June 2 – “A Poem”

Want to know the best way to get a bum knee to sore up? 

Sit at the computer for a day, then stand up. 

That’s all it takes.  No muss.  No fuss.  

No outside exercise.  And that’s a plus.

OK, so it doesn’t really rhyme, but you gotta appreciate the effort, right? 

That’s what we did pretty much all day yesterday.  Great day-off planning.  See, Chris has started her next project.  Scrapbooking.  She has made her trips into Texas to Hobby Lobby to gather all her materials.  The only thing left is to get some photos to commemorate the occasion.  Oh, and what occasion might that be?  Well, what better place to start than our trip to DisneyWorld … in 2016.  That only puts us two years behind.  She already has plans for a scrapbook for each of our journeys, though, so this is one project that will take a while. 

So back to our day yesterday.  She has done all sorts of research on the best way to translate digital pictures into paper-based photographs.  Yes, there is such a thing.  I know it sounds terribly antique, but at least we have progressed from tintype.  Now the only step left is to choose the pictures she wants turned into paper.  That is a process that used to be done only through a specialty store (or, of course through the appropriate department at WalMart).  You used to have to drop off a film canister and wait a week, then go back and pick them up.  Then technology really caught up and you could get them in just one hour.  Now you take your photos, store them digitally (or better yet … in the mysterious “cloud”), and look at them on your electronic devices whenever you want to.  Sound so convenient.  But there’s just nothing quite like thumbing through the pages of an actual book and seeing images of memory moments flash before your eyes.  Sounds like a TV commercial now. 

Well, here’s the report I have been dreading.  We started with 1300+ photos.  Way too many.  We went through them and deleted some from the list for reasons of duplication or fuzziness or “that one is better this one.”  When we finally finished we were pretty proud of ourselves.  Until we counted up our tally.  1,075.  Maybe 300 gone, yet still a massive total at out fingertips.  Ah, for the days when the “jumbo” film canister held 36 pictures and you were never sure you could ever take that many.  Now we have to go back through and compile the pics to check for more duplications and to eliminate more of “but that one is so cute” items.  How big can this scrapbook be, anyway?

Psalms 67:3 says, “May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you.”

Father, thank you for memories and for the means to relive them.  Amen.