Sliding into Disaster

I did not get a post written yesterday for the March Challenge, but I am proud of myself.  I did not stress about it!  I could have berated myself for not budgeting my time better.  Being retired should give me plenty of time.  How could I not have squeezed in time to write a post!

I have been in the process of creating a slide show with music for my friend, Ann.  The post from Tuesday, Louise Kauffmann Luppens tells more about the slide show.  The goal was to have this finished by Friday (today) so that Ann could take it to Columbus to show her mother and also her brother who would be visiting from Maryland.  

Making slide shows for Ann is always a bit more labor intensive than others that I have made.  She emails me folders of pictures and later I will get more...and still later...more.  I was not helping either, as I would find pictures of my own taken at their family events.  So both of us kept adding pictures. We kept accumulating folders of pictures. Folders within folders within folders. Many with the same names.

 Ray walked in, looked at this, sighed and said, "I don't know if this is such a good idea."  When I started the project there were almost 700 pictures.  If I used all of those...the slide show would be close to an hour and a half....much too long. We decided to put all of the pictures on a DVD, make copies and let all siblings, children and cousins have one.  Then, I would select a variety of pictures for the slideshow.

It sounds simple...but the pictures arrived out of any order.  There might be a picture of Louise as a child next to a picture of one of her grandchildren.  We wanted to have some order...at least grouping similar photos.  This took forever.  Ray suggested I make a album in Picasa of these...putting them in the order I wanted.  I tried that, but found a quicker way.  I won't go into all of this...but I finally got the slides in perfect order.  I saved a draft each time I made a change.  No way was I going to lose photos...there were lots of backups. 

Wednesday I was ready to have Ray add the music.  I had charted out each section...example...showing a picture of the mountains when Julie Andrews belts out "The Hills Are Alive"

....and then when she sings "with the Sound of Music"  I had a picture of the siblings in their choir robes singing. 

  I counted how many slides would fit with each song.  "Somewhere over the Rainbow" would begin at the first wedding picture.  I was feeling quite smug... sat back...saved the draft one more time...ready for Ray to add the music that evening.

Fast forward:  Ray is ready.  He has done his magic with recording the selected songs.  I open the draft....it is missing over half the pictures!  It can't be!  I opened another draft...same thing.  The pictures that remained were no longer in order.  I have to admit...I said a few choice words....well, a lot.  Ray suggested I just pull the photos from the album he had suggested that I make.  Ooops...not the right thing to say...especially, since I had not made that album. 

Ray was sure the slideshow was there somewhere on the computer and did his part in hunting.  No...it was not there.  So...yesterday, instead of writing a post I redid the slideshow.  It is finished now.  The music has been added.  I will deliver it to Ann some time today.  I still would like to do some editing...but will not take the chance of losing it....but...I did take Ray's advice and I made a folder...so that even if I would have another disaster...the solution would be a key click away.