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 equipment that was prime in the first days it was purchased but now outdated.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Salt Lake City Family History Library but technology dictates that we now digitally copy the records so this machine is obsolete.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.