Residue of Years

Ah, the holidays are over and retirement is no longer something new and unusual. So, it's time to get down to business, YES, I have all that backlogged genealogy and about fifty more years of photographs to scan. But first, there is one last leftover task to complete that relates to my late 'career'.

You've probably read that in today's job market, it is projected that people will be changing jobs (and companies) every couple of years. And I had quite a few different jobs in different industries when I was younger, but once I found a place I liked with people I liked - I stayed. So I was with Shared Medical Systems (SMS) and then Siemens who bought SMS for 33 years. Geez. If you stay at a company only a couple of years, you're not going to gather that much flotsam, but three decades? Whoooaaa.

So, what's the task? Why, the 33 years of stuff! I wouldn't consider myself a hoarder, but even the most careful person is going to accumulate a lot of stuff in timeframes that span epochs. When I was clearing out my office and storage I threw away mountains of materiel that I thought I might need some day but never did. I'll bet there are a lot of people relieved that I've gotten rid of some of that! I no longer need it as 'insurance'. But even so, I brought home fifteen boxes (small boxes, OK) of stuff that needed further sorting plus my awards and plaques and crap from over the years.

I brought them home and put them all in the basement to cool. It might have been dangerous to handle all that stuff while it was still warm. Some of it might have gone off!

You see, this is an instance where my genealogy experience had me err on the side of caution. What if there was something in that mess that some future biographer, tired of picking through this blog and trying to time-sequence it, might need to finally determine what the hell it was I did for a living!

Heaven knows I don't know.

Just to set the record straight, that's not what my office looked like, it actually looked like this, but you can't see the crap because it's hidden or in storage. What you can't see doesn't exist! I learned that a long time ago. Hah!

So, down in the basement, I've got boxes and it's time to take care of them before they go bad and start to smell. I'm guessing a lot of it is going to be recycled, but it's time to close the chapter. Even at the risk of nostalgia and a ravaging paper cut.

And I know some of you are wondering who was in the early photograph I posted at the beginning of this post. Well, that's Katherina Pokornoski and her husband Stanislaw Zak c.1873. She's my half great-grandaunt. And I've got her photograph!