Installment 2 on our final 10 weeks of adventure.

Installment two of the last 10 week adventure.

So David called up today to ask his dad about the medication that he is taking for his high cholesterol problems.  David calls up often to ask about his meds and what and how he should take them and what are the side effects etc.etc.  He often calls on behalf of his girlfriends or room mates.  It helps him feel important I suppose to be able to call his Dad and get authoritative information on medications.

Ever since 9/11 there has been a heavy security practice in the Archives.  Some of the people carry their electronic identity card with them on a lanyard around their necks while others have them in their wallets etc.  Rob carries his card in his wallet in his back pocket and turns into Rob the Hipster as he backs up to the electronic recognition installation and bumps his hip pocket next to it to make the door unlatch.  It is hilarious to watch and if you did not know what he was doing, you might just wonder what this guy is all about.  We have a very special key to call the elevator if we enter our area through the search room.  We walk through the elevator and press the 3R key and the back door of the elevator opens up and we are in the hall way just outside our room.

We are now surrounded by records of all types and sizes – we could hide in the room and never be heard from again.  The added reworks that have been thrust upon us weigh heavy on my mind and heart.

Today was moving day.  It was very moving to say the least.  We have been frantically packing up stuff and I made the decision to pack stuff that I will not use in the next few weeks – pack it up and leave it packed while we are in this much smaller apartment.  We are living in the historic old farm house – the one that has now been converted to 36 apartments.  I find it hard to imagine how much remodeling had to take place for the building to be capable of offering so many places to live.  The Bishop announced in church that we would be moving today and asked people to come and help.  The Elders came and Bro. Fectau and two workers who work for John McNaughton;  Between us all, the chaos reigned supreme.  I am glad that one person had a truck to haul stuff from here to there.  The Elders moved the couch and the bed.  I was quite worried that the bed would be put in the back of the truck and the truck was not too clean.  The Elders put the bed on their heads and carried it across the parking lot that way.  It really looked quite comical.  All our stuff was dumped onto the floor of the main room and spilled into the second and third room.  There is not much room for storage etc. here and I do not think I can fit all our stuff in this apartment.  In the other apartment it looked sparse but in this apartment there is insufficient room…………..well it is only for 10 more weeks……………..we can do anything for 10 weeks.

So we worked and worked and got the bed set up, the kitchen somewhat taken care of and the office set up and we are on our way.  When it comes time to leave here, we will have to be really really brutal in divesting ourselves of stuff because we are only going to have our car to take us and belongings back to Arizona.

Beginning the last Ten Weeks

The week started off rather uneventfully and then the phone rang.  It was our supervisor with directions to us to do some work that was first done in 2008 but seemingly these digitized records have been lost.  I have no idea why it took the Family History Department so long to find that these records were lost   We had two very hefty volumes that needed to be re-done from  a few months back.  Our supervisor told us that we were not to re-do the work until he came to visit us.  He has not been here in Augusta since the week before Christmas, so these two books have been sitting here rather forlornly awaiting attention.  Then this week our supervisor decided that we could go ahead and do the rework without his personal attention.  How's that again?  We wanted to do it way back when it was first told us that we needed to re do them.  So we have spent the past almost 3 days doing these images one at a time with right left capture.  The books are heavy and it is really difficult work and we made sure that we took a re-focus every 20 pages whether we felt it needed to be re-focused or not.  Time is not a renewable resource and so much of it is wasted.
Jeff then brought up 10 boxes of folders from Washington County.  These are very large folders and the papers inside are all humidified and pressed flat and ready to be digitized.  I am excited to work on these.
There is always a BUT FIRST WE in anything we have attempted to do in this mission.  The BUT FIRST WE is the rework of  records captured by missionaries 4 years ago.  How come it took the Family History Center to discover that they were missing these records done four years ago?  How much other stuff have they lost?  The preservationist here was unwilling to look through the myriad backup files that are sent to him of the digitized works so we are left with the Two large file boxes of criminal court cases for Caribou, Maine.  Add to that 21 boxes of military records on 3x5 cards and who knows how many cards are in these files.  We dare not begin to do the re-work until we receive instruction from our supervisor.  How do we do these little 3x5 cards - If we do them singly we will probably get roasted alive for wasting the abilities of the 50 megapixel camera, but if we go ahead and do them in multiples, we will probably be roasted alive for doing them that way as well.  The problem is readability in the end so one by one sounds more like reality than doing 12 cards at once, because the camera array can handle that.  We await his reply.  We made a mistake in the last submission and have one rework to do.  He sent us a note chiding us for making such a simple error and then ends the note with "Thank you for all you do".  Do not know quite how to read that - is he happy because we did all the other things correctly or is he saying that we mess up regularly enough that he thanks us for all that we do?  English is so fun..................but a lot gets lost in translation.
This is also our moving week.  We have been given a number of used boxes from the Archives and have been packing up stuff to move to the other apartment and then the phone rang.  It was David's case manager.  He is bucking to move to another apartment/house and eventually on his own.
We should never be complacent about anything and we got our hearts kick started by this phone call.   She said the following:-
He hates living in the Group home (but he has had much more success in this home than in others.)
He hates having to abide by rules (when he lived with us he hated the TV being turned off at bed time)
He has his eye on moving to an ADHD home
He called up and said that they have a great pool in the back yard with a waterfall in it (good selling point )
He said that they have a young teenage girl living in the home. (red flag)
He is always on the lookout for a girlfriend (red flag)
He is bucking for a section 8 home so that he can entertain his girlfriends freely (red flag)
He cannot control his expenditures so I guess if he went to an 8 home he would eat well two days and starve the rest.
He blows his paycheck within the hour of it being cashed
He canot be self medicating because he forgets to take his meds.
Well, it's now or never to do the weekly report, get the shuttle off to Fed Ex then home to finish packing up our stuff.
How in the world did it all grow to be this amount?  Well, we brought minimal in our car and the rest either was here in preparation for us by the Ward, or we had to buy just so we could live here.
Most of it stays here when we leave but I am taking my memories with me for good measure.
Memories linger forever and provide us with "day trips into memory" when we go home.

