I am a to-do list junkie. Sometimes I add things I’ve already done, just so I can cross them off.

So it’s no surprise that two days before ringing out 2014, I was scouring my projects list for the year to find some small item – anything – that I could still check off.

Painting the interior of the house seemed unlikely. So did making it to the gym 3 to 5 times during the previous 52 weeks. And it seemed a bit late to persuade the Huff Post to publish an article I had still not written or thought about.

It was with sheer ecstasy that I spotted the words “tintype album” unchecked at the bottom of my 2014 list. I had written these words because at the last family reunion, in a hopeful burst of responsibility, I had promised to digitize the tintype photos in my grandmother’s album and send them off on a thumb drive to the family archivists.

There is nothing that warms my heart at year’s end like a project that can be checked off quickly and with no complications.

“It’s such a tiny album,” I declared. “It will be done in no time.”

With that, I headed straight to the basement table where 11 months before, my video-savvy husband had laid a sheet of non-glare glass he’d purchased specially for the project.

“Now just lay this on top and shoot pictures with your iPad,” he had said. “No ceiling light glare.” Apparently now was the operative word. As the months piled up, so did the storage boxes, coat hangers and old clothes. Right on top of the glass. Each edging a spider web signature.

“No problem,” I said, “I’ll just scan them.” And headed for the wireless printer upstairs, which always works flawlessly as long as the router is working, the modem doesn’t need to be rebooted, the printer settings are perfect, the scanner software isn’t corrupted, and I clap three times and spin around before I insert each picture.

When my great grandmother, picnicking in a long fancy gown, appeared on my computer screen without the clapping/spinning ritual, I took it as a sign from the universe that the project I was attempting to check off was in extraordinary alignment with something.

“Check this out!” I wrote the first archivist, a meticulous retired professor, when I e-mailed him my handiwork.

“Wonderful,” he said. But apparently not too wonderful because he also asked if I could kick up the resolution a bit and if not, could he buy me a new scanner.

With only 45 hours till year’s end, I had no time to install a new scanner and no clue what resolution was. I asked Mr. Video Savvy for help, hoping he had long forgotten about the non-glare glass. He deftly kicked it up to 600 something or other.

“All set!” I messaged the professor, and attached a picnic picture as big as the Goodyear Blimp.

This time, I also copied my cousin’s husband, a minister, who commandeers the family’s online photo album.

“Thank you!” he wrote back. “But could you please crop out the white space?”

At this point, the picture was too big to crop, so I reduced the resolution, cut out the white space and sent it back to both with the proud message, “Cropped!” To which the professor responded, “Oh, please, no. I want the uncropped version,” and the minister suggested – ever so politely – that with a soft brush I might want to remove any dust from photos before I scan them.

Over the next two days, miraculously, I blew off dust, scanned pictures, downloaded them to thumb drives, stuffed them in mailing envelopes, and finally checked “tintype album” off my 2014 list.

I was careful not to mail them, though, until 2015.

Back from the post office, I wrote “Mail thumb drives” at the top of my 2015 list. And immediately checked it off.

Copyright 2015 Pat Snyder