Back to the Great Archival Project! The supercomputer is online again, so I've gotten it together and waded into the morasse of stuff that needs to be digitized before file formats change and the home computer is abandoned altogether for the GDrive, wave of the future. I've been burning discs of 2008, (as I've been burned before by corrupt hard drives) and have gone back to scanning old pics. Currently, I'm diving into the old wedding day pics, which were all shot on ACTUAL KODAK FILM! (Yes, we are that old.) So it's a chore sliding those negatives into the machine, but kinda nice to see the things on the computer. I can get one roll of film digitized and photoshopped a day -and I have about thirty rolls. The goal is to get it all done and booted up to the AppleTV by March 29th and surprise Mrs. Ditchman, so I've got two months. I think I can do it. Don't tell her.

I also have a bit of video. I will never forget standing there at the reception, taking direction from the Best Man, when out of nowhere a video camera came flying through the air and landing with a crunch on the grass, right there in front of everyone. "That's Dain, our videographer for the weekend," was announced. How the camera leapt out of his hands at just that moment has never been answered, but it was a good laugh. (Dain is my little brother.) Anyway, he got it all on video -everyone laughing, upside down, POV of the lawn. Dain went on to happily sample all the wine on my wedding day. I think he was at the bar when my bride came down the aisle, as he seemed to have missed that shot. He had a fantastic time!

There were a couple guests who had video rolling, actually, so I was able to track down one of them for the footage. While I was scanning negatives the other day I noticed my mother-in-law with an old video camera that appears in a couple pics. I never got that footage! So I play the intrepid documentarian now, tracking down the "lost wedding footage" from 2003. Please Email me your leads, or whatever old pics you may have of the fabled day.

There are also a lot of prints, which takes TIME -and, man, does it ever. Over the years, a lot of people have sent us scattered remnants and I've been collecting the mess in a box. The wedding was kind of a funny, shoot-from-the-hip-in-the-middle-of-the-forest-a-few-hundred-miles-from-home sort of party, and we bolted for Hawaii immediately following and then did the big move-in together right after that. The wedding was all planned and executed in our short 4 month engagement during the Christmas holiday, and as a result, planning for the archiving of all this stuff never became much of a priority. It all sits in a couple boxes at the foot of our marital bed, and it has sat there for nearly six years -various photos, mementos, guest book, receipts from the day, invitations, Big Sur matchbooks, etc. We don't really even have a "wedding album", which is kind of odd to consider. But we do have two kids to show for it, so all the mess is justified. Anyway, I'm sick of these boxes sitting at the foot of the bed.

And we both had a lot of wine that day! I know because half a bottle was spilled down the bride's pricey, worn-once gown. (We recently picked up the dress from the Restorer. They seemed to have miraculously repaired it, though erasing the stain did make me a tad nostalgic.) I could blame the wine instead of my age, but it's getting harder to remember it all, so getting these pics and video together has become important, before it's gone forever.


By the way, can anyone tell what kind of wine this is? I was able to enlarge another shot of it. It's a '96 Napa Valley Cab with the letters "...refethen" in the name. Just thought I'd ask. Funny... I remember it not being nearly as good as the Monticelli Bros.

P.S. Found it.


(In the case that the Ditchman kids will want our story's details.)


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