Lessons and Carols

When I was a young teenager (age 13-17) I sang in the High Church Choir at St. Lukes and my favorite time of the year was the 9 Lessons and Carols that took place at midnight on Christmas Eve.  The lights were low in the church and we processed from the back of the church to the Choir Stalls up by the altar, with our choir boys leading the way.  We looked wonderful in our pale blue cassock's and White surplice over that.  The songs were magnificent and the spirit was pervasive.  What a wonderful way to usher in Christmas.
Last night we went to the Lessons and Carols at the Green Street United Methodist Church here in Augusta.  We found a place to park and an added gift to the city was a house on the corner of State Street and Green that had lights all over it and they were synchronized with the music they had playing in the front yard.  It was a spectacular sight and was a grand way to start the evening. 
The Green Street UM is a very old building and very ornate.  The ceiling is the pressed tin ceiling with spectacular gold leaf design on the support beams.  They had a bell choir and a singing choir.  The bell choir was very soft and hard for me to hear due to the children and people talking during the performance and when they accompanied the organist, he drowned them out.  Still, a good time was had by all.  The minister called the children to the front and was talking to them about the baby Jesus and then he handed them all gifts that were a mug, hot chocolate packet and marshmallows.  I was certain that we would find marshmallows all over the pews by the two little 2yr old girls in the pew in front of us, but their mothers confiscated the gift as soon as the little ones returned to their seats.  These little girls love each other.  They are cousins and one is four months older than the other and she was quite motherly to the younger one.  In fact, the people in the row in front of us and the people in the row in front of them were all family - about  15 people including children.  One of the little girls kept waving to her grandma who was in the bell choir.  It was very cute.
As we left the building after the service, we could hear the music from the house on the corner and could see the synchronized lights.  As we turned the corner to the parking lot, some people called to us from the truck leaving the parking lot and it turned out to be our Bishop and his wife and family.
It was very cold last night and was 3 degrees this morning when I got up.  We had strict instructions to call Sara at 7am (our time) so that she could see us open the gifts she had sent to us.  She sent some music to Bill which was a piece that she performed a dance to earlier this year and she sent us some Hand Warmers - like the type that hunters use.  She sent us a set of nesting Matrushka food containers for us to take our food to the Archives.  She also made a scrapbook type booklet for pictures of highlights of our mission.  She promised to send us more pictures of their family throughout the rest of our mission.  I am still waiting for the last promised bunch of pictures...............
It is now 5 degrees - I hope that the car starts so that we can go to church this morning.

White or not, it is still Christmas

3^rd Missionary Christmas

Christmas 1970  found me living in Tokyo 2^nd Ward close to Ikebukero.  It was cold and snowy and we were out in it.  I had purchased a pair of snow boots, and loved making tracks in the snow, much to the chagrin of my companion.  She was raised in Ogden, Utah, and snow was not new to her.  I was raised in Australia and Snow was a novelty to me.  Our district leader thought that we could eat at a nice Chinese restaurant with a family style service.  That was the first time I had ever done that.  Of course by the time the Elders had taken their fill of the plates as they revolved around to us sisters, ther was not much food left to choose from.  I guess they were hungry.  My Christmas gift that year was being able to see Mt. Fuji in the distance from the railway line overpass.  It had been snowing all morning, but by afternoon, when we went home, it had cleared to reveal that perfect mountain.  What a spectacular gift.

My second Christmas in the mission field was celebrated in the Mission home with Pres. Abo and his family.  It was warm and loving and my gift that year was the love of the Abo children.

This year marks a third Christmas spent in the Missionary service and I am in Maine, USA.  As I type this it is snowing and perhaps we will have a white Christmas  - who knows.  We have a tree that is a left-over from the previous missionaries.  It is pre-lit and so I bought a bolt of red ribbon and made bows to decorate it.  Also put some candy canes on it  and it will have to do. 

We plan to attend the Lessons and Carols at the Methodist Church in town on Christmas Eve and then on Christmas Day we will join with our congregation in song and scriptures to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

The brightest part of this year’s Christmas has been the cards we have received from all our friends.  The most personal and precious gift was a DVD from friends in Prescott that showed pictures from the trips they took this year, and of Arizona’s best fest – we missed it due to being on our way to the MTC.

On a day when we were feeling particularly down after a training session this week,  Three Cards came bearing gifts of love and support…..just like 2011 years ago three kings brought priceless gifts to the Christ Child.  The greatest gift to all mankind is the Christ Child himself.

