T minus 4 - The tale of Rubbermaid

When we began the traveling part of our full time life in the Newell our plan was to spend time the first year scanning all of our family photo albums.  With the advent of the digital age in photography we now store our pictureS on external hard drives as I am sure many out there do.  We wanted to convert all our pictures dating from before that time to digital.  For 2 years we carried all of those photographs around in a large Rubbermaid tub.....in those two years we managed (I should say TLE managed) to scan just one of the multiple family albums.  That Rubbermaid tub was taking up a lot of our precious storage space under our bed, so when we returned to the west coast for the first time in 2 years we left all the pictures at our daughter's home in Riverside.  She was going to try to get the rest scanned, but life intervened and it never got done.

Fast forward to this January when our daughter's basement became flooded due to a burst pipe and we thought the pictures had been destroyed.  We were out in the desert at the time, as you will recall, and thinking we had lost all of those pictures we went through a brief grieving period, however, when we returned back to her home from the desert we found out the Rubbermaid tub had done its job and the pictures were kept dry!  Right then we resolved to get the job done, and took possession of the Rubbermaid tub once again.

Well, we had good intentions over the past three months, and talked often about setting up one of our tables in the trailer, and taking my laptop and printer/scanner out there to 'gang tackle' the job, but it just never happened.  Well, here we are just days from leaving SoCal once again for an extended period of time and those pictures just lay there in that Rubbermaid tub kind of mocking our inaction.  There was always a good excuse.....it was too cold, or too hot, or too windy, or we were too busy, or too something.  Finally I told TLE we had a two day window this weekend to get the job done, and if she was willing to spearhead the project  we could get 'er done.....she agreed.  So Saturday I set everything up (the Rubbermaid tub was already in trailer) in the trailer, and we dove head first into the project about mid morning.

TLE would take all the pictures out of a given album, sort them, remove duplicates, and just scan the really important ones.  We worked together steadily all day long taking short breaks here and there, but by 4 pm we had made a real dent in the Rubbermaid tub's contents.  I don't think we'll get them all finished by Sunday evening, but we will have made a significant dent, which will enable us to reduce the mass of pictures we will still be carrying with us by over half.

Last night as I watched a couple of NBA playoff games TLE continued removing pictures from photo albums, sorting them, and getting them ready to scan....with all this advance work on her part we should be able to get a lot done Sunday.

TLE at work even this morning

Well, suffice it to say, that was essentially our entire Saturday.  Around 4 pm we shut down the scanning operation for the night, and TLE made cocktails so we could sit and relax until dinner.  I got out the BBQ to grill some carne asada, and around 6:30 we had a lovely taco salad as the sun slowly slipped over the western horizon one more time.

Thanks for stopping by!