The holidays

Aren't the holidays wonderful! I of course mean these mid-summer holidays. July 4th, hubby's birthday, nephews birthday, parents anniversary, annual pilgrimage to my folks house for lake festivities, and this year, a baby shower there for me! And most folks at work take advantage of the three day weekend by planning their own vacations for the same time, effectively getting a 5 day vacation while only using 2 days of vacation time from work. My boss is doing this too, which means that I can't start on my next big project until she gets back to do her preliminary stuff. So what am I going to dooooo! Which of my "must be done before baby arrives" chores can be done at my office?

Let's see, I can catch up the 10+ year journal, but that's nearly done anyway. My 10 year journal is this wonderful journal that gives you 4 lines to fill per day for 11 years, all in one book. Filling four lines isn't daunting and I freely allow myself to skip whole un-eventful days or just put in 3 words or whatever. If I have more to say than 4 lines, there's overflow pages in the back. I've been doing it since 2004 and it's been handy and informative. I noticed that I got "sick" every year during the same days that the leaves first appeared in the forest out back. Well, duh, that would just be allergies. And since I've noticed that, I hit the allergy meds pretty hard about that time each year and save myself being sick. Pretty cool! Also, it's easier to keep track of car repairs, when did we get the cat, how long have they been married, which year did the furnace die in February leaving us cold for a week, how old is that child now, and other big important things like that. I've started keeping small weather reports there too. Just the high, the low and how much rain we got. I was completely sold on this 10+ journal while breakfasting with hubby's grandparents one day years ago. Hubby's grandfather reached over during breakfast, took a journal off the shelf at random and turned to that days date. "On this date in 1964, Tom hit his first home run." He snapped the book closed, shelved it, and we talked about that day for 5 minutes. Very cool!

So I could completely finish getting the 10+ year journal up to date. I could address Christmas cards for this year (we've got them already in the attic anyway). Yes, I'm that nerdy. With baby boy arriving in October, how likely is it that Christmas cards will get done if I wait until November to do them? And I plan on sticking one photo of baby boy in the cards this year. Birth announcements and Christmas cards all in one! I could caption all the photo albums. I've got nearly a year's worth of pictures to do that with right now. They are printed and in 2 albums though! That's half the battle! I got the Ireland photo album captioned a couple weeks ago - only 9 months after returning from the trip. Good thing I had captioned the digital versions. There was already a lot of details I'd forgotten.

I still print my digital photos out because media storage is always changing and you never know if jpeg file formats will really be around in 30 years. If you just keep them in your computer, they could get lost, damaged, or technology could move on without them. If you save them to home-made CDs, those don't last more than about a year and then you've got nothing. One thing about preserving photos for 50+ years is that printed photos will stand the test of time. They may fade or turn slightly red (or some other color) but the basic image will very likely still be visible 50 years from now. And you won't need a special gadget to look at it, just your own eyes. You can still see if your daughter looks like your great-grand mother when SHE was 30. And that's what photos are for. To clear up the edges of our mental pictures.

My cold/allergies have gotten better! I think due to the fact that I ran our air filter on high for 4 hours in the bedroom yesterday evening. Much less congestion this morning and I'm coughing up less stuff. That was graphic. Sorry. We went on a 2 mile walk yesterday and my foot isn't any worse! Very refreshing to go for a walk again.