Accurate and Average - drowning in words

Accurate in an average way

Yes, this pronouncement by our supervisor has me scratching my head also!  Accuracy denotes perfection – no errors and as Johnny Bench some years ago in a TV ad,  advertised for the paint company with the slogan, No runs, No drips, No errors.   So just what is accuracy?  It means that you are in perfect focus – at all times.  It means no blurs or blurring of images.  It means no reworks.  I’m all over that one.  Well, as it was explained to us today – a last gasp effort to polish the pearl that we have been given, you can focus the camera as best you can, the computer makes algorithm driven guesses and then you pray that it is accurate and to check it you use a straight edge, such as the one on the “M” on the Kodak Greyscale Card.  Look for the fully blocked pixels (they are very dark and form a backbone for the letter you choose) and then you count to see if there is a “halo” of one to one and one half pixels from the blocked pixels.  Yes, I know this is very technical, but in the years that follow this mission we are doing, this camera we are using will be a total dinosaur………………..They will probably have developed some wonderful “capturer of dreams type camera” that will just point and shoot………..AAAAHHHHH! I do like point and shoot cameras – just like my Iphone.  I am afraid that Blurring is part of life.  If not so, then we would be victims of all its hard edges.  Blurring is caused by movement of the capture cradle.  We fixed that by putting rubberized shelf liner under the little runners that it sits on…………hence no more movement sideways and less chance of blurring.   However, one of the re-works we did today may just come back for rework again – it has very tight binding and the words disappear down the ‘gutter’ which is what they call the very center of the book  where the pages extend out from the binding.  There is little we can do about it.  No Reworks is the goal.

Now about Average – well that is described as being the best of the lousiest and lousiest of the best.  What more can I say?  Still I scratch my head over the “Accurate in an Average way.”

We had an in depth conversation with our supervisor over cultural influences and how they shape our view of life and our approach to problem solution.  His rapid fire questioning in the past has left me rattled to the point that I cannot think what is next.  Each tidbit of computer knowledge that comes to stay in my brain, is a hard won tidbit to be sure.  When I am approached with rapid fire questioning and the statement “Now, I just told you that yesterday/this morning/one hour ago or even last week or last phone conversation,”  I am left searching my brain for that particular answer and cannot find it under such an “immediacy” kind of request.  The problem seems to be in the Urgency with which he speaks, his sincerity, and the objective to get people trained, but the cultural difference throws up a wall and makes things difficult.  I had the same problem when I was in Japan.  I wanted to get the message out, but was grabbing at straws to understand and be understood that I trod on cultural toes, and things did not go well.  In any case, we cleared the air, and things went a lot better after that.

A question has arisen regarding the accuracy of the algorithm that operates the camera for focus.  Our Supervisor took an image from the book we were working on, and he fine tuned it and re-worked it and he captured it on a thumb drive and he sent it to the head examiner in SLC and it came back ‘BORDERLINE’ out of focus.  He was devastated.  I guess a new version of dCamX is coming out in the new year that is supposed to fix all these inconsistencies.  I hope that it magically focuses and that it eliminates re-works altogether.

So, when we go back to the Archives on Tuesday, we will have to re-orient the camera so that it will accommodate the single page capture of the books we are working with right now.  These books have to be done page by page with huge clips holding them down and the pages have to be smoothed, and then put the spirit level on them to check that they are perfectly horizontal and that they are level with the camera.  This requires lots of bending over the book, squeezing the clip to open it to grab the page, smooth the page, check and re-check the focus every 50 pages (so as to retain the focal plane for optimum capture).  Once we get into the rhythm of the single page capture, I think that things will go quickly……..or at least I hope it goes quickly.

I just had to get out of the building for a breather.  It is becoming very hard not to be able to be out in the sun.  So, after our supervisor left, I walked out into the sunshine.  It is wonderful to be able to breathe fresh air – recycled air and air conditioning is hard to me to cope with.  I walked over to the State House and went to the top floor, saw the rotunda, next floor down was the senate and house of representatives rooms, next floor down was the hall of flags and the next floor was the ground floor.  The guard directed me to go down one more level and see the wild animals that they have there.  I walked through the tunnel that connects the state house with the office building and saw the cafeteria they have there.  Sure is a pretty interesting place.  Went back outside and saw the sunshine and walked a few blocks before returning to work at the archives.

Still trying to figure out ‘accurate in an average way.”

