Slide Show Update

Happy holidays, everyone! I am now so behind on my blog that it is hopeless to try and catch up. Every few days I write a post in my mind that does not make it to the computer. Things are complicated by the fact that my mother, with whom I am staying right now, does not have internet. Sigh. (I am at my sister's right now, where there IS internet, but where I have to sit by a freezing open window in order to get enough signal. What IS it with this town, anyway?!)

Anyway, I decided I'd better just dive in and start with what's happening now. And that would be ME RUINING THE SLIDE PROJECTOR. Yes, after all those months of going through all those slides, we had ONE NIGHT of slide show, and then the next night, there was this funny dark blobby shape on the screen. Hmm, could the lens be dirty? Wipe lens. Dark blobs still there. Okay, was it all those old, old slides from Aunt Myrtle, leaving dirt on the inside lenses? Uh oh, now the forward and back buttons don't work! Emergency!

So I manually moved the carousel around to show each slide, kind of dark because of the blobby dark spots, and we did view one more carousel (80 slides). Which by the way, were very interesting, as well as the first round, and inspired many stories by Mom about her growing-up years which we hadn't known.

But anyway, after limping through the second carousel, I managed to open a side compartment (thanks to the instruction manual...yes, my parents preserve EVERYTHING in as close to its ORIGINAL, PRISTINE STATE AS POSSIBLE, so thank goodness of course the instruction manual was right there in the box) and saw this HORRIBLE SIGHT:
The lenses on the right? Clear and beautiful, as they should be. The lens near the bulb? SHATTERED! And the bulb? You can't see it in the picture, but there is a big bulge sticking out toward the shattered lens.

Oh, misery and woe! I ruined the projector! I didn't take me long to realize what had happened: the bulb had gotten too hot and bulged out and touched the lens and shattered it. This was due to the fact that I neglected to run the fan at the end of the slide show the first night, instead just SHUTTING EVERYTHING OFF. And the bulb was probably about the temperature of molten lava after the extended discourse on the first 80 slides, including the aforementioned childhood stories. AARRRGGGHHHH!!!

Oh, to go back in time! The press of a button! I looked at the instruction manual. Too late, I read the part about what to do AFTER the slide show was over (RUN THE FAN, IDIOT!), confirming my diagnosis.

Now at this point, some would say "Heather, do not spend one DIME on that old projector." (That someone would be my sister.) But I am not one to give up so easily, nor consign a lovely old, perfectly functional (mostly) projector to the junk heap because of my dumb mistake. Not to mention missing the rest of the slide shows!

So to make a long story short(er), it turns out there is a little camera repair shop called CamTech here in Bend which is run by a person who does not think people that want to repair old slide projectors are crazy, and even had a replacement lens IN STOCK. And I was lucky enough to find a replacement bulb stored with the projector (which is good, because a replacement bulb, I found out, costs $120. I can't even bring myself to write what the lens cost, but at least it was less than that.)

So I got a new lens and found out that the other problems can be taken care of with some servicing and then the projector will last another 40 years. For now, we will forward by hand and run the fan a lot, and I think after that the projector will go in for the servicing.

Because after wrestling with the cost-effectiveness of servicing the projector, to preserve it WHY exactly, and for WHAT?? in this digital age, I have decided that the smile that comes unbidden to my lips when I turn on the projector, and the joy I feel in clicking through each slide and sharing it with my family is PRICELESS.