This will be a shorter post, I just had something I wanted to share, especially with my brother. Continuing where the last post left off – I have been going and organizing more and more of my things that were only vaguely organized. A lot of this stuff was sorted vaguely into categories like “paper stuff from childhood” or “decorative stuff from my old room” but my goal is for absolutely everything in my life to be organized, kept with intention and accounted for.

I must confess that I tend to put this project off as I have a bit of anxiety about going through what I like to call ‘The Archive™’, which is a series of boxes I’ve moved across the country twice but have never fully gone through. This anxiety stems from the idea that some of the things I assume are in the boxes may be missing which would be heartbreaking. As part of this I have been working on a project to digitally archive as many files and especially photos from my old phones and computers before it is no longer possible. In a random bin of papers I found some unassuming, old 8gb flash drives. These ended up being some of the most important finds during my personal Archaeology journey: over one thousand photos and videos from the childhood family computer and digital cameras! I found so many screenshots of my early Neopets and Animal Jam gameplay, photos of myself at ages I did not think existed and so much more! I even discovered a few absolutely priceless videos from my very first YouTube channel, which I thought were completely lost—I didn’t think any of my Littlest Pet Shop videos had survived, so I’m really excited to have found them.

My brother is not someone I mention regularly as I mainly communicate online about my doll collecting hobby and that was never anything that connected us. We did, however, both really enjoy dinosaur documentaries and toys together. He was always very interested in stop motion animation and has expressed disappointment over losing many of his creations over the years. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any of his incredibly detailed LEGO Star Wars stop motions (complete with bullets added using MS Paint), but I did find one of our old dinosaur stop motions, and I remember filming this one vividly! Presented for the first time since 2009, this food chain animation—likely inspired by the Odell Down Under game—features the Kong Roaring Bull V. Rex by Playmates Toys and the Carnotaurus from Disney’s Dinosaur, produced by Mattel:

That’s all for now!