January

January has set in. Now that it is the 24th and February is just around the corner, I am starting to recognize the familiar habits of January.

I’ve been purging. Purging! Closets have been unpacked and I’ve been merciless about what to keep. There are bags for the Salvation Army, recycling and trash piled up in the one hidden corner in my apartment. The bags leave on trash night, or as I head to the car, hoping to drive by a clothing drop box. Then the bags reappear in the same spot as the next closet or cabinet is analyzed.

And now there are closets that I can open without things falling out. There are cupboards that I can now close. All my socks have buddies (the friendless socks were pitched) and I can easily find Andrew’s uniform in the morning because all the piles are as they should be.

I’m not done yet…there are still a few more spots to tackle…but just seeing that the process is happening feels like January.

Another sign of January? I’ve started running. Dave’s joined a Cross-Fit gym. We have resolve about exercise… and often that January resolve peters out pretty quickly, but this year it feels like maybe it won’t. Though, I think every year it feels like maybe it won’t…but this year I have new pink running shoes! This year Dave found a gym that is personal and fun! This year I am not so overwhelmed by the kids that when Dave says he was thinking of going to the gym I say “what?!? And leave me with the kids??” This year I say “Ok. What time you think you’ll be back?” See?? It just might stick.

And…I’ve been rethinking some of my systems around here. Trying to make laundry not be the worst thing in my whole life. Trying to make my food tastier and dinner prep feel less frazzled. These housekeeping changes are pretty small…mostly they are about my mindset…but the fact that I am feeling mindful about housekeeping systems? It’s definitely January.

And another sign of January is that I have new scrapbooking supplies gifted to me at Christmas (thanks Tara! thanks Mom!) and lots of big ideas on how to use them. This page about Dave’s travel is one of my favorite pages I’ve done in a long time. It took me a while to research his trips and what they were about, but I’m glad I did it. Who knows? One day we might all chuckle about Dave’s presentation on “Building a Digital Repository for a Diverse Coalition of Analog Video Collections”. Silly Daddy. Digital Repositories?! How 2010!

Here’s the list!

Nov 2009: St. Louis
AMIA presentations: Digitizing 201: Video Digitization Workflows and Challenges; Capturing Born-Digital A/V Content for Preservation and Access

May 2010: Norway
International Association for Sound and Audiovisual Archives Conference: presentation on data migration from digital audio visual tape

Nov 2010: Philadelphia
AMIA presentations: Digitization: Reboot!, Secure Media Network; Building a Digital Repository for a Diverse Coalition of Analog Video Collections

Feb 2011: San Francisco
BVAC: training staff on repository management

March 2011: Indianapolis
AVPS: general consulting with library staff at Indiana University

March 2011: Amsterdam
International Association for Sound and Audiovisual Archives Conference: presentation on Digitization 101. Also visited the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Nov 2011: Austin
AMIA presentations: PBCore Cataloging workshop

Aug 2012: San Diego
Society of American Archivists Conference: presentation on Loss-Less video compression

Dec 2012: Seattle
AMIA presentations: Workshop: ffmpeg4archivists; Man vs. Machine: John Henry within the Digital Archive

And that’s my busy, techy guy for you. ;)

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