The Christmas Staff Party

Today they had a Christmas Staff Party at the Archives.  Art the Archiver arranged for us to order out some Chinese Food from the Lucky Garden in Hallowell.  Since we did not know what we were looking at, we just chose something from the menu.  Art went down to Hallowell to pick it up and when it came it was a real surprise package to be sure.  I thought I was ordering pot stickers (gyoza in Japan) and instead these doughy blobs with overcooked meat in them showed up.  Bill ordered broccoli beef with noodles - it was not so good either.  People have raved to us about the Lucky Garden food so we thought it would be wonderful....but it was less than.  Of all the Chinese places here in the Augusta Area, we like the  one over by the Fairfield Inn called The Great Wall Restaurant.
This morning we were instructed in the DcamX all over again.  Manuel also tried to get the engineers to find the tif image that we were supposed to fix.  Three images were mentioned in the rework but each of them is numbered as being 10 or so further on than what was in the original folder.  No one seems to know how or why the images were checked - especially seeing that they do not exist in the first place.
We finished off yesterday's book and did a whole new book today.  The highlight of the day was hearing from SLC that all 13 of our folders submitted last week passed.  That is what I call a Christmas Present to surpass all Christmas Presents.  However, we may not be so lucky next week.
During the late morning it began to rain here and quickly turned to icy rain and everything got coated with ice.  We heard of people caught unawares on the roads and there were loads of fender benders.  We even had a short blip in the electric supply for the building and people's computers had to be re-booted.  Ours is plugged into a continuous power supply box so my computer was not affected.
We are getting better at doing the single page capture on top of the cradle.  The books are 16 1/2 inches tall and they do not fit.  The quality of the paper is not so grand either so we have to be extra careful not to tear the paper when we turn a page.  Had a few accidents like that already.
Our landlord came by and refunded the money I lost in the washer down in the Laundry room.  This particular washer is the most cantankerous thing I have ever used.  Sometimes it works but mostly it doesn't.  One week I put in $6 in an effort to get it to work.  He returned the money to me and said he had the technician out to fix it.  But it was not fixed and still ate money with no laundry done in return.  So, tonight he came and he took out the part that was giving problems and told me to go down to the laundry room and do my laundry for free.  With the timing mechanism out of the machine, all you have to do is to push the button and it works and I got to do my laundry for free.  Free is Good!

Molasses in winter

A swift race with the  proverbial Molasses in Winter syndrome is taking place at the Archives as of Today.  Oh yes, the supervisor is here and he has set us a task that seems to be at best insurmountable and at worst, abject discouragement.  You see, he wants us to be very fast at our digitizing but the books we have now are over 3 inches thick by 16 inches high and 12 inches wide.  They will not fit in the cradle and if they do, the over extend at the sides and get stuck and pull and wiggle and I am sure that the one book that we did on this series is going to be a rework.  Now that is a Christmas present that we always wanted.  On top of that, the FedEx man came with two shuttles for us and we were really excited to open them and see what they held.  One of them is not even ours and belongs to another digitizer in a different state.   Now how’s that again?  They get after us for errors and have zero tolerance for blurred images and focus problems, but we are expected to function with only one shuttle instead of two.  I can hardly wait to see what is next.

What is next has already arrived.  Our supervisor has been here two days and I have not slept for those two days due to anxiety over his visit.  His rapid fire directions and questions have me totally rattled and I cannot answer his questions as fast as he desires and then I get a lecture about how we have had this all before and how can I not remember?   Well, it is like this, when you get to be 68 you can remember what you did when you were a kid, like the clothes you wore to the school dance that your mother made and it did not fit because she was sure I would grow quickly enough that I would fit into it in two weeks – well even after two years I was not that big……….but it pays to be prepared.  I can remember not wanting to eat my vegetables at dinner.  I can even recall which of the vegetables I hated to eat – and that was most of them if not all of them.  But ask me what I had for breakfast this morning  and you’ll get a blank stare and a stock questioning answer of “We had breakfast?”  I guess he is really a nice caring man who wants to keep his job, but he scares the beejeebers out of me because I do not ‘think computer’ that fast.  Not raised in the computer generation to start with, so what do you really expect?

