On Tuesday I was asked how much of my house is finished. I answered 50% and then on reflection said maybe more like 60%. I think I grossly underestimated. Yesterday I was at the house when all the built in cabinetry was arriving, and when the stairs and wood flooring was finished. In fact, the house is very close to being done, perhaps 80% now. There was an absolute mountain of cabinets in the living room, waiting to be installed into the bedrooms and kitchen. If it weren’t for imminent Chinese New Year, the house would be finished by the end of February.
This reality, and the fact that tomorrow morning I’m leaving for a month in the USA, keeps pushing me to throw away more and more stuff from the basement storage. I’ve managed to reduce my books library by 90%. My computer and old electronics rubbish, by 98%. Practically the only thing I haven’t culled has been my collections of old memories and photographs. I have trunks full of slide albums.
But having slides today is sort of like having Han Solo in ice. I really have to want a photo to go to the trouble of re-installing my slide scanner and processing the slide. So much so that I haven’t scanned a slide in close to five years.
Thinking about this, I realized a great double-blow solution would be to use the Scan Cafe service. I could get electronic scans of all these immobilized images. Then I’d (1) have access to them electronically, which is vastly more useful (2) be able to throw out at least fifty pounds of crap from my house.
The Scan Cafe service comes well-recommended by Kevin Kelly Cool Tools. I will want to do some more due diligence on their service, but I am very tempted to try this out. If it works, maybe I’ll sponsor to have other family collections electronically thawed. Dad has piles of carouselled slides somewhere in the attic. They also scan photos, and I’d be thrilled to have a bigger library of photos of Pa and Nanny, for example.
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Personally, I’d love to have the classic Nanny-eyeball picture!
I had all of the albums, and I looked very hard for it.
I believe that Mom quietly disposed of it.
The photo I am looking for is of two enoki mushrooms dressed in matching striped shirts.