Doug's Project 365

My current project, bound to last months, is digitization of old family artifacts. First up is some 150-year-old photos. This one looks like a plain mirror if you look at it casually, but the equipment in my previous post brings out some amazing detail considering that the original is less than 2″ square (and is at least 150 years old). Sadly, we’re not sure who this person was, but probably an ancestor or at least a cousin.

I had already bought a photo copy stand to help with digitizing the old family photos from my mom’s apartment. But when we unearthed a box of tintypes, I knew I had to step up my lighting game. That’s 2 off-camera flash heads, plus a lamp to give me enough light to focus by. These all have polarizer gel over them; the polarizing filter on the lens then blocks just about all unwanted reflections.

Summer St. in front of my office was a bit of a slushy mess this morning (and not much improved by this evening). The sidewalks in the area, however, are in pretty good shape.

Especially on a snow day. This is a new recipe for me, Caldo Verde from Serious Eats, with potato and kale.

Balaclava, baklava, whatever. I took them both to work this morning.

I’m using today’s extreme cold as an opportunity to make both chicken stock AND beef stew.

My mom is downsizing again and my brothers and I are going through her apartment, ruthlessly discarding junk and documenting the rest for family members to claim. This, for example, is the toy banjo that we siblings each annoyed my parents with when we were kids.

If only I remembered where I put my doubloons, I’d have someplace to store them now. Beer coaster for scale.

For once, our Christmas cactus has got the right holiday this year — in the past it’s been everything from a Halloween cactus to an Easter cactus.

If my father’s research is accurate, this clock — which has been in my family since new — was made in 1857. It’s a pendulum-regulated, weight-driven clock and still works fine after all these years.