fragility, beauty and strength

 Our apartment came without any wall art - so this fellow showed up at Goodwill and came home with me.

 Our Lunar moth (underside) after one rain storm.

 the top side of the moth after one rain storm and tangling with the grass clippings.

 Three rain storms later and he was worse for wear.  I went back the following day but apparently he had become fodder for some wandering animal.

 this Willow tree had fallen over well before we came to Augusta.  I really thought it was dead but since spring has come, it seems to have sprouted lots of new branches.  I guess not all the root system was torn up out of the ground.

 Day lillies are always something to photograph.  This was taken at 5.30am and the sun was not quite up yet.

 This is a very peaceful scene in someone's front yard on Riverside Drive.

 This is the older part of the cemetery.  some people have been here since the late 1700's.  Some of the names on the stones are the same names that appear in the court records of Kennebec Co. that we have just finished digitizing.

 These are three piles of wood ready for burning in the fire place.  More than a year's supply and down the back of the trees, they had a couple more piles neatly stacked.

 I love Queen Ann/s lace.  It is so fragile yet it can withstand a lot of things done to it.  when I taught flower class, we put the stems into water with food dye and the dye was absorbed by the flower and we had colored Queen Ann's Lace in the arrangements.

 These machines look awesome.  I do not know if they are for rent, sale, or are used in a lawn service but they sure added color to this house in the pre dawn walk on Riverside Drive.

 A sad ending to the use of these weights.  They are by the side of the road, presumably for the taking.

 This is Charlton Hesotn's body Double hefting two Mighty Volumes that just got re-worked.

 his wife also got into the act.

the books by themselves after we had worked with them.  We will not be sad to see them go back to the stacks downstairs.

Hit a bump in the road

Our time away from the digitizing is filled with packing up our stuff to move across the parking lot to where we will be for the last 3 months of our mission.
I do not have time to write a blog, but will write out our adventures when we have moved.

Only 3,725 ....Oops!

Well, I got it wrong.  there were about 3,000+  hunters who had applied year after year and did not get the chance to hunt a Moose so they were given extra chances this year to see if they could win a slot.  The newspaper featured one of the hunters as he spoke to his wife on the cell phone when he found out that he won.  Now all he has to do is to go and hunt down a Moose.  So go to it, 3725 winners of the lottery!
I was driven clear to Mooselookmeguntic lake in search of a Moose and we never found one so I think that the Moose are safe.
Today we were given the last of the Kennebec County records to digitize. It has been a long hard road to do the Kennebec County records.
Jeff brought up 10 boxes of records from  Washington County , these are the actual court papers and such and we have them in folders and all these loose papers will present a challenge to do.
My friend Mary is so excited that we get to do this and wants us to search for her GGrandfather, George Noble who died in 1866.  It will be a while until we reach the 1860's but will keep an eye out for George.  I have told her that he is hiding in plain sight.............and I hope to prove it to her.
David has called up and told me he is moving to an ADHD home in Gilbert.  Immediately there are problems with this proposed move and I have been in contact with his case manager and at her request have written of past difficulties we have encountered.
Life is never dull when David is around. 

