Answers to your questions

Marcy said...

How did you get into scrapbooking and how long have you been scrapbooking?

I did a "scrap" book in grade school for a Girl Scout project... I cut out all the clippings with the Apollo-Soyuz space mission and taped them on construction paper. I still have it...but it's getting in bad shape.

My first real memorabilia scrapbook was done in the early 80s. I did four scrapbooks...one for birth through high school. One of my senior year. One of all my sports clippings/award/etc from high school. One for my trip to Germany. They are done on Hallmark albums, so they are acid free paper. However, I used Scotch tape to put down items except photos. Photos are all basic black photo corners.

My first "artistic" scrapbooking was done via....Creative Memories of course. The first page was of Amelia's first Christmas. I think I did this in 99 or 2000. I never looked back. I have 6 "Chronological" Creative Memories style albums completed... 1999 - 2003 with a gap of one year in there. I don't do much Chronological scrapping anymore, and have about 6 3-rings binders of miscellaneous themes and pages. I also have a cruise album (first one done non-creative memories style, but it was done pre SDU, so it's still pretty primitive.) In reviewing albums I have done, I am most proud of the fact that I have done so much journaling.

I'll find that first CM page and post a picture of it. Not bad, as far as CM pages go.

mindakms said...


How about If you could change one thing in your life what would it be?

Easy... I wish my mom hadn't died when I was nine. I wish I had gotten to know her as an adult.

Other regrets of things I did (not things that happened)...I wish I had played Cello instead of Violin in grade/high school. I wish I had gone to Stanford for grad school instead of Berkeley. I wish I had kept in closer touch with my nieces and nephews as they were growing up. They're all adults now and I'm not as close to them as I wish I were. I wish we would have sold and moved to a larger house in Linden Hills before the current real estate boom.


BonnieRose said...

What's one thing in your life that you have accomplished that u are extremely proud of?

I am proud of my career. I have a great job at a great company. I have advanced to a nice level (but not an executive my any means) and I make enough money that my family never really wants. (There are downsides to that, but I'm not going to whine about that by any means). I have helped design disc drives. There used to be some drives in the field that had parts in them that I helped to design. And I think my favorite accomplishment was transferring my first process line to Thailand (back in 1992, I think). It's always fun to see boxes going out of the factory that say "Seagate" and know that I had a part in it!


Susan Anonymous said...

So what does an engineer really do all day??? My dad was some sort of engineer for Control Data back in the day and I have no idea what he really did.

OK Susan...you got me started. I'll probably talk way too long here...


Engineers basically solve word problems. We take problems and use math and statistics and creativity and innovation to solve them. Well, that's fine and dandy, but what do we do all day? Lots of different things there.

Some engineers support a production line or develop equipment to make things. Just think, someone had to figure out how to cut scrapbook paper into 12x12 sheets, stack them all up and shrink wrap plastic around them. Or design the die that cuts the cool shaped papers. And still make money at it. Some engineers design equipment to do this (i.e. sit at a computer and draw prints, or direct someone who does). In equipment design, you might have to go through a catalog of 100s of different air cylinders and figure out which one is best for your machine. Get one piece of equipment made. Maybe write the software. Figure out what data you want to take from the process. Get it up and running. Turn it over to the production floor. Train operators and technicians on how to use and fix the machine. Cool stuff.

Now imagine you have a paper cutting machine in your factory and it goes down? Or maybe is starts ripping papers? Maybe it's counting out 23 sheets of paper in a stack that is supposed to have 25? Someone has to figure out why that machine that used to be ok now is making bad product. Go out on the floor and look at the machine. Look at data from the machine. Check all the settings on the machine. Talk to the operators about why and when it is not working. So sometimes engineers are like detectives.

Or maybe as an engineer you write code. Someone had to write lines and lines of code to make Photoshop work. I don't know as much about this area of engineering.

Some engineers are number crunchers. Think about designing an airplane wing. There are people who do computer models of wings and model the stress the wing will see during takeoff, flight and landings. The vibrations it will see. Figure out how long the wing has to be to support the overall weight of the plane, etc. Same with designing bridges (how do they know it's strong enough? ) or water treatment plants.

Some engineers play with chemicals...or figure out a way to make Fruity Cheerios instead of regular Cheerios. Or figure out how to get tongue tatoos on Spiderman Fruit Roll-Ups.

Engineering is cool, you get to use math, work on your computer. spend time on the phone communicating with people, order stuff, put it together, troubleshoot it, make products, be a detective. You get to actually make things, add value to the world. Oh yeah, and go to meetings and fly to factories half way around the world. You get to keep going to school to keep up on new trends and innovations in how engineering is done! It's basically the best job ever.

Oh...I ramble on and on. Maybe I need to do a nerd website where I can wax philosophic forever and ever. Of course, then I would have 0 readers instead of 4.

Can you tell I love engineering? I am so proud to say that I have 1 niece who is a working engineer, one who is starting engineering school soon. Maybe I didn't spend much time with them, but I'd like to think that the fact that they had an Auntie engineer helped them to see that it was something they can do! Alas, in Mechanical Engineering, only 10% of graduates are women. Same as when I was in school. Maybe the math scare them away. Or the wrenches. Or the nerds. Oh well.