 90s the higher end ones put the dates on the backs of photos and on index prints. So I have some fifteen years worth of photos that I need to guess dates on--often by hair style or clothes being worn. Sometimes I can tell by the event being pictured, but I found that my mother no longer recalls what year they went to Alaska or when any of the cousins got married.

I scanned some 3000 photos before realizing I was in over my head. So I triaged. Old black and white--yeas. Newer color--pick a few representative ones. In the end I scanned some 5000+ photos. (I plan to do the rest later.)

So it's been a challenge.

I was up until 2 AM working on all of this, and then got up at 8 to put together the flower arrangements (sunflowers, statice and irises, courtesy of the local Costco).

Today I unveil the fruit of all this labor--my 25 minute, 350 slide Keynote (Powerpoint for Apple) presentation, with accompanying audio. Each of the slides has from 1 to 6 photos, so we're talking some 1200-1400 pictures. It should be fun.

And tonight I get to sleep........