I saw Raiders 6 times in the theatre in 1981, at least once with my parents.
Crap Shoot
It really is.
You never know how you’ll react when a memory strikes you.
This is especially true on the anniversary of certain events.
I woke up knowing what today is, and felt oddly calm.
It wasn’t until I got up and walked past the spot where I found him 4 years ago that the feelings, emotions, anxiety returned.
And that’s all I’m going to say about this today.
Miss you, Dad.
I got chills….
… and luckily no more than that.
I was laid up in bed most of Friday, from an onset of chills in the early morning, to spending most of the rest of my day knocked out.
This is the most I’ve slept in one day in a long time.
I managed to get up to shower and eat some Belvita breakfast biscuits and tea, but after that, I just collapsed onto my bed.
I got up again around 2pm and at a couple of dinner rolls for late lunch, and that’s when the chills really started to get me.
Concerned that I was, I took a home COVID test that came up negative.
I texted my sister to let her know what was going on, and she called and came home with some won ton soup.
Around 6pm I got up and had a small bowl of soup, took some cold/flu medicine, and proceeded to fall unconscious for the next 10 hours or so, occasionally waking up to see what time it was, but drifting off immediately after that.
Around 5:30 am I got up, still a little dizzy, but no chills. I took a shower which seemed to clear my head a bit more, and then I finished off one of the take out containers of won ton soup and a glass of ginger ale.
I feel fine now, but still a bit meh. Hopefully it was just a 24 hour bug.
Ah, the healing powers of won ton soup and ginger ale. And cold medicine.
Thanks, Jen.
Slides: April – June 1971
Found a whole bunch of slides in the garage today.
These are stamped APR71 to JUN71.
17
Film to Digital
As if I didn’t have enough hobbies/projects in my spare time…
Since a little after my Mom passed away, I had this idea of converting any and all Super 8mm film that I could find into digital video files.
The cost of offsite conversion concerned me, along with the idea of shipping these memories elsewhere.
After Dad passed away, I started looking into getting a home system to do this, but again, the price was a bit high.
Recently I checked pricing on these units again, they had dropped to an affordable price point, and decided to pick one up.
It seems to do the job well, having digitized about a dozen and a half 3-minute reels of film (at a rate of around 30 minutes per reel) and I’m pretty satisfied with the output.
For example: from about 45 years ago, Christmas 75.
Watching these films reminded me of another reason I didn’t convert them right away, it was still painful to see home movies of ones who have moved on, but age has made it a bit… less painful to watch.
It’s also fun to watch my niece, reacting to movies of her mother (my sister) as a baby.
Gotta say that’s it’s oddly satisfying and emotional to do this, seeing memories from over 40 years ago, and preserving them.
Found Slides
And then I found a box of slides.
I didn’t organize them too well, I’m afraid.
Found Again
Found some negatives in a kitchen cabinet that my Dad used for miscellaneous storage of stuff, most of which I tossed or put in recycling.
But hey, more old photos!
Found
My sister Jen found a yellow fishnet bag with some old letters, a 50+ year-old Chinese Restaurant menu from Minnesota, and a set of negatives.
So I set up my little all-purpose media scanner thing and made pictures out of the negatives.
Behold!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen these pictures, in any form.
Oh, and here’s that Chinese Restaurant Menu:
/end 2020
At work, having just finished a breakfast burrito from Philz. Their ‘Gratitude’ holiday blend is pretty good, too.
This isn’t the worst year of my life, far from it.
But I think it’s the worst year of our collective lives.
Because we’ve been living with this shit together, but apart.
I hope to see many of you soon(tm), in person, again, soon(tm) being the type reserved for when updates to City of Heroes would come out.
I let out a primal scream for about 1/2 a block as I drove to work today. That actually felt good.
But then I couldn’t find parking near the Chinese bakery to get pork buns, so I had to opt for the Philz breakfast burrito.
Anyways, just rambling this morning, not rumbling like it was around 5:42 am. I sat there thinking that this was it, this is how 2020 was going to finally do us in.
But the rumbling stopped after a couple of seconds, it was more like a boop on da nose.
So cheers to you all, my friends and family and imaginary people on the other end of the internets, here’s to making it to the end of this crappy ass year and to the new beginnings of the upcoming year.
Not that I expect everything to change overnight, y’know.
It’s a symbolic thing. You understand.
2021 = 2020 won? No, fuck that.
It was never a game to begin with.
Welcome to life, mother fuckers.
Let’s ride.