So it is “molasses in winter movement” that is trying to overtake the snails pace race to the finish.  I refer to the new way to do these large books – which is one page at a time,and sitting on top of the cradle and not under the glass anymore.  The next 7 books are only written on the right hand page and the left hand page is totally bereft of words and certainly no doodles of any kind and no hurriedly scribbled notes to help the typist to remember to put in certain paragraphs that were left out of the first presentation etc.etc.etc.  We have these huge bulldog clips that grab the pages and anchor them down so that there are no bubbles, humps, gullies, or other distortion of the page.  We have to use a sprit level to be sure that the surface is parallel with the camera mount and that it is perfectly flat and within focal range.  To achieve this, one has to lean over the book, place the first clip, then smooth the page to accommodate  the second clip and then the third clip.  Take the spirit level and check vertically (top to bottom of the page) and then horizontally (from side to side of the page) before clicking capture.  All throughout this maneuver we have to be ever vigilant that the page does not move, gully, bubble or hump and cause distortion.  We have to be careful that the clip does not tear the pages (they are over 120 years old and the paper is brittle and has not rag content).  In this race,” the molasses in winter  is winning”  I hate to lose to the gooey stuff, but I am.  Peter even brought us a really fancy and very expensive little level that he used professionally in another job with his camera, but it is so tiny and so easy to lose that I put it back on the shelf and we use the 10inch spirit level from K-Mart and it works well.  We also have to do a full focus every 30 or so pages.  We may only get one book on the shuttle to Salt Lake City this week rather than 11 or 14 as in other weeks.

Had a phone call from Lloyd who works at the Verizon store.  He asked if we (as a church) put much store in the 2012 end of the year calendar from the Maya………..of course not.  We are directed by a Prophet of God and have no need for a Mayan Calendar.  After all, each January, the tabloid in the Super market shouts the prophecies of Nostradamus and it is always gloom and doom from that camp.  This year some 80+ yr old preacher said the world would end on March 21 – and when that did not happen, he reconfigured his calculations and came up with October 2011 – and that has passed as well.  Guess he needs a new crystal ball or something.  So I engaged Lloyd in a conversation that went something like this………..

”Lloyd, imagine I hold in my hand a glass sphere that contains all truth.  What would happen if I took it outside your store and dropped it on the cement there?”  He said, “well it would be in a million bits”.  I asked him if he would be able to gather all the pieces of glass form the sphere and put it back together again?  He said that the chances of it being restored back together complete are slim to none.  I then had him agree with me that he would find shards of glass for a long time after that and that each shard represented a piece of truth.  All truth can be circumscribed into one great whole.  I suggested to him that throughout his life he would find pieces of truth and that it was his responsibility to embrace truth wherever he found it……………..gave him something to think about.  I also challenged him to read the Book of Mormon and follow the challenge in the back of it which encourages people who read this book, to ponder, pray and ask God if it is true and they will get an answer.  ‘By the power of the Holy ghost, ye may know the truth of all things ‘ is a scripture in the Book of Mormon.  I do not know if he will follow through, but I told him that I would love to talk to him at a later date and he said he would do that.

Tonight we went caroling with the young people of the Ward and it was very cold but very much fun.  We ended up at the chapel and the plan was originally to go into the neighborhood around the church and sing carols to the neighbors, but everyone was too cold to go back out and do that.  So, we had milk and cookies and conversation.  I saw the bishop and told him about Lloyd and he said, “Oh I already heard about your conversation.”  I knew Augusta was smaller than Prescott, but I did not think for one minute that it was so small that one conversation I had with one person would already be known by the bishop.

After the archives we stopped at the YMCA so that I could do some walking.  I have not been able to walk due to it being so dark when we leave the archives at 4pm and not much sun or light on the weekend that I can use between washing loads and shopping etc.  We seemed to have a different group there today.  There was a twenty-something Adonis in short shorts running full tilt around the track with a full backpack on his back and his Ipod blaring in his ears – I could hear him coming by his music before I could hear his heavy breathing.  Some skinny kid from the high school was bounding like a Gazelle around the track and I was walking as fast as I could.  In each corner of the room people doing exercises on mats – well it looked more like they were writhing in pain.  One fellow had a heavy 20 pound weight on his back while he did pushups.  Another seemed bent on turning himself into a human pretzel while in another corner an old man was doing some yoga and Pilates moves.  Imagine my surprise upon turning a corner and finding him throwing himself to the floor as it someone had done a Judo move on him.  He is the same person who walks clockwise around the track when the rules clearly ask that we walk counterclockwise.  Must be some sort of Feng Shui thing or other that causes him to walk in this manner (Or maybe it is a death wish to be crashed into by the Gazelle racing around the track, or even by Adonis).  Another older gentleman comes in and stands by the wall and lifts his arms up and then down a few times, stretches his arch muscles against the wall, then he goes over to the magazines and tears out the pages he wants.  Three young women were there today and boy, were they ‘hotties’.  Too bad that all but two men in the room were grey haired  and balding.  Sugar Daddies I wonder.