375,000 will be gone this year

In the paper today they had a listing of the winners of the Moose Kill Lottery.  As if they don't have enough automobiles that kill Moose each year on the roads, they have to go out and  hunt them as well.  On the other hand, the stories of Moose/Car interaction usually leaves the Moose unscathed and the car a total write off.  In Maine they have a lottery system which draws names of people who have paid the $15 license fee and it is a big thing for Hunters to go out and try to bag a Moose.  As I read the listing of winners , 3 1/2 pages of listing, I noticed that there are hunters from as far away as Oregon and as close as Moosehead lake area.  some one should warn the Moose that their number may be up when these people are turned loose.
Just think, 375,000 less Moose in Maine?  Either they have an over population of Moose that they have to thin the herds or there are 375,000 fireplaces that are waiting for a stuffed Moose Head.
There are some licenses for Bull Moose and some for Cow Moose.  That alone should keep the population down by thinning the breeding herd and give the remaining Moose Carte Blanche at boosting their numbers ready for next year's license lottery.  After all, the Moose are following their eternal mandate - that of multiplying and replenishing the earth.  I guess there is no natural predator for this size of an animal.

Summertime Zamboni

 the front lawn of our apartments is vast and would take forever if you used a push mower.

 Our landlord has this riding mower that he uses........

And I think of it as being a Summertime Zamboni.  I have often seen the Zamboni they use at the skating rink at the Hockey Arena, but this one is especially made for cutting grass and would not do well in smoothing out ice for winter.  In the winter our landlord has an attachment he puts on the front of this Zamboni to plow the driveways.

What is appropriate?

 What do you do with the alphabet tags that fall off the books as you work with them.  There is nothing we can do because we have no way to re-glue them to the books.  The picture below shows how they look when they are  in place on a book that is not damaged by time and use.

 They have been cleaning out the photolab and these are extra films etc. that have not been used and cannot be used in this digital age.  They are all out of date anyway.

 somewhere in the world it is 6 O'clolck.  This Seth Thomas clock was found under a pile of junk an dput up on the file cabinet to remind us that somewhere in the world it is really 6 o'clock and that we should be aware o f the march of time.  I do not know if the clock actually works or if there are batteries for it anywhere.

 You always need to read the directions.  this is a packet of directions and user manuals that came out of the photo lab.  You never know if you need them.......

 There is a funeral monument business across the road from where we live.  This angel headstone has fascinated me ever since we moved here.  The price is on the tag in the upper right hand of the heart and it is $6,000+ for this particular headstone.  I guess I will not be purchasing it for the Lunar Moth in the next two pictures.

 This Lunar Moth was on the side of the street when I was walking on Friday morning.  I was amazed to see it there and picked it up and took these two pictures.  Apparently it is rare that people see them because their life span is only about a week long in this stage of its development

  

The ant population had made short work of the abdomen

and when I found this spectacular moth

they had almost finished

consuming 

its

thorax.

Does this mean they had found a Happy Meal?

Relief Society Fix it yourself day

 We had a Fix it yourself Day at Relief Society from 10am to 2pm on Saturday 23 June.  This table above has many ingredients that will go into making home made cleaners that are environmentally friendly and easy to make.  they handed out recipes as well.

 This class was about fixing dry wall problems.  We could have used the information in this class when we had the house in Mesa after David kicked a hole in the wall.  I guess I could do the repairs now but I really hope that we do not have to fix any holes in our walls in Prescott.

 The meal was a "grab and go" meal - we were free to take what we wanted and were allowed to eat while the presentations were going on.  Pretty easy and the M&M's were the first to go off the table.  Well, we must realize that chocolate is a food group.

 This is the schedule that we followed.

 This was the heating presentation.  What to do when your heat does not work - what to look for and how to do something about it before you call the plumber at 2am in the dead of winter.

 This was how to fix the sink and dripping fawcets.  Really really interesting.

 Elder Hill and Elder Morales taught us how to change a tire.  Elder Hill has worked with Large Trucks since he was 14 so he knows a lot about vehicles and how they work etc.

 Yes, even though we had a tarpaulin available, he was on the ground in his white shirt and tie showing us where to put the Jack so that we do not damage the car.  His best bit of advice - read the owners manual before attempting anything.

 Elder Morales is from Guatamala and he was showing us how to put the tire back onto the car.  It is a safe bet that his Mayan ancestors had never come up against how to change a tire like this.

Even though he taught us how to do it,

I think I will still call AAA 

if I get a flat

tire.

