Hello 2009; No Sorry, I Have No Cash. Just Take the Watch And Go.
It's been an interesting 24 hours.
With the carpet coming tomorrow, I spent yesterday (Wednesday) packing and moving things around, but not actually being productive. I haven't been sleeping well, in that it's taken me several hours to fall asleep after going to bed, so I decided to further procrastinate by shopping for a mattress topper. I never found one, but I bought a pillowy comforter at Ikea that seems to have worked pretty well. While I was wandering around marveling at the year-end prices, I checked again for an acceptable picture frame.
Sometime in, let's say, the early 90's I bought a Keith Haring calendar and saved most of the pages with the intention of cleverly framing them and thereby having some KH prints on the cheap. For over 15 years I've looked and looked. Wednesday I got tired of waiting and just bought something simple. I framed 3 prints and they now face a postcard of Matisse's Icarus that a dear friend used as the template for a tat in...'98 I think. Feeling good about myself I decided to hang some other stuff that I've been putting off. I am a firm believer that where you live is not your home until you have put things on the wall. The Neanderthals knew that. I've resisted this for the last year here, as well as in the last place I had in Aliso Viejo. Making a home would have been tantamount to admitting that Colorado was not in my immediate future. I've been hanging on to something and missing out on feeling comfortable in the process.
I hung a mirror, a Ty Wilson print my mom came Valerie and me for Christmas '93, and a golf disc signed by Juliana Bower at the 2000 Worlds Disc Golf Championships in Ann Arbor, MI. The only thing that remains is a valence for my window, but I haven't found the right tartan yet. Little things, but they make a house a somethingorother.
This flurry of activity emboldened me to move the guts of my pre-built pc into a case I bought a while back, when I cared to hyper analyze & plan every component - from the power supply to the brand of silicon grease. A few hours and several fake-curse words later it turned on correctly with the first try. Science, it works! The case is gi-normous but it has a handle for all of the many LAN parties I attend. /sarcasm It looks burly and tough; I like it muchly.
I guess I went to bed around 1:30 and fell asleep pretty quickly. The neighbors were doing gangsta karaoke, which was entertainment plenty for me.
Ben called this morning around 9:30 (Hi Tina, if you're reading this) and we talked as good friends do for some time. I got up, got going, and came down to find that Rob's two friends, with whom he went drinking, were awake on the couches. I had only set the water on the stove for my apple cider when Rob came stumbling down the steps frantically declaring, "We've been robbed!"
Not quite sure what to make of his potential antics, I did a quick survey of my stuff and didn't notice anything amiss; he then pointed out that his bike was gone, as were two laptops from his room.
Turns out, and this is cobbled together from a few different rum-induced perspectives, that his lady-friends arrived by taxi before he did and that some guy with a champagne bottle started chatting them up, saying that he knew Rob. When Rob got home he was so blitzed that he either didn't notice or didn't care that he was letting in three people instead of two. One of his friends, Leee (sic) claims that this fellow was making the moves on both her and Jodi and that some of the champagne spilled on the couch. My couch. Grrr. I suspect this fellow waited until everyone passed out then helped himself to stuff that was easily portable. In the end, he took (2) laptops, (1) road bike, (1) cell phone, and (4) sets of keys. Luckily, I was the least inconvenienced of the bunch, though I'll have to get a replacement car key at some point. The funny thing is that my laptop was sitting right next to the couch (where I'm currently parked & on which I'm currently clanging) but he went up the stairs and into Rob's room to take stuff. I'm especially lucky that this fellow didn't take the BSG DVDs Rob had borrowed....
The police came, the neighbors were informed, and a new set of locks for the house were purchased. I continued packing.
Today was an affirmation in the theory of creative destruction-ism. I am a bit OCD which leads to a slight tendency toward pack-rat-like behavior. When I buy something I am compelled to keep the box. I bought a nice iron a few years ago, and kept the box in which it came. Granted, it's just an iron, but I've used the original packaging in two different moves, and have felt mildly superior about that. The problem is that, while it's been nice to have for those two days, it's just been an empty box for the other 880. I have probably a half-dozen items I could point to in the same vein. Like, do I really need to keep the box my cell phone came in? Or the box from three video cards ago?
With Ty's lovers and my own reflection stirring me on, I became relentless. I threw away the recently-vacated pc case (and two others I'd been hanging to "just in case"), 7ish hard drives (the largest capping out at 10GB), a myriad of keyboards & mice, and nutritional supplements long since expired. I'm a freak sometimes.
But getting rid of the old wasn't sufficient for my purposes, I need to create as well. I had, in my old apartment, an abundance of shelves in my closet and so had fashioned for myself a small workspace, complete with storage for screws, cables, adapters, and other electronics. There was enough shelf space left over to store my DVDs. I really liked that setup, but was unable to create it here because so much stuff was left in boxes. So today, 14 months after I moved in, I unpacked. The pictures are now in one box, the storage bins are assembled and filled, the DVDs have been moved from the bookcase, and the knick knacks that I hadn't unpacked since December '05 are set aside ready for their display. A Petoskey stone (Michigan state rock), a miniature Etch-A-Sketch, my many 'coins' from my Army days, a wedge of a tree that was chopped down during my ASB trip to New Mexico, a Slinky...the stuff that makes life worth living.
The dumpsters are full, my room is empty, and my room is no longer just the place I go; it's now my room. I'll let you know if this Rob's stuff shows up on craigslist.