It's not a curve, it is a spiral - even more convoluted than DNA

Our supervisor came today and our learning curve is taking on more of a DNA spiral configuration.  At the rate we are required to go with the new books that are only one page capture, I am sure we will be here until the second coming.  Between LSI readings, depth of field measurements, leveling, focus plane and capture, we are prisoners of the book and the whole digitizing system.  We are not allowed 'time off for good behavior' or even an apology for actually being right about reworks...........guess it is a cultural thing all round.
The temperature has taken a nose dive into the 'barely out of single digits' and the locals are all excited about the number of ponds and lakes that will be frozen over for them to go skating.  Our fun time is limited to doing laundry and quarreling with the recalcitrant 'sometimes working sometimes not' clothes washer, going shopping at the supermarket, needing to go to the YMCA to exercise but having to choose home teaching over a healthy body, and the list seems endless and not much fun at all.  Whatever happened to laughter?  It is Christmas after all, and our tree has only a few things under it that I put there.  Pretty bleak now that the spider died.
We are back to using the hot spot from verizon - the Netgear person has moved.  It was fun while it lasted.
I looked on the internet for the long range forecast and we are to have snow on Wednesday and a green Christmas.  At least on Christmas Day we will be able to have an easy trip to and from Church - no snow and no ice - at least it seems that way.
At lunch today I showed Anne the Tips for Beauty out of the Benton Falls, Maine, 1956 cook book.  I think I will follow their advice,  I will be very sure "not to sit on a dainty spindly chair and furniture that will accentuate my bigness."  I will  avoid shoes with heels too high and slender and dark colored shoes are usually better than light.  I will use dark colored stockings as dark as the current fashion allows.  "Knee Hi's"
Well, in reference to the last directive from Beauty hints by Julian, I would point his attention to the directive from the Relief Society President at the MTC which said that we did not have to wear nylons any more since the latest trend is for ladies to wear peds with their shoes and no nylons.  I don't like panty hose anyway.

Problem solved

When we first came here we had a terrible time with the clothes washers that they have here.  These machines thrive on eating the money we put into them and not delivering the water and washing that we expect from them.  It is as if they are determined to eat as much money as they can and laugh all the way to the bank.  when we first came and tried to use the washers,I was amazed to find that we were only allowed to use one tablespoon of detergent in each wash.  I cannot see how this will clean the clothes - and it doesn't do a good job, so I saw the owner and asked him about the washer and why it is only one tablespoon of detergent and he said that these washers are the energy efficient washers and they use "H E" detergent - which stands for High Energy detergent.  I wanted to say 'I knew that!!'  We have 150 fluid ounces of the detergent and at 1 tablespoon at a time, we will barely use any of it with two washer loads per week.
I am not impressed with the washers at all - our whites are now a dull light grey and I doubt if they will ever see WHITE again.  This discoloration does not bleach out and so we are stuck.  Well, I might as well have washed the whites with a red shirt or something - at least I would have some excuse for having non-white WHITES.
I have been keeping track of our spider 'Slim Pickins'.  Well last night the temperature dropped to 10 degrees or less and I guess that was too much for him.  Aside from not getting anything to eat, he had no shelter from the cold and he has passed into the eternities. 
This picture below is what happens to your windows on the car when there is high moisture in the air and the temperature is really really cold.  these are icicles that make the windows look like a bunch of fairies had gone ice skating over the surface and left all these tracks behind.  Disney used similar illustrations in Fantasia to show ice skating tracks on the frozen lake by the ice fairies.

On the other hand, our Arizona based automobile seems to be weathering the whole thing quite well.  It starts promptly even though it is less than 10 degrees temperature.  Of course it must be wondering what in the wold we are doing leaving it out in the cold and snow and rain........there is not much sun this time of year at this latitude and what sun there is, it is watery and not very warm.  After the solstice, it will start its journey back to the northern hemisphere and life will warm up for us appreciably.  When we get back to Arizona, it will be tucked away in the garage every time it is not in use and happiness reigns.  No more scraping ice off the car before you can drive it.
My Sunday School lesson that I taught today was on the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  The scriptures tell us that he will cleanse the earth by fire.  Someone in the class spoke up and said, "Yes, well, the Lord drowned them all with the flood in the day of Noah."  Someone else said, well it will probably  be by a nuclear blast this time to burn the inhabitants by fire.  Well, I guess that one good atomic blast CAN spoil your whole day.  No one knows how the earth will be cleansed by fire, but it will come - so pay your fire insurance.