Monday, July 16, 2012

Monday (again) but is now 63 days left to accrue memories


I woke up early and wanted to go walking but when I got outside, it was this fine misty rain that in time soaks through to the skin and I did not much want to be soaked by the time I got back home, so I sat down and started on my Sunday School lesson.  This next lesson is on fasting.  Probably will not have too many people stay for class when they find out the subject matter.  It takes me a week or takes me all week to prepare the lesson for Sunday and even after all that I am still feeling like a fish out of water.
On Saturday when we went to the Health Fair at Rite Aid, I listened to a presentation by Lamey Welham shoe store.  They had a bunch of really spectacular shoes there to talk about and one caught my eye.  The lady said that it would last a lot longer than other regular tennis shoes, and probably they will, but they are more for Runners than walkers and I was interested in trying them on.  So this morning, since we had the morning off, we went over to the store to look at shoes and inserts.  They have a machine that measures pressure points in feet and it is fun to stand on and see what it registers.  I asked to see the special shoes and I put them on.  I did not like the feel of them and did not think that $175 was a good expenditure on them.  She mentioned that I might like Asics and I just bought a pair of Asics at Famous Footwear this past Saturday.  So we left there and went to Wal Mart to pick up my prescription  and a small bottle of Nutella, and then to home.  Nutella is the newest dip for corn chips.  We had decided to eat lunch at the Archives before Manny came and so we packed up our lunch and headed off.  Anne and Anthony were eating lunch when we got there.
Dr.Suess wrote a book “The places you will go” among others and Shel Silverstein wrote a poem called “Listen to the Mustn’ts” which has as its final line “anything can happen child, anything can be”.  Well today proved  no exception to that line. While we were at lunch, my phone rang and it was Sean Duffy,  Bill’s big boss from Saffeway, asking him to come  back to work for them.  Now that came quite out of the blue and was very much unexpected.
We spent some time on the phone calling our doctors in Prescott to make our appointments for when we get home.  Some prescriptions are in need of being renewed.
We had a phone call from Manny and he said he was going to be at the Archives at 1.30pm instead of 1pm and so we went back to our room and we set up the table and the camera and it was fully focused and ready to go when he got there.  The first thing he said was that we should take the table away because it really was part of the light setup and the light setup had been turned around to accommodate the cradle.  He also said that we need to buy something that is 30 pounds weight like a bag of sand to hold the structure down rather than the two heavy things that Peter brought up that are totally unstable anyway.  He then said that the main table on which we had the cradle when we got there was sufficient  for our needs and so we found a piece of black foam core board and he used some ”D” clamps to hold it steady while I taped the rest of it.  He then said that the camera needed to be higher (this has been the big argument this whole mission whether the camera was high enough or low enough and whether we had the camera focused properly).  So he reached up and tried to move the camera up and the whole thing came crashing down onto the board we had just set up.  Luckily he had the camera in his hand while the metal frame that held it fell onto our foam core board, and made a big dent in the board.  OUCH!!!
Last week I had found some wrenches that I did not know what to do with.  Today I found out what they were good for.  They are special hexagonal wrenches that fit into the bolts that had been holding the stem of the camera stand in place.  He said we should have tested this out – but how were we to know that the bolts were loose and that the thing would come apart?  So we tightened the bolts and then he said that the Camera was loose.  Well Duh!  It has been that way since we came and we have no idea that it is supposed to be tightened into its place by these same wrenches.  How in the world are we to know these things.  I am glad that it was not tight up to this point because we have had to change the camera orientation with earlier captures and if it had been  tightened down there is no way we would have been able to take the image.  I have often said to Bill that this stuff that we work with is totally primitive and at dinner tonight Manny told us that there is a new version of DcamX coming out and when they tried the beta version recently, it did not work.  Guess the Gugu Garage that houses the Computer Geeks needs to go back to the drawing board.  So we wondered whether the blurring of our work previously was the result of the camera being loose in its mount and not tightened down.  Ahhh the pitfalls of greenhorns working in a medium and area that is totally unfamiliar and totally unrelated to anything they have previously undertaken to do.
We had previously arranged for the staff to take Manny down to the archives below us to show him all the boxes and boxes of stuff that is on the docket to be done.  He was unfazed by the enormity of the amount of work that he expects us to do before we leave in September.  He also was shown the humidifier room and the process was explained to him and the fact that there is a lack of folders to put the papers in and the whole litany of problems were explained to him but still he insists that it all can be done before we leave.  Perhaps we do not need to sleep of a night time but work through 24/7 to attempt to get it all done but actually we will only scratch the surface.   I had not seen the 300 boxes myself, but I did see them today and I am overwhelmed with the enormity of the work.  In pursuing his goal of getting it all done NOW, Manny went to talk to Davie Cheever, head Archivist here.  Mr Cheever said that perhaps he could wrangle the folders to put the newly humidified records in………….is there no one listening or seeing the amount of work ahead of us?
We spent about 2 hours looking at the records downstairs, talking to people about the task ahead and also trying to get the camera focused and the other adjustments made.  It was pretty interesting , even after 9 months of groping in the dark by ourselves trying to master this process, and even after all the adjusting and re-adjusting the camera (he put it up high………..AAARRGGHHHH…………….after all the lectures we have endured about having the camera down low) it was easy to observe that even Manny was having a hard time getting the camera adjusted and the LSI and focus done correctly and to advantage.
Manny offered to take us out to dinner tonight and we accepted.  We went to the Longhorn Steak House and it was a much better offer than going to Line Dance Class – but I really like line dance.  I could not go to dinner tomorrow night because we are supposed to be going visiting teaching to Rose and she only has one day here and there that we can go to her home.  It was between two good choices I suppose.  I called Mary Hitchings and told her we would not be there and asked if anyone had adopted Puffalump or any of the Woozles.  She said that some people came to look at Puffalump but that he is way too old to be adopted and so he is still in the pound along with the Woozles and even though the pound offered two kittens for the price of one, out of all the cats they have there for adoption, only one was chosen and it was not one of the kittens that Mary had fostered for the pound.  I am sick at heart that the marvelous and magnificent Mr. Puffalump and his Woozles are headed for euthanasia because of the glut of animals in the pound at present.  All that caring and vet fees for services down the tubes because these marvelous little kitties did not get adopted.  Life is hard at best and the kittens will fare no better than what the pound has to offer.
Life is hard for everyone – especially if you are a cat in the pound here in Augusta.

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