Our 38th Wedding anniversary

21 June 1974 we were married in the Salt Lake Temple with really good friends in attendance.  At that time we had no idea where our subsequent anniversaries would be celebrated.    All things being equal, we should have had family around us to celebrate this anniversary but David is in Phoenix and Sara is in Nebraska and so we did the best we could to celebrate.
Last night we went to the Long Horn  Steak House.  We were surprised to know that it is part of the Red Lobster/Olive Garden chain and so we used the gift card to Darden Restaurants to eat out.  I had given Bill the gift card for fathers Day.  When his food came, the steak was too rare - read that it was still moving around the plate so the manager came over and apologized to us.  We chatted a little and I told her we were celebrating 38 years together and she asked if we were going to have the  wicked good looking Chocolate volcano cake between us so she said that she would buy it for us.  Hooray for our celebration.  For the rest of the night I saw everything through a chocolate fog.  Boy was that volcano cake rich and it had ice cream on top into the bargain.
I had told the staff at the Archives that we were bringing in a Fruit Pizza for lunch today to celebrate the anniversary and they were busy warming up their collective taste buds ready for the treat.  We were eating lunch and it came time to pass out the pizza and then Anne gave us the card she had bought for us.  It was of an older couple sitting in Adirondack chairs on the beach and the lady was saying "Burrito" and the man was saying "Broccoli" and he was wearing a cap like Bill always wears.  Inside it said happy anniversary.  The front of the card caused us to laugh a lot because I tease Bill about eating Broccoli for lunch because it gives him broccoli breath and Anne said she could not pass it up as soon as she saw it.  At that point they opened the refrigerator and brought out a 9X13 cake that said Happy Anniversary Bill and Beverly and gave us a lovely card that everyone had signed.  This was a total surprise and it really made the day for us.   On top of that we have now done 67 folders for this week and we still have tomorrow to go.  Jeff has had a phone call from Manuel and the project for Washington County is all go and so we start on it as soon as we finish the last of the books that we are now working on.  I found some more Bessey names in the court docket books for Anne.
We had a missionary meeting to attend tonight, but on Tuesday night they totally re-keyed the church building and so no one could get in for us to hold our meeting.  Sr. Kader and myself went off for Ice cream for everyone to eat until someone came to open the building for us.  When they finally came, they came with all the stuff for the party for Katy Dawson's young women recognition award night.  After the missionary meeting Bill  and I went to the recognition night and we also had some refreshments.  So, we have been partying for 24 hours - what a way to celebrate 38 years.  I am grateful for the party that the staff at the Archives added to for us as well as dinner last night and the volcano cake given to us and also the good wishes of the folks at Katy's party.
Perhaps we should celebrate our wedding anniversary more often!!!!!!!!!!!

flight

The garden in the Governors mansion, Blaine House, holds many surprises if one stops long enough to examine what is growing there.  I stood and watched a bumble bee wobble his way into a flower and then back out covered in pollen and then find his way into the next flower and the next and the next all the while doing his duty of pollinating the plant.  It is amazing that these ungainly insects can even fly – they seem to be way too heavy for those little wings that are attached to their backs.  Other things that fly also seem to be too big to stay aloft like airplanes etc. but they do.  I know because I have flown in some of the biggest ones.  This morning I saw a Great Blue Heron flying over Augusta.  These are magnificent birds and I have seen them at Watson Lake in Prescott and was within 3 feet of one in Cheney, Washington State a couple of years ago.  My friend Len loaned me his binoculars to see the one in Watson Lake and I was amazed at how beautiful they are.  The one in Cheney was just as surprised as I was finding our presence so close to each other that it took off out of the marsh where it was and I got to see it take off and fly away.  A great lesson in Physics as the bird takes flight.

We are getting very close to the end of the line with the court docket books and still Jeff has not heard from anyone at Family History as to how and what they will next need from the Archives of Maine.  We did get clearance a couple of days ago, but he has heard nothing else and we are half way through the week and three quarters of the way through the Docket books for Kennebec Court.  The fun thing about this is that I have found some court cases that are for the Bessey family – this is Anne’s ancestors and she is very interested to see what I see come up in the docket books.  One of the cases was a divorce that was not granted between a couple named Bessey.  Anne knew their names and was interested in finding out more about this case through its papers.  I have found three other Bessey cases that she is going to look into.  I really love Genealogical research and have missed the chance to do some since I have been on this mission.  Finding Bessey names has rekindled the flame that has been put out or just left smoldering while I serve this mission.  When I was set apart to come on this mission, the Stake President told me that I would be an angel to these deceased persons out here through my efforts at digitizing.  I hope that the Bessey families look upon it as such.