With the carpet coming tomorrow, I spent yesterday (Wednesday) packing and moving things around, but not actually being productive. I haven't been sleeping well, in that it's taken me several hours to fall asleep after going to bed, so I decided to further procrastinate by shopping for a mattress topper. I never found one, but I bought a pillowy comforter at Ikea that seems to have worked pretty well. While I was wandering around marveling at the year-end prices, I checked again for an acceptable picture frame.
Sometime in, let's say, the early 90's I bought a Keith Haring calendar and saved most of the pages with the intention of cleverly framing them and thereby having some KH prints on the cheap. For over 15 years I've looked and looked. Wednesday I got tired of waiting and just bought something simple. I framed 3 prints and they now face a postcard of Matisse's Icarus that a dear friend used as the template for a tat in...'98 I think. Feeling good about myself I decided to hang some other stuff that I've been putting off. I am a firm believer that where you live is not your home until you have put things on the wall. The Neanderthals knew that. I've resisted this for the last year here, as well as in the last place I had in Aliso Viejo. Making a home would have been tantamount to admitting that Colorado was not in my immediate future. I've been hanging on to something and missing out on feeling comfortable in the process.
I hung a mirror, a Ty Wilson print my mom came Valerie and me for Christmas '93, and a golf disc signed by Juliana Bower at the 2000 Worlds Disc Golf Championships in Ann Arbor, MI. The only thing that remains is a valence for my window, but I haven't found the right tartan yet. Little things, but they make a house a somethingorother.
This flurry of activity emboldened me to move the guts of my pre-built pc into a case I bought a while back, when I cared to hyper analyze & plan every component - from the power supply to the brand of silicon grease. A few hours and several fake-curse words later it turned on correctly with the first try. Science, it works! The case is gi-normous but it has a handle for all of the many LAN parties I attend. /sarcasm It looks burly and tough; I like it muchly.
I guess I went to bed around 1:30 and fell asleep pretty quickly. The neighbors were doing gangsta karaoke, which was entertainment plenty for me.
Ben called this morning around 9:30 (Hi Tina, if you're reading this) and we talked as good friends do for some time. I got up, got going, and came down to find that Rob's two friends, with whom he went drinking, were awake on the couches. I had only set the water on the stove for my apple cider when Rob came stumbling down the steps frantically declaring, "We've been robbed!"
Not quite sure what to make of his potential antics, I did a quick survey of my stuff and didn't notice anything amiss; he then pointed out that his bike was gone, as were two laptops from his room.
Turns out, and this is cobbled together from a few different rum-induced perspectives, that his lady-friends arrived by taxi before he did and that some guy with a champagne bottle started chatting them up, saying that he knew Rob. When Rob got home he was so blitzed that he either didn't notice or didn't care that he was letting in three people instead of two. One of his friends, Leee (sic) claims that this fellow was making the moves on both her and Jodi and that some of the champagne spilled on the couch. My couch. Grrr. I suspect this fellow waited until everyone passed out then helped himself to stuff that was easily portable. In the end, he took (2) laptops, (1) road bike, (1) cell phone, and (4) sets of keys. Luckily, I was the least inconvenienced of the bunch, though I'll have to get a replacement car key at some point. The funny thing is that my laptop was sitting right next to the couch (where I'm currently parked & on which I'm currently clanging) but he went up the stairs and into Rob's room to take stuff. I'm especially lucky that this fellow didn't take the BSG DVDs Rob had borrowed....
The police came, the neighbors were informed, and a new set of locks for the house were purchased. I continued packing.
Today was an affirmation in the theory of creative destruction-ism. I am a bit OCD which leads to a slight tendency toward pack-rat-like behavior. When I buy something I am compelled to keep the box. I bought a nice iron a few years ago, and kept the box in which it came. Granted, it's just an iron, but I've used the original packaging in two different moves, and have felt mildly superior about that. The problem is that, while it's been nice to have for those two days, it's just been an empty box for the other 880. I have probably a half-dozen items I could point to in the same vein. Like, do I really need to keep the box my cell phone came in? Or the box from three video cards ago?
With Ty's lovers and my own reflection stirring me on, I became relentless. I threw away the recently-vacated pc case (and two others I'd been hanging to "just in case"), 7ish hard drives (the largest capping out at 10GB), a myriad of keyboards & mice, and nutritional supplements long since expired. I'm a freak sometimes.
But getting rid of the old wasn't sufficient for my purposes, I need to create as well. I had, in my old apartment, an abundance of shelves in my closet and so had fashioned for myself a small workspace, complete with storage for screws, cables, adapters, and other electronics. There was enough shelf space left over to store my DVDs. I really liked that setup, but was unable to create it here because so much stuff was left in boxes. So today, 14 months after I moved in, I unpacked. The pictures are now in one box, the storage bins are assembled and filled, the DVDs have been moved from the bookcase, and the knick knacks that I hadn't unpacked since December '05 are set aside ready for their display. A Petoskey stone (Michigan state rock), a miniature Etch-A-Sketch, my many 'coins' from my Army days, a wedge of a tree that was chopped down during my ASB trip to New Mexico, a Slinky...the stuff that makes life worth living.
The dumpsters are full, my room is empty, and my room is no longer just the place I go; it's now my room. I'll let you know if this Rob's stuff shows up on craigslist.