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.
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