Last night we got a  phone call to tell us that there is a crew that will move our stuff from this apartment to the other one.  Apparently they are slick at doing this stuff - so much so that I have visions of our furniture and belongings just flying across the parking lot and into the new apartment.  I wonder what a flying couch will look like - better yet, how will they get it to fly into the new apartment?  the turn into the apartment from the hall is really tight and they will need more than wings to get this monstrous couch into the apartment.  when we leave in September they are going to have fun getting it back out again.  I wonder if there is a Rent-a-wing company in Augusta?

the speed at which we live

 This hand tooled extravagant toy does not belong to a young speed demon but rather to an older very staid gentleman whose passion is "fixing up" automobiles.

 Obviously he has spent a lot of time and money doing this to a perfectly innocent car.

 Yes, even standing in a parking lot, this vehicle screams "SPEED".

 and the number plate says it all. 

 The photo lab is about to be deconstructed and demolished and disposed of.  I wonder just how much money has been spent in setting it up years ago.  Technology has made it obsolete pretty much and so the chemicals have changed composition due to age and now need to be disposed of so as to not harm the environment.  The person who ordered all this stuff in the first place had carte blanche and used the taxpayers money freely - or so it would seem.

 chemicals, chemicals and more chemicals that need disposal.

 equipment that was prime in the first days it was purchased but now outdated.

 even more equipment.

 Yet more stuff once used to produce the photographs that have become part of the archives etc.

 this is the microfilm desk that sometimes gets used.  Perhaps I have seen it in use 10 times over the past 9 months that we have been here.

 this is also a microfilm machine that years ago was used by the LDS missionaries to produce microfilm of the archives here for Salt Lake City Family History Library but technology dictates that we now digitally copy the records so this machine is obsolete.  It is still useable but microfilm degrades and is not used any more.

 this is the electronic copier that Christina used but it is broken now.  She used it for 8 weeks and it died and we are still waiting for the repair man to come and get it up and running.  It has been sitting idle now for almost one month.

 This is Janets corner of the room.  Her stuff also fills the opposite side of the room and people are afraid that when we leave, that she will fill up our side of the room as well.  Apparently she is not on the Archives staff but holds a paid position with hard money funding and she has cut her hours.  Her job is to procure grants for various historical societies etc. but not for the archives, museum or library housed in this building.

 this is our corner of the room with all the volumes that we have digitized last week and are digitizing this week.  We do our digitizing for the week, send off the shuttle then we have to wait until the report comes back before we can return the volumes to the area downstairs to be re-shelved.  We have to wait to see if any of our digitized volumes get rejected and have to be reworked.  I hate reworks.

 Someone speeded up the process of the garden by erecting this figure to be a scarecrow to scare off the critters who might wish to invade and eat a delicious newly grown vegetable.  Although it is not visible, this scarecrow has a Richard Nixon Halloween Mask for the head.  Do you think that these people are not Republican?

 What speed did they achieve on this exercise machine parked on the side of Riverside Drive?  Perhaps more than they could cope with so it is out on the sidewalk for people to ogle and perhaps purchase.  There is a glass mason jar there with a sign for people to put the money in if they desire to own the objects.

 This is an oldfashioned ironing board and a lobster trap marker.  There is also an old rake in the foreground.  I never cease to be amazed at the trust people have here.  There is an old man in a house not far from this that makes old looking cupboards for older homes etc.  He leaves them by the side of the road with the price on them and people stop to buy them.  If this was someplace else, the goods would be taken and gone before he knew it.

the house with the ironing board is up for sale so I could not resiste taking a photo of the sign due to the lobster marker that was for sale.

There are lots of vehicles that use Riverside Drive.  This morning there seemed to be more motorcycles than ever.  One in particular was really speeding.  Just as he came into earshot he was past our house and way down the road.  Sound travels fast, and this motorcycle this morning was rivaling that speed.  One slip and the rider would have been an obituary next week.
In an effort to get through the traffic circles (the term they use for roundabouts here) we have devised a mantra which says , "U go I go", which is to say, if the car on our left starts out, we will go as well because he has determined that it is safe to go and if a car comes, he gets hit first and we keep going safely.  Sounds macabre but it is a fight for survival on the roads of Augusta.
Another speedy thing I have to mention is the speed at which we arrived at today.  We have been here 9 months and I have no idea where the time has gone - except it has gone one day at a time with pages upon pages of digital images sent off to the family history library.
Sara sent us some pictures of the children in the mail yesterday and I cannot believe how much they have grown since we last saw them.  Time has flown but we are not fluttering in the wind - our flutter days are done.