The gadget worked!

After a few false starts, Mark's VHS to Digital Converter WORKED as advertised. We converted a vacation tape from 1991. Evey was four; Lowell was twelve. It was so cute to watch! Mark was 40, and I was just shy of turning 41. Wow! That was scary to watch. One thing I learned was that my perm that everyone said they hated didn't look so bad after all. I kind of liked my 1991 hair-do.

The vacation was 10 days, starting at Busch Gardens, Virginia Beach, and Water Country USA, and ending at the Caribbean Beach Resort in WDW. A twenty year old video was just about right to watch and not remember any of the details. Sure, I remembered that we took that vacation, but I certainly didn't remember everything we did or how the inside of that hotel looked. The video ran about two hours and 15 minutes, and it was a blast from the past. Now it's on a memory card that can be copied and shared with our kids. Ha ha! Whether they want it or not!

We also spent a lot of time looking for the old tapes. I located 15 VHS tapes clearly marked as home movies, another 20 unmarked VHS tapes, as well as dozens of small tapes and old VHS-C formats. We hope to convert one tape each day until we are done, if possible. It is possible to watch the tape at the same time that it is being converted, so that's a nice feature as well. Mark swears the quality of the digital recording looks a lot better than just watching it straight from the VCR. I think he's right!

More problematic are the many BETA tapes I found. Originally we had a beta-format video camera and machine, before moving to VHS. We now have 10 labeled BETA tapes and 7 unmarked BETA tapes. Although this converter could do a BETA to Digital conversion, our old BETA machine has been dead for years and years. We are trying to research online whether or not it's possible (and maybe cheaper and/or better) to repair the BETA machine and do our own conversions or ship them to some out-of-state company that will do it for us. Meanwhile, at least all the BETA tapes are together in one box, clearly labeled, and sitting in the family room where they won't get lost!

Today we will be heading out relatively early in the day to put some mail in the box before the 1 p.m. pickup up in the village. While we are out there, we are going to take a walk, maybe outside or maybe in the indoor track. We haven't been in the indoor track for a very long time. Since it's going to rain this afternoon, it should be a good day to convert another home movie!

It's still Hanukkah! Day Seven today, and the last night will be tonight. I've included a few pictures of last night's festivities. Thanks, Evey, for the fabulous electric pencil sharpener. We hadn't realized until we moved here that we didn't have even a little hand-operated sharpener, so we have lots of unsharpened and dull pencils! Today I plan to sharpen a few up to have on hand. Mark gave me $25 Amazon money for Kindle books. Trust me, that money was spent almost immediately. I bought three full length novels and two short novellos. I think I have a nickel left on the account. LOL! I gave Mark the same amount on an iTunes card. He got three cards all together, one from Evey and two from me, so he can buy lots of music and videos for his iPad. And Rudy once again trumped us all. He gave Mark a fantastic t-shirt. Words would not do it justice, so check out the picture! It's perfect for Mark. Thanks, Rudy and Georganne.