The Holidays, Part VIII: The Archivist

 (Days of work remaining until holiday time off: 9)

Hank seems fine. He'll get the last of his medications over the next few days -- mostly just the steroids -- and he has been the wonderful little lovey goblin we've come to expect him to be over the course of these last six months or so:

He has very different relationships with both Daisy and myself. With Daisy he is very affectionate, will lay on her chest and snuggle/lick her, will want to be held for long stretches of time, and absolutely recognizes her as his mom. With me, he wants love and attention and to be my shadow -- sitting on my feet, always needing to be in the room with me, crying at me for love or food, and always bringing me toys so I'll play fetch with him. He will almost always sleep with me when I sleep during the day and he just wants to be with me more than anything else. He has brought so much love and good vibes to this household dynamic and is the best little cat we ever could have asked for. 

And this weekend I'm going to put the Santa hat and scarf on him to take some good photos -- if the lighting is good and he continues to act like he's feeling better, of course.

Anyway.

I have begun the long and resource-intensive process of archiving the VHS tapes I was able to retrieve from the parents. So far, this is what I've been able to uncover just for the family stuff:

• Daisy's oldest sister's modeling video from September 1991
• Daisy's cousin's ice skating performance from 1998, along with home movies from that family
• Daisy's oldest sister's ballet performance from 1988 -- recorded three weeks before Daisy was born (Mom is heavily pregnant with Daisy in the video)
• Daisy's middle sister's birthday party, from 1994 or 1995
• Dad giving a presentation on some software, likely a work-related video from the mid-90s
• Daisy's oldest sister's 6th grade graduation video from 1996
• A tape Daisy's grandfather (Dad's father) made of family activities, including outdoor tourism, Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, and scenery in Maine/Vermont in 1989 -- anyone in the video who was over 50 at the time is now long dead -- seriously, I don't think there's a single one of them left alive today, and I only ever met 2-3 of them before they died
• Daisy's middle sister's high school speech performance (part of it, anyway -- the tape was pretty damaged)

And that's just what I've gotten through so far. Of the tapes I brought back home last weekend I easily have ten more or so to go through. And this doesn't count the giant collection of tapes that Daisy will need to retrieve and bring over to the house so I can go through them between now and Christmas too. When I collected the tapes last weekend I made sure to grab all of the ones that didn't have labels on them, or that the labels were barely legible, as to not skip over something that was possibly an absolute gem, and I'm glad I did -- a few of the above recordings were on otherwise fairly unremarkable tapes, or tapes that were labeled with something innocuous (the grandfather's tape was just labeled with the grandparents' names and "The NeverEnding Story" -- which was also on said tape in its entirety). 

Most of the recordings are short. Daisy's older sister's modeling video is a minute and a half long, Dad's software presentation is something like fifteen minutes, the birthday party is like five minutes, etc. But sitting in a basement deteriorating over the decades, these things would have been lost forever. I only hope the rest of the tapes that Daisy is able to retrieve are in as good condition. 

Through it all, the trusty, ancient VCR has been a trooper. I'm afraid I'm going to wear it out or otherwise kill it before I'm done with my work, and if that happens I will be devastated because they're not exactly easy to replace these days. 

I'm also finding really interesting snapshots of history on the tapes -- such as two back to back news broadcasts (one local, one national) from CTV -- Canadian television, from December 5, 1994. I saved those as well for my own collection because they are absolutely fascinating to me. And let me tell you, Canadian holiday TV commercials in the 90s were wild. I can't wait to see what else I find on these tapes. I told Daisy that I live for this sort of shit.

In other news, we did finally nail down plans for Christmas. Daisy's oldest sister (the one mentioned above) and her family will arrive on the 26th, so Christmas this year will indeed just be the four of us. Daisy offered to do it at our house, but Dad declined that saying he didn't want to go out anywhere, he just wanted to be at home. We will attend the Christmas Eve church service together as planned, barring any unforeseen circumstances. Everything else will be fairly traditional as far as I know -- normal holiday rules apply and all that. We will, of course, celebrate with Daisy's sister and the boys once they're in town, too.