Annoyance + aggravation = accomplished.

Awful news. The woman I paid to do my transcription completely bailed on me. She made up some crappy excuses (which I am 99.9% sure were a load of crap) and just kind of said, "Sorry!" Thanks, lady. That price really WAS too good to be true. So, I lost a couple weeks of time waiting on her to give me something to work from. So freaking obnoxious. I was super pissed when I found out (Saturday evening), but I have just accepted it at this point (late on a Monday night). I didn't think I was going to get my money back, but I did. I am so happy to at least have that. As soon as I found out that I was screwed, I called up my sister. Her reply? Something to the effect of: "And this is why you can only count on yourself." My sentiments exactly.

In better news, my spell of complete inactivity with my project are over. I think I was just so overwhelmed by the amount of work that is needed that I just could NOT get myself to start the editing in earnest. [Inspirational quote/reminder here: "Don't let fear stop you from creating things." - Dieter Uchtdorf.] I finally came up with a workflow today and got a good chunk of work done. I was concerned with the size of a Pro Tools session that included all of my audio (around ten hours or so). It would take FOREVER to back up and move around (I will be working on three computers... my laptop, my PC at work, and [most likely] one of Macs in the audio suites at school). I needed to break these interviews up a bit. Make the amount of audio material more manageable. I went through my proposal again to re-read my narrative description (needed to remind myself of what exactly I am doing...). My proposal stated that the questions I would ask of my siblings (and I imagine the final piece) would be focused on five phases of our lives: life before we were aware of major issues, the disruptive events leading up to the divorce, the divorce itself, life following the divorce, and now. So. I started with my interview with my sister Crys. I created five tracks, one for each of these phases (track titles for my own reference: BEFORE, CRACKS, DIVORCE, POST, NOW) and one track for the answers to an interesting question I asked: "How do you think the divorce affected your siblings?" Then, I just listened to the interview, cut stuff out that I know I won't be including (even though some of it is absolutely fascinating) and separated her commentary on each phase into its corresponding track. I just finished bouncing all six of those tracks (don't worry, Pierre, I left handles on each side of the sentences I like!). I will do this same process for the interviews with my brothers and the conversation all four of us had together. I will finish this part of the process this week. I feel like I am actually going somewhere with this. So excited. I am going to ask for some time off of work so I can actually put this thing together.

Pretty productive for President's Day.