My journey to digitize history...

It's an amazingly quiet weekend -- after all the holiday craziness, all the noise and crowds, spending a 3-day weekend quietly at home is indeed a wonderful treat.

I know it sounds a bit crazy... but I am continuing on my long journey to digitize history. 

For all the text messages between me and Michelle, starting on 6/9/2009, line by line, I put them in an Excel worksheet.  Each line has its date, time and the message.  As of today, there are 10,106 lines.  I didn't record anything prior to 6/9/2009 because it didn't occur to me that my phone might die one day...  

For all the emails between me and Michelle, starting on 9/11/1999, I put them all in a Word document.  As of today, the document has 503 pages.  The very first email was from my little Michelle, on 6/9/1999 at age 9, saying: "Hi mommy, how are you?  I miss you."  It was quite a revolutionary experience for Michelle to learn that we could communicate this way!

As many of you know, I have been putting all the emails into books.  As of today, I've made 7 books for Michelle, each contains about 70 pages.  Attached are the covers for those 7 books.

Book 1 = Horizon.  This is the book I made for Michelle as a part of her high school graduation gift.  It covers her young life from 1990 (when she was born) through 2008 (right before she graduated from high school).

Book 2 = High School Years.  This book covers Michelle's high school years from 5/2004 to 2/2008.  It contains all (and only) the emails between me and Michelle's high school teachers.  Seventy pages of them!! 

Books 3-7 = Footprints.  The fine prints at the lower right-hand corner of each book indicates the time period covered in that book.  These books carry all the emails between me and Michelle.

Let's hope that some day, in a very distant future, in our old ages, we would have the time, interest and calm minds to enjoy the history.