Excuses....excuses....

For a while my iMac had started to slug along.  Given that I spend most of my personal computer time these days playing with pictures and video, I assumed it was because 13,000 pictures and videos had bogged down iPhoto.  Apparently the problem was a little more widespread than that...and a month or so ago I booted up to receive a message that my hard drive was about to explode and that I might want to consider backing it up.  So I did.

I did some online research and decided that maybe a fried hard drive didn't necessarily mean the computer was dead.  So I ordered a 1 terabyte hard drive.  In the meantime, pictures backed up on the camera.  And then the camera's memory card was full.  And then I noticed that even though we had other memory cards, we just weren't taking pictures like we did before.  This was a problem as it wasn't like our kids are just sitting around becoming ugly.  

So finally, Brian and I took a break from our ongoing basement painting epic and conquered the iMac together.  For those considering doing this, replacing your iMac hard drive is not for the feint of heart.  It required peeling back the monitor, disconnecting the camera and pulling back a substantial amount of electromagnetic tape.  But, in a tribute to our marriage...or at least to Brian's frugality as he realized that the alternative to this $100 hard drive was a new iMac that would cost more than $100...together we worked our way through the guts of my iMac.  We installed a 1 T hard drive and, hallelujah, the computer booted!  After a few relatively small glitches, I got files restored and am back in business.  

Although one might think that catching up on the blog would be the first order of business....one would be wrong.  The first order of business was to divide the 13,000 photos in the iphoto library into 5 smaller libraries.  Interestingly, the time covered for each library keeps getting smaller and smaller.  The first library covers 35+ years and holds pictures of Brian and me pre-Brian and me (as well as historical family photos) and has 2,000 pictures.  The second is Brian and me pre-Lucy and Sage.  With 3,500 photos, this library covers only 3 years.  Carved out of the second library is wedding pictures (including all wedding festivities) which is its own library of some 6,000 pictures - most of which are from one single weekend!  The fourth library is Lucy and Sage Age 0 (about 5,000 photos) and the fifth is Lucy and Sage Age 1 (a work in progress).  Note, that these photo counts may include a lot of dupes after the big library division project.  

So that, my friends, is my excuse for why I am months and months behind on the blog and why there is suddenly a flurry of activity.  Stay tuned...we might get caught up one of these days after all.