I'm not a librarian

Books. A great many books have I. Various topics, various genres, various ages. Most are on the shelf in something that loosely qualifies as a system, if "whatever I can fit there" is a system. My apologies, Mr. Dewey, but your hard work never really stuck, even though I worked in a Media Center for a bit. Sadly, some of the books are in boxes, in the attic, most likely providing an abundant harvest for the silverfish (or firebrats, to be more accurate). I have a near entire set of some pulp fiction series, a vast assortment of thrillers from the likes of King, Coyne, Saul, Koontz, and others. I have some classics. I have some old books in languages that I never could read, or could read but forgot what the words meant. Yes, a great many books.

Recently, I cluttered things up a bit more by bringing home a box of books from Mom's storage unit. I've listed some on SwapSimple, will put others on half.com, and might give a go at selling the older ones on eBay. One thing I do know is I probably won't do is read any of them. I can't remember the last non-technical book I read. Heck, I can't remember the last magazine I read in full, and there is a stack of newspapers that attest to my lack of reading in that realm. I suppose that one of these days…

Hmm. I think I've said this many times before. Guess I'd better get to reading something or getting rid of something. Maybe I will start with the Owner's guide to the Xbox game I just received.

Shameless self promo

So, I'm driving home this AM, and on the local radio station I nearly always have on the dial (check out www.104star.com), they started discussing packrats. Sound familiar? I jumped out, ran to the phone, sat on hold a bit, and then talked with the morning air personalities about my perspective on the issue. I even promoted the project. It was fun to listen to our conversation when they played it back, but it occurred to me that now I would definitely need to get busy.

So much for my AM nap, eh?

But wait, there's more!

Between house-sitting and sitting in Doctor's offices, I've almost forgotten lately what my house looks like. Oh, that's right, it's cluttered. And today we've someone coming over in an attempt to sell us new windows, at least in their mind. We're in it just for the estimates. Before the sales effort arrives, however, I have been mandated to make things look.... less cluttered?

Furry clutter

Having just cleaned the litter boxes for today, it occurred to me that some of my clutter will never leave, yet I'd better work harder to get it organized. The way I figure it, it was either the new purring addition to the family, or it was the son searching for something, but whatever the cause, I noticed a few things out of place. Out of place in the sense of scattered about. Granted, the fact that my med renewal managed to get delayed, so the order I placed before my visit to Chicago which I expected to be here when I got back home wasn't here, which means I've been out of the "keep an even keel" pills for a few days and have found myself obsessing on the smallest of things, like a piece of paper in a place it wasn't before or a piece of technoclutter on a pile that it wasn't before, or moving the three month's worth of unread newspapers from the couch to the floor to the couch to the floor, or spending an extra long amount of time waiting to get the perfect head shot with my sniper rifle in Halo, or typing excruciatingly long sentences before I get to the end of them. You get the idea.

Where was I? Oh, that's right, the new motivation. Her name is Mickey, she's a tortie, she's loud and loving, and she is really into exploring her new domain. Sadly, there a few places she goes that even the other two cats know to ignore. Thus, I suspect I will keep finding things where they weren't and missing things where they ought to be. I can't wait to see what she does when I open up the guest room to begin the final stages of cleaning it up...

Tilting to one side

For years I've chuckled about the mess the English language can create, given that a single word can take on so many meanings. I'm not the only one either, and some have made a decent living off the phenomenon. My experience with non-English languages is limited, so I don't know that it is all that unique to my native tongue, but I suspect that there is less confusion with languages where one word means one thing and not five other things. What is really fun is to find those instances where one meaning of a word makes the other meaning or meanings near comical, but at the same time very fitting.

