Reminiscing...

 

If you said, "Little River Band, 1978," you get 30 bonus points.  Still one of my favorite bands.

This is some actual reminiscing...

Joan is looking through newsletters.  Newsletters?  Long before I started this blog, I did a newsletter to keep family informed on what we were doing.  This started back in the 90s.  Full color.  Multi-page, generally at least one issue each week.  Mostly, it was about our travels at the time.  Copies went out to family.  I found out my Mother was keeping these in a binder, by year... we started doing the same.

Going through a cabinet in our entertainment center at home, Joan said, "We need to condense these newsletters.  I told her, "Toss 'em if you want."  She said, "No, I'm just going to take them out of the plastic sleeves and 3 ring binders - it will save a lot of space."  It's the first time either of us have looked at them in years... Joan said, "These photos are so crisp - what camera were you using back then?"  I don't know - there have been a lot of cameras over the years.

I kept doing the newsletters, kind of in conjunction with this blog, which started in 2008... the newsletters had more images and details than the blog.  When my Mother passed away in 2011, I kept up the newsletter for a year or so, but it was easy to eliminate the paper version, and just do an electronic version of the newsletter.  And in 2012, I switched it all over to this blog.  Prior to that time, I did the blog so Stephanie could see what we were doing, while we were doing it; especially the Captain Jobs.

Since 2012, we have saved an annual electronic version of a year's worth of blog posts - these can be saved on a hard drive with all the photos from that year - takes up very little space.  And saves me a pile of money on ink/printing.  Progress.  For reference, the blog posts from 2022 would have taken up over 700 pages.

With these binders, I did front and rear cover images each year.  The binders and plastic pages take up about the same amount of space as the actual newsletters.  We'll gain that space and eliminate the weight.  There is other stuff on those shelves - there will be piles: donate, toss, keep.  And, yes, there are boxes for iPads and iPhones we've had over the years... those will go in the "toss" pile... along with some of the GoPro crap... and probably some other gadgets accumulated.  It's a "project."

And the reminiscing: about once a minute or so, Joan would say, "Oh, look at this..."  It was usually an image of our sweet little Isabella.  2008... we brought her home just before Christmas that year... she was so tiny and frail looking.  But, the heart of a lioness.