a buncha junk gone

On Saturday, we took a bunch of computers, laptops, monitors, and printers over to Earthplace because they had a computer recycling day. Eight dead computers, three dead laptops, three or four dead or dying printers (Hewlett-Packards, most of them—they sure don’t last like they used to). Several monitors, including this huge monitor that was a state-of-the-art desktop publishing monitor back in 1993. Still works, but as Stanley says, it dims the lights in our entire neighborhood when it’s turned on. We made our donation and left it all there.

Not all of the electronics were ours—some were from Stanley’s technical support clients who didn’t know what to do with their dead electronics (he pulled the hard drives so there’d be no data problems, though ComputerFox, who processing the computer recycling, “shredded” the data left on the drives that were turned in). It’s way, way too hard to deal with dead or obsolete electronics: if I hadn’t stumbled upon the Earthplace notice about a month ago, we’d still be tripping over this stuff.

Then, later on Saturday, we took a couple of big bags of clothes to Goodwill in Norwalk. Yeah, yeah, I know the clothes will probably go to some third world country to get picked over. So what? Better than going to the landfill where they are of no use to anyone ever again. While we were at Goodwill, Stanley asked if I wanted to go in and shop. I laughed at him.

We have too much stuff. Books, in particular. I’m a good way through emptying the boxes in the front room—the boxes sitting there since Stanley emptied the storage bin, where he’d stashed all his stuff when he thought he would have to sell his house (he bought out his siblings, instead). We bought two more bookshelves on Sunday to hold the books that I couldn’t fit onto the bookshelves we already have in abundance. So, most of the books are put on shelves. The boxes and boxes of albums are all put on shelves. The boxes of Old House Journal and Whole Earth Catalog and yes, even Playboy and, oh yes, the comic books, are going in the attic. Or somewhere.

We did cull a lot of books and just dumped them. What? Dumped them? Gasp! Philistines ... no, really, they were mostly very obsolete textbooks and some crap feelgood self-help shit books that a former (former as in we haven’t seen him in years) friend dumped on us. Former friend was obsessed with collecting books—not reading them, mind you—and ran out of space in his tiny apartments so his bibliomania spilled over into our life. And our books could use another round of culling. Not the old books, the rare books, and the classics, but we have a lot of stuff such as manuals that aren’t relevant now, and a lot of paperbacks that are now getting so old they’d induce an asthma attack if we tried to read them. Maybe get rid of my Wall o’ Death (I used to be fascinated with true crime books).

My next project, by necessity, is going through eight years worth of paperwork and organizing them so I can do the books so I can do the taxes. Figuring out what I can dump (how long do we have to keep this stuff, legally?), filing what I can’t, and entering the stuff I haven’t entered. My main new year’s resolution is to catch the books up at the end of each month. Last year’s paperwork is just stacked—it’s an organized stack, but still a stack. I can’t stand it. I know there is all this research about how messes aren’t really that bad, sign of a creative mind and all that blah blah blah. I just don’t need to be this creative—I really do function better when things are under control. The appearance of it, anyway.

A couple of weeks ago, I read an article by Glen Wosley about how to keep email under control by making sure the inbox was empty at the end of each day and I have to admit, it’s made work a lot more manageable (I applied what works for me and ignored what didn’t—took me a whole day to do it right, but damn it makes things so much easier ... ) I monitor more than 20-25 websites, so I get a shitload of email all day, every day.

Tomorrow’s task: getting the billing done. Shoulda been done Monday ... plus a site for a new client is due to launch this week and more work on an interesting ecommerce project and enhancements for WestportNow.com (a photo selling application and an adserver network, with ads) and emarketing trials ...

THINGS IN THE WORLD
I’m not quite ready to plunge into the political world just yet—I’ve been paying attention, but I’ve needed to keep my stress levels under control (there’s a lot going on, a lot of worries I have about people I love) so I’ve been “laying low” for a bit. That is nearly over—it’s starting to get more stressful than not to keep my opinions to myself, especially as that lying hypocrite Lieberman gets press and ... but I don’t want to go there just yet. And I’m pissed about teardowns and con artists and the LNG island going into the middle of the Sound and all the catalogs we’ve been getting and mostly about the war and that damaged piece of work in the Oval Office and the morons who still support him and what he’s doing.

I think I’ll go find the cats and the dog and go to bed now. With any luck, I won’t have to unroll Stanley from the quilts too much (it’s cold tonight!)

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/16/07 at 10:15 PM
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