Friday, October 26, 2012

Family Time

It's been a wonderful week.  My youngest has been home on break from college, but heads back to the dorms tomorrow.  My oldest son has had some time to drop in and visit this week, which has been fun.  They're both spending the night. and I'm loving it.

I started sorting through some old photos, earlier in the week, I thought had been lost forever.  They were safely in an album, in a storage box, that I'd shoved into the back corner of a closet.  I definitely need one dedicated space for photos, but I have so many that it's very hard to do.  My son suggested scanning all of them and putting them in the internet "cloud" so I'll always have access.  But, what happens if that "cloud" disappears or malfunctions?  Yes, I'm a skeptic!  I may have to give it a try though.

I haven't been able to do any creative writing for a while.  Just have a mind-block I guess.  I read about a well-known author who took a long break when that happened to her.  She just spent months reading every book she could get her hands one, enjoying the journey of other people's stories.  Afterwards, her head cleared and she was able to get back to her writing.  I thought it was worth a try, so I've finished two and a half books this past month.  One is a collection of short mysteries, and the other two are the most recent Agatha Raisin mysteries by M. C. Beaton.  I'm still not ready to write, so I'm splitting my reading time between The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Treasure Island, and another light mystery called Crunch Time by Diane Mott Davidson.

It's been wonderful being able to read again.  I'm still doing the eye meds and drops, and still delaying the start of the new drug with the vision/heart risks.  I just have too much living to do right now, so I'll think about it later on.  For now, I'm just enjoying each day as it comes!


2 comments:

Donna said...

I've been wondering how you've been. I hope that you keep up the battle with your MS! Sometimes the creative muse goes on a little vacation until our minds can catch up on the latest problems our bodies have. At least, that's the way it is with me.

I second the motion on scanning your photos and saving them digitally. Prints deteriorate over time too, fading and changing colors because of the papers and chemicals. Be sure to save them at a high resolution - like 300 dpi. Digital storage is rather inexpensive these days. I have a 2 terabyte external hard drive for all my computer backups. And another 1 terabyte external hard drive for a 3rd copy of my photos. Cloud storage is quite safe because the companies do backups on different servers. So they have built in redundancy. But cloud storage is more expensive in the long run than your own hard drives. You can get a 1TB unit for less than $100 and a 2 TB unit for about $150.

Nita Jo said...

Thanks Donna! I hope my muse comes back soon. I appreciate the photo tips. That's something I can work on that doesn't take creativity, just organization!