For example, when I follow the strong urgings of the Mrs. to take pen to paper and create a series of tasks to be accomplished, and compare it to her series of tasks to be accomplished, the image of knights jousting is not the first thing that comes to mind, but there does seem to be a subtle significance to that image. A joust, after all, was a competition where the terminal objective was to knock someone off their high horse, so to speak. To me, calling the area where the joust occurred a list gives a new feel to creating a series of tasks that need to be completed. Ultimately someone wins and someone loses. Ultimately some task is knocked out and some task is left sitting. Problem is when too few are knocked out and too many are left sitting. Worse, when the group of knights from the next marsh over show up and challenge those left sitting, the place gets a little crowded. You know the feeling. Cross off one task and five others replace it. Yep, 'list' seems to be the right word.

Try this image on for size. Have so many knights around who want to challenge, and then load them up on a boat, and build the battle arena on the port side of the boat, thus giving a new perspective to the meaning of lists, especially when the starboard side of the boat is barely skimming the surface of the water from all the weight on the port side. Too much tilting to one side can cause a serious problem, even sink the boat, a catastrophic event from any perspective. Aye, mate, it be a shame to have the boat list from the lists. Thus we have my view that lists are bad things. Very, very bad. After all, I don't want my boat to sink, or the project for that matter.

Ah, the subtle psychological twists are endless, aren't they?

Home is where the clutter is

OK, so it has been a few days since I last posted anything, but I have a legitimate excuse. The Mrs. and I were exercising the parental option of visiting the adult children. Given that the second born lives far enough away to qualify for the extended visit as opposed to the short visit, it might be more accurate to say that we went to live with her and hubby for a while. Being away from the home means nothing is done on the project, but coming back home is a strong reminder that there is much work to do before it can be called a success. Since we don't have firm traveling plans for the rest of the summer, let alone the year, I reckon I have little barrier to getting most of that work done. I might even see fit to post more frequently.

A Model World

Timing, as someone once said, is everything. Comedy, opportunity, food expiration. The best of these things are highly dependent upon the right timing. Recently, I discovered another thing that benefits from timing, that being listing items upon eBay™. Some explanation is in order.

This month is one of those transitional, do things other than the project months. Clothing had to shift from the dang-is-it-cold to the dang-it-is-hot wardrobe. School ends this month, which means that daily routines will change. Hehheh. This month, the outdoor tasks begin to take priority over the indoor tasks, and new things like watering the garden have to be remembered. This year, the beginning and end of this month are taken up by traveling and preparing for said traveling. This year, this month means the oldest offspring and spouse are transitioning to that stage of marriage known as Real Estate Indebtedness, with the required moving of things that suddenly don't look all that nice. This year, this month also brought the change from a generous supply of household freezer space to a generous supply of "ohmygoditisallthawed" food that had to be eaten (or tossed) and the associated task of figuring out what to do with the freezerbeast if it's broke.

In light of all this, it was decided to postpone the next GaYaPo sale until June, and I avoided listing things on eBay™ that would have to be shipped off to new homes. Granted, there are still the things on SwapSimple and halfdotcom that could suddenly become must have items during my absence, but given past history...well, I am not too concerned that anything will suddenly come into demand. Still, I did decide that there was a brief point in the middle of the month where I could list something on eBay™ and have the transaction complete before I had to travel. I figured that I would take one group of things that I had not listed before, and based upon how many GaYaPo sales they have sat through, I didn't figure that I would be required to wait for too many payments and have to ship off too many packages. Right. This is where that timing thing comes into play.

See, one of the things of which the project suffers is lack of exposure. When things are on eBay™, it is an opportunity to obtain some exposure. The more things that I list, the more potential exposure, especially if the things are popular. Dad's trains were popular, pulling in great numbers of views. Other things, not so popular. Who knew that model car kits would pull in the number of views, especially since they were hardly looked at during sales? In fact, who knew that I would have, of this writing, six of the nine items sold with another day to go? Who knew that I would have, of this writing, some of the biggest viewing hits of anything I've ever listed? Of course, I won't be listing anything else before the end of the month.

Timing is everything, and once again, my timing is a bit off.