Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Our 62 day adventure tops them all so far


Our 62 day tops them all so far.  I went walking early in the morning and when I got home, we decided to eat right away and then get into the archives to be there by 8am.  As I turned into our drive way, I saw a Garage Sale sign.  It is tacked to the tree, is about 9 inches square and in not too prominent writing it announces a garage sale for Sunday – 9 to 2.  The only trouble is that the speed of the cars along Riverside drive precludes anyone being able to see the sign much less read it and attend the garage sale.  The only reason I knew of it was that I was walking by it.  For sure if I was in a car going down the highway, I would never be able to read it and would probably miss it altogether.
Our supervisor began the day with asking us to sit by and observe while he focused the camera, did the LSI and set up the hot key thingy.
He then dropped the other  shoe so to speak by telling us that we had to finish all of Washington county records before we leave as well as humidify ALL of the York county records, put them in folders, and get started digitizing them.  His estimate was not an estimate but rather an ultimatum – YOU WILL GET ALL THIS WORK DONE BEFORE YOU LEAVE.  He wants one of us to digitize the Washington County records upstairs while the other is down stairs doing the humidifying.    He also said that there is no reason we could not do 400 digital images in one hour.  There is no reason we could not prepare all the York county records and have them in order ready for digitizing (presumably by us also).  The man is not much more than a human steamroller.  They had better install a toilet in our room so that we do not have to leave the room to take care of business.
He has been told many times but apparently does not hear the statement that the archives does not have the folders nor does it have the budget to get sufficient folders for York Co. and the one who is doing the digitizing has to write the contents on the front of the folders and number them correctly and place them in an acid free box which the archives also does not have.
Then he saw the work that Christina was doing and he wanted us to also digitize the Births, Deaths and Marriages of Maine as well.  How foolish of me, I really thought there were only 24 hours in one day and that I was programmed to sleep most of, if not all of one 8 hour segment.
My shoulder muscles are so tense at this ultimatum that it was a 4 tylenol day to help control the pain.  I rarely take pain meds but today the problem was overwhelming.
At lunch, Anne said, “Get your stuff together, we are going to Dairy Queen to unwind – and we did.  It was awesome.
In the afternoon he put us through our paces getting unhappy if we did not do things as quickly as he wanted or in the same manner he wanted and finally he left with the direction to me to digitize for the next hour.  My shoulders are so tense I gave up after 50 minutes and we went to the YMCA.  Bill exercised there and I went walking on the Rail Trail for an hour.  It helps me to unwind.
So this was our adventure for the day – sort of like tightrope walking across Niagra falls and trying to catch all the drops of water spray in a thimble as we went along.

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