A couple weeks ago, Grandma called to ask me to come and help her put together a book for Grandpa. She's put together books for other ancestors in the past and done a great job, but wanted some help with this one. It worked out that last week, I was able to go and lend a hand.
It was a good week, though in many ways a challenging one. We worked every day from 8:30 AM until 11:00 PM with only a couple hours off each day for meals and such. On Monday, we went to the gym or spa as Grandma likes to call it for some exercise. I haven't been able to go to a gym for quite awhile and I was surprised by how much I really have missed it. I guess it's partially that I miss using the various machines where I am able to track well just what I am accomplishing, but it's also the fact that I'm able to get a variety of different workouts there. I started off on the recumbant bikes, which I've always liked. These were cooler than the ones I've done in the past because each bike had its own screen for watching TV and getting additional stats. Its nice to get to choose your own channel rather than watching whatever someone else has chosen for the joint TVs or asking for the channel to be changed. After 45 minutes there, I did free weights and finally did the rowing machine. I'm not sure why, but I've always really liked the rowing machine. I'd say its one of the best overall workouts. Someday, I think it would be fun to go rowing in a real crew boat.
On Tuesday, Grandma and I walked down to Subway about a mile or so away for lunch. We also stopped to check on carbon monoxide detectors at Ace since Grandma's was giving signals that it was dead after we changed the batteries twice. They were a little expensive there, so we didn't end up buying one. Just a day or two later, the news came out that a family of 4 from Pocatello were all found dead in their beds from Carbon Monoxide poisoning after they missed church and a family dinner. The saddest thing is that the only survivors from the family were two children serving missions. Its a terrible thing for a young missionary to have to deal with and I pray that as difficult as the experience is, it will be one that makes their faith stronger rather than leading them to apostasy. The good news is that for now, they seem to be handling it well. After that story came out, all the carbon monoxide detectors in each store nearby were sold out. Grandma put in an order for two at Ace, where they are going to offer a special on them.
We also went and had dinner with Skye and Lance on Thursday, which was awesome. Skye made honestly the best steak I've ever had. It was a teriyaki marinated steak that was really tender and flavorful. Normally, I'm not a big steak fan because it's often not done very well, in my opinion, but when it is, it can be pretty dang delicious. It was fun playing with their dog Roxie and hearing more from the kids. Sylvie showed me her two photo albums and told me about the pictures she's saved, which was really cute. Dutch was showing his Lego treehouses he has built. Lance and Skye are really good parents. Their kids are all very sweet and fun while also being smart and having a lot of other good qualities. I think that can be pretty challenging these days, but fortunately they've not only been blessed with good parents, but good natures as well. Dutch and Christian even walked Grandma and Rayola to the car, which they apparently always do. It may seem a small thing, one that I would probably have never thought of in my crassness, but it makes a difference to Grandma and Rayola.
The work pretty much encompassed the rest of the week. There was a lot to do. Part of the problem was that about 4 of the pieces Grandma wanted to include were typed, but couldn't be located, so we had to retype them. That was about 10-15 pages of retyping to do, but fortunately with both of us working on it, they didn't take forever. Grandma is really quite a fast typer, probably about the same as me, though I'm not super fast myself.
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| The workspace. Two computers and a lot of mess! |
Another unanticipated time-consumer was my discovery of a number of interviews Grandpa had done that were not transcribed. There was at least 5 hours of recorded info to go through. The transcribing was pretty painstaking. First, the interview had to be listened to a bit to determine if it was worth including. Then, the whole thing had to be typed bit by bit. I was slower at this process than Grandma, because I type everything Grandpa said, where she tends to be a much more liberal transcriber! It was strange hearing Grandpa's voice again after four years since I last saw him. It was almost like he was still here. Listening to him talking for hours and hours brought back a lot of memories for me.
The rest of my time was mostly spent locating, scanning, and placing pictures. This was also a slow process, because I was trying very hard to match pictures with the relevant content. Locating the perfect pictures always took longer than I would have liked, especially as it often meant trying to remember which album I had seen a good picture in before or simply hunting through photos and trying to find new photo sources to use.
Another thing that significantly slowed me down was that after I had done the life sketch on the PC as I mentioned in the last post, I decided for various reasons that it would probably be better for me to do the editing on the Mac instead. This might not have been such a big deal, but I've literally only used a Mac for about 5 minutes in my entire life up to this point and didn't have much success in those 5 minutes. Getting used to a new system was a challenge. Fortunately, after going to the gym on Monday, we were able to stop by Lance's office with the Apple so I could get a quick lesson on stuff I needed to know how to do. This was a big help to me, but practicing with it over time also allowed me to pick up new tricks on my own. The learning curve did hinder my progress somewhat, but it was also a good educational experience for me.
The bigger problem with the Mac was that it has some sort of bug that would cause it to pick up pictures during a drag and drop, but would then get stuck and not allow them to be dropped. This bug would then mess up the whole system and require a restart or shut down to fix. I had a little bit of trouble with it early in the week, but the restart would solve the problem, so while it was annoying, it wasn't crippling. Then, on Thurday night, it got to be a terrible problem. It basically wouldn't let me do anything with pictures without picking up the picture and freezing the system. I couldn't even resize pictures after copying and pasting them without an issue. The worst part was that the restart fix didn't even work at all. It would simply have the exact same problem after every restart. This was a big problem. It basically meant I could do nothing that I needed to do. My research showed that this is a pretty common bug in the system caused by some operating system or features that I really don't understand, knowing next to nothing about Macs. I just shut the computer down for the night and prayed that that would be enough to solve the problem.
The next day, however, nothing had changed. I knew that Lance couldn't be much help, because he's not very familiar with Mac himself, and had already told me that the shut down was all he knew to do with that problem. I tried to call Gerrit and Elisabeth, since they are quite familiar with Apples for advice, but I didn't reach them and wasn't able to hear from them about it. After a few hours Friday morning in which all I was able to do was locate and scan some pictures and get them cropped as well as transfer a few files from the PC, I decided to just try doing the photo editing again and see what happened. Miraculously, it worked and I didn't have problems with it again.
While there were some frustrations like this that I had to deal with, I really did have a great time doing the work. It was challenging and time consuming, but also rewarding to know that I was helping create something that I hope will have value to my family now as well as subsequent generations. I learned a number of things about my grandpa and now have a much better conception of what he was doing when in his life. It also made me appreciate more fully how blessed I have been to come from a great family and also to appreciate the many blessings and miracles that have helped to get me and everyone else where we are today.
One of my favorite parts was putting together a collection of one picture for every year we have held Larsen family reunions. I was trying to do mostly ones of the whole family, but barring that would just find a picture with the most people possible in it that represented that year. It was a fun trip down memory lane to look through all the pictures and interesting to see them all together in one place spanning 24 years. Things have changed a lot over that time, but I can only love my family more each year. They are all a great inspiration to me in so many ways and getting to associate with them while having fun is always one of the major highlights of my year.
Grandpa Larsen definitely did well. He left an enduring family legacy that has and will continue to bless the lives of many generations. He was not a perfect man, by any means, but he was a very good one and his life was important. He will not be forgotten.
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