Day 68 adventure began with the early morning lecture from
the Ravens in the tree outside. I have
no idea what they have to caw about but they are very loud and insistent. So, I got up at their request and got ready
for the day. Decided to go walking on
Riverside Drive going North. I find that
at 5.15am there are very few cars out and about and most of the people in the
homes are comatose still. There was a
fog coming from the North rolling down the highway but as soon as the sun got
above the trees, the fog dissipated; Just as well because I cannot see the
backyards too well when it is foggy.
There is one house that has what looks like a massive playing field behind the house that
goes way back to the trees. I have no
idea who mows this expanse of grassy area, but it must keep them busy for hours
and hours. In the winter when there was
snow on this area, it was tracked up pretty good by the snowmobiles. Maybe that is why they keep it mowed pretty
well to keep down the encroaching wooded area.
I walked about 3 miles today but will increase this as time
permits. I guess I have to depend on the
ravens to begin lecturing me and the Robins also have a chorus of their own.
It is amazing what you can find by the side of the
road. Today I found an 8” spanner or in
this country they call it a wrench. I
have seen lots of things by the side of the road like work gloves, pieces of
strap for holding down loads to keep them from shifting, shoes, socks, and the
usual paper goods that people seem to toss out their cars or that are whipped
out of the back of trucks by the wind etc.
I will be glad when this mission is over and I can revert to
somewhat normal eyesight. I have to wear
my computer distance glasses all day so that I can see what is on the screen in
front of me and to see what I am doing on the table when I put the cards down
to digitize them. When I look up, I
cannot see well and so the whole place is blurry. One of the staff was coming towards me one
day in the hallway and I did not recognize her until she was right in front of
me and I think that she thought I was too strange for words when I did not
greet her when she was further away.
Yesterday the repair man came to repair Christina’s digitizer machine. He said that the wheels were worn down and
that is why they could not grasp the papers and work efficiently. The supervisor for that machine and its
operator is Lorraine, and she is the mother of Tammy who just started work in
Nina’s job. Lorraine told us that a new
girl would be starting today and at lunch time she came to start work. She had on a very short sun dress with narrow
straps over the shoulder and she agreed
with me that it was too cold in our room for her to wear Summer Clothing to
work so when she comes back tomorrow to really start work, I hope that she
wears some clothes that will keep her warm.
Christina apparently came in for a few minutes to train Corin (the new
girl) but I guess the training did not last too long because by the time I got
back from lunch, Christina was gone.
Our big joy for today was to find that all our folders have
passed from last week. Hooray for
us. I say hooray for us because we still
do not know what is the exact height we should have the camera but we did our
best to focus and to matt it out so that we have a narrow border around the
cards. We have only one more folder to
do and we have started it today and will finish it tomorrow and then we will
start in earnest on the court records pages from up in Caribou in Aroostock
county. Bill wrote a note to our supervisor
telling him that we were almost done with the reworks from the earlier
missionary couple and that we will be starting on the Washington county papers. He was really planning to be here to show us
how to do the papers, but I think that we can figure it out ourselves. This guy is a bit of a control freak and
thinks that we can do nothing new unless he is here to show us. We had a rework of the two books that Bill
was holding as Charlton Heston’s body double and our supervisor was insistent
that we not re-do them unless he comes to teach us how. We already knew how. What we did not know and could get no one to
tell us was the number of pages we could digitize before we had to re- focus
the camera. It was a depth of field
problem and no one in the “guru garage” in SLC or our supervisor could tell us
what we had to work with as far as depth of field. So we just went ahead and we refocused every
20 pages. It truly was a pain and if we
had been able to get anyone to tell us just how many pages we could have done
before doing a refocus, I am sure that the oversized books would have gone a
lot faster. Anyhow, they are now done
and put back downstairs in their little cubby hole.
Last night we got a phone call from the landlord asking us
to drop off a mail box key to the lady who has rented our old apartment. I was under the impression that we had left a
mail box key there for her, but I guess we hadn’t, so we went over to drop it
off and we met her. She works for the
Cable company and moved here from Winthrop.
She had tried to put her furniture in this apartment that we now occupy,
but it would not fit and it really fills up the apartment we had. When we lived there we had room to walk
around and had/still have a minimum of furniture. She has loads of furniture and the apartment
looks to be REALLY SMALL due to the lack of room that she has available after
filling in the spaces with a sectional sofa, huge coffee table, large
entertainment center and big screen TV in the living room and the dining area
is filled with a hutch on one wall and a corner hutch over where we had the
microwave. I really think I would have
claustrophobia if I had to live with this much furniture as she has in such a
small space. And she has a cat living
there into the bargain.
Someone in the vicinity has an open line to the internet and
mostly it shows one bar and is very low in its power and I am using it tonight
to post this blog because Bill has taken the hotspot with him on his celllphone. When we were in the other apartment, the
connection was stronger at sometimes 3 bars but I am glad that I have internet
tonight.
I was typing the blog when I noticed that Sara was online so
I talked to her over skype. We had to do
it without video to have better sound connection and she told me that they will
be going to Germany in January to be there in time for Jacob to start his post
doc in February. It is exciting to know that they will have this overseas experience. World turmoil will take
place no matter where we live or what we do.
wow! What a ride this
is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The kids will come back speaking German!
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