PASSING THOUGHTS

This weekend I'm consumed with scanning my slides into the computer. This first required sorting the slides into some kind of life timeline. Sometimes the slides were stamped with a processing date and sometimes not and the latter needed considerable effort to place, particulary those from the 70's when I never seemed to stay in one place for a long time.

The problem was compounded because in my travels I crossed the USA several times. For instance, I lived in California twice but at four addresses. These were interspesed with stays in New York state. In one case I lived with my parents in the same house three different times. Identifying which Third Street stay, the one in 1972, 1973, or 1975 I was looking at took some detective work.

Perhaps this doesn't seem important, but when you get to my age and you recognize that you're forgetting a LOT and that it's harder to stir up the old memory banks, it's time to nail down some basic information....names and locations. Heaven forbid that something gets out of sequence in a complicated timeline to cause even more befuddlement.

So, along with the scans, filed by Year, and in some cases in special event folders within the year, I'm going to write a text file with notes about each year so I can get my life sorted out once and for all in text and photo.

In the process of working on the most complicated portion of the timeline (mentioned above) my thoughts went to a Russian 101 class I took in college in about 1981. I liked the sound of the Russian language and it's grammar and it's very charismatic instructor. He said there were jobs in the government for translators and for a time I entertained the thought of going into this field. Aside from the fact that I was not motivated enough to do it, I also thought of the background check I'd have to undergo, listing where I've lived and where I went to school and who I knew and in the complexity of my life I knew, even at that time, that I'd never be able to pull this information together. So, now I'm attempting to do it 20 years further down the road.

As a final rambling passing thought, I recalled that Russian instructor, so charismatic and impassioned about his area of knowledge, and I remembered my first college Chemistry professor; he was bald and not 'sexy' charismatic like my Russian professor, but he had a joyful, uplifting spirit and a love for Chemistry. I loved Chemistry, and chose it for my major, because of his love and enthusiasm for the field. Unfortunately this love was not sustained to where I developed my own passions. I became capable enough to become a good lab technician, but could never dedicate myself to it to become a good Chemist.

Enough mental wanderings for now .... back to the slides.