My suggestion is to send them off. I guess I've never heard of slides getting lost or damaged. Otherwise, it is a somewhat slow process w/a scanner, especially if your slides are of high quality & you set the resolution (sometimes known as dpi) to a higher value of say 5-600. If you sent them away, you'll still get the slides back & you can keep promising yourself you're going to get them done someday & maybe you will, but in the meantime, you'll finally have photos to look at, print, or share via email etc.

Another practice I've used & would do again is to ask around & find someone locally "at home" that can do it. I had a friend who worked part-time at a real job, & then scanned at home for me in her spare time. She scanned hundreds & hundreds of old prints, but the concept is the same. You just have that person scan them & not edit. Have that person do a couple for test purposes & see what you think. Then you edit when you get the jpg files back. In this case, you'd pay that person by the hour, whatever the 2 of you think is fair. Remeber that the higher the resolution you demand, the longer it will take that person.  Again, unless their house burns down, you'll get your slides back. Maybe you'll want to find someone living in a brick house.

Good luck...but again, don't wait.