Stranger Things

If you like the Goonies, and you like Fringe, my guess is you would like this show. The show has good casting, writing and direction, in my opinion, in science fiction genre. 

Middle and my husband have watched since the beginning. They have not yet seen the latest season. 

We started back at the very beginning, and watched the first two seasons while youngest was home for a full week over the 4th holiday.

Continuing on, now watching separately, we really enjoy each season’s different story line with the consistent/returning cast. 

We offer Witness Protection

 I am showing you the Cheyenne Cone Flowers. At the feet of the bird is a patch of daisies. In front of the daisies are Cheyenne Cone Flowers hiding from the bunnies. 

Three summers ago I planted them in the backyard and the bunnies kept them trimmed down to about 2”. 

Last summer I moved them to the side of the driveway. 

This summer they have the long arm of a squash helping to hide them from the sun and the bunnies and they are thriving. They get watered nearly every day. 

Identifying photos during a scanning visit

My mom, husband and I went to my mom’s first cousin’s house to scan photos, a couple Saturday’s ago. 

This is our second time going to a relatives for a mass scan, we went to Iowa in the summer of 2019, very good timing. Middle went with us to my husband’s cousin’s house, we stayed the weekend. Eight months later, we were in a long lockdown. 

On that first trip, my husband labeled each photo, on his lap top, as he scanned, which was time consuming. 

This trip, I used post it notes and the camera on my phone, which worked better. 

What mattered, what I needed to document, was what I did not know by sight.

I knew I was coming home to move the photos from my husband’s laptop, which we had taken in order to use our portable flatbed Epson scanner, to our PC. I also knew I was immediately going through all the photos, labeling them on the PC. 

So I only needed to make notes on what I did not know, mostly years and locations. If I knew the people, I did not need a note. 

This worked very well. I wrote most of the notes myself as I loaded the scanner. Sometimes my mom’s cousin wrote longer things out for me. Most of the photos were not labeled. I had my mom and her two cousins to help look/think/calculate. I am very good with identifying people in photos. 

My husband ran the laptop/scanner. 

(My mom mostly enjoyed looking at photos and talking with her cousins, who she had not seen in person in decades, but chats with them online on occasion.)

Very valuable to me

I use the key pad, on the outside of the single garage door, many times a day. 

The puppies and I go out that way for walks, I use that single garage door to water plants, and garden. 

Watering/gardening, I leave the garage door open. 

Walking, I shut it behind us. 

I wear my very small cross body when I walk, it holds my phone. 

I usually have earbuds plugged into my phone and listen to podcasts or talk to youngest (on her way home from work). 

The puppies and I walk about three times a day. 

I used to do this with the neighbor’s pup too. It gets us all out of the house and fresh air. It gives us something to do and breaks up the day. Lots of walking practice at this age pays off in a quality dog for the rest of its life. People are stopping me to comment on the puppies’ beautiful walking skills already. I can stop and talk to people and they are just nicely at my feet. 

 

If the power went out or the battery died on the garage key pad, I would be locked out of the house. 

So I clearly needed a key in my very small crossbody.

I was worried a loose key would get lost. I definitely needed something flat to hold the key. My solution was the thick envelopes with a snap closure that the bank uses for safe deposit box keys. They had an extra for me, when I asked at drive-up. 

So this is now the entire contexts of my “purse” -

That is my medical insurance card, drivers license, AAA card, two credit cards, $60 cash, the key fob for my car, and my house key. 

The fob goes in the bottom of the cross body and stays there. I use the buttons on the inside and outside of the car to lock/unlock. I use the lever on the inside of the car for the trunk. 

All of that fits easily/comfortably in the small side zip of my cross body. My phone fits in the larger pocket. I wear that cross body in the neighborhood and in the car. 

It is extremely light, even with my phone in it. Out and about, I never take it off, it stays on my body. 

This system allows me to have the absolutely basics, in a hands-free way. 

If I am going somewhere more complicated, I pack extra things in a small canvas bag. 

This is a long way from the purses my grandmothers used to carry. 

Update on the slide situation

All the way back in January, I mentioned slides absolutely do not last.

https://baby-steps-v.blogspot.com/2022/01/slides-public-service-announcement.html?m=1

We do not have a lot of slides, but we do have some that we want to save. Preserving slides means converting them to digital, quickly.

Our local library has lots of electronic and craft/skill equipment available for use. So 3-D Printers, scanners, sewing machines, soldering equipment, etc. 

The library slide scanner is an Epson, but more complex than the Epson we have at home. This one has a special light, down the center. (See my arrow).

The holder positions the slides exactly under the extra light.

It scans four slides at a time.

It was about the same speed as our regular flatbed Epson scanner at home. The scanning app/buttons were exactly the same. 

The conversion quality is good. The photo with the boys and the car on the computer screen was a slide. Now it is a digital photo. (Yes, that photo is hysterical. It was my husband doing some type of slide photo assignment for a college photography class in the early 1980’s. Normally he did not/does not take slides. Those were college buddies.)

So we will be able to convert all our keeper slides to digital photos, easily and for (nearly) free. The only expense was we replaced our memory stick. Memory sticks also do not last.

We scan the slides on the library system. We save them on a memory stick plugged into the library computer. We bring the memory stick home, plug it into our computer, save the digital photos.

This scanner will also scan negatives. We have not yet tried that, we think all our negatives have been printed. Plus, there  are still photo stores that will print negatives. But those brick and mortar/local photo stores are dwindling very quickly. In my area, we are down to Walgreens photo lab (in the store) and some things have to be mailed for processing. And we have one local specialty photo store left.