Since Monday afternoon I’ve been horizontal. I’ve been living on water, cranberry juice, and a little ice cream. Anytime I try to eat anything more substantial my intestines riot.
I’m in that limbo of not being so sick that I’m sleeping all the time, but not being well enough to do anything. When I move, the room spins. Oh, and the burn? The skin no longer oozes. Now it’s tight and dry.
I’ve read two novels in two days, and my brain can’t take anymore. I’m bored, and just a tad lonely. Husband is out of town; he left Wednesday for New York, since a close friend of his is getting married tomorrow. (He left me well-provisioned with juice and soup and calls at least twice a day to check on me.) He’ll be back Saturday evening.
So I’m sitting at my desk looking at the two-drawer file cabinet next to the desk, thinking about whether to sort and recycle files. Most of these two drawers contain papers from grad school: syllabi, handouts, papers I wrote. I have not looked at any of it, not one bit, since I graduated seven years ago. Everything in those folders is accessible some other way (web, books, professional journals). I want fresh space to hold papers from what I’m currently working on. Space is a premium here, and we really don’t have much room for boxes of paper. All the paperwork from my therapy practice is stored separately. I’m required by law to keep those for a certain length of time.
We don’t own a scanner, and besides don’t most scanners only scan photos? There was a time when I’d heard that scanners which scanned text were prohibitively expensive. Haven’t done any research on that. Really, do I need to keep the scrawly notes I took on research methods or counseling techniques? Actually, I do have papers as far back as 1979-80 — stuff I wrote for classes. I long ago ditched notes from high school and undergraduate coursework, as well as textbooks from that time. I did keep grad school texts, and will, since I do refer to them occasionally.
Since I’m too weak to really do anything about this at the moment, I’ll leave it. What would you do? What do you do with old papers?
Scanners scan images, be they pictures, text or whatever. OCR software that converts an image of text into actual text used to be extremely expensive, but these days your average $150 scanner typically comes with a passable OCR application. They’re not terribly accurate, but good for short documents.
OCR is irrelevant unless you want to edit the documents you capture, though. Otherwise, you can just scan everything you’ve got into PDF files and archive them that way, printing out specific documents in the future should you once again need hard copy.
The real problem is volume. Flatbed scanners are fine for the occasional picture or short document, but if you’re going to be archiving hundreds of pages of stuff, you really want some sort of document feeder, and scanners with those capabilities start to get pricey.
Poor baby – no fun being sick.
I would clear the papers out of your work area, box them if you must, and get that space available for your current needs. Scan stuff in the boxes later and toss them at your leisure.
Looks like TP already has the answers. You might want to consider a used scanner if you need one with a document feeder
Get better soon!
The problem is the illness, not how to deal with old documents. I use a prescription called atropine to stop the intestinal activity, permit food intake, and allow the body to fight the problem with the immune system. I also take two days of Cipro to kill the nasty bacteria which may have arrived via third-world-water during travel. These remedies usually take effect within 3 hours.
Don’t worry about the documents…most of us sacrifice the garage for storage. You also can get plastic waterproof storage boxes, fill them with the documents, and put them on the patio under a beautiful dropcloth…
Bill
Hey, you are sick so no work unless that would help you heal. I had this same crappy bug some month back and it stayed peripherally for almost a month, though I was able to go back to work a week later. My scanner software at work and home has an OCR, but I usually just make a copy into PDF format of something I want to save.
Kathryn, get well soon.
I’m sorry to hear you’re under the weather.
Me, I’m merciless when it comes to clutter. I seem to have gone from one extreme to the other. Regardless of the object, whether it’s a book, a piece of clothing, a draft of a poem, a paper from school, a notebook from class, a knick knack, a gift never used, I ask myself: When’s the last time I thought about this, used this, wore this, looked at this? And if it’s been longer than a year, it’s gone, baby. Gone.
I’d burn those papers. Or shred them and have your own ticker tape parade. Or toss them in the trash.
Seriously.
Get better soon.
Oh, and hey….why not write a poem in some of this down time?
Sorry to hear you are still sick. I hope you feel better soon.
As for old papers. I still have some of mine. It’s been years for me too. I did eventually throw some away a few years ago but this summer some of that stuff is gonna go!
-n
Kathryn, I am very glad to read your burn is doing better. I was really worried about it. To get an intestinal virus on top of it is just not fair. Hope you are feeling better soon.
Hope you’re feeling better soon. Meanwhile, enjoy some guilty pleasures. Watch old movies. (I always watch Pillow Talk when I’m sick; don’t ask me why, but I swear it cuts my recovery time in half.) Let people wait on you. Sleep.