Why I am a Packrat...

Confessions of a packrat...

Or It's Not my Fault! Blame the jeans!

:) Well it is true - I have lots of jeans and most of them either don't fit anymore, have stains on them or the one that is too low (durned hiphuggers...more like a**bare-ers.) Anyway...

I am a packrat because I am convinced that practically anything I have could come in handy at some point in the future and furthermore, I am convinced that if I throw it away... as soon as I throw it away, it will be desperately needed all of the sudden. Like magic. Magical Murphy's law that is. Or is that Murphy's oil soap? LOL

I remain a packrat for the same reason the light bulb wont replace itself: we have to _want_ to change. The lightbulb is clearly content to just sit there not-illuminating like some sort of rebellious "I'm on strike" nonsense. Light bulbs of the world unite. Me - I'm content to live in a virtual and literal sea of chaos and constantly lose things bc of it...

Spring Cleaning

Ok so it's no longer spring officially or otherwise - I get that. But still the cleaning needs doing and entropy knows no season.

I did however discover a few treasures:

1) my new friend who just retired from the school where I work (two ships passing in the night tooting their horns at each other and wondering what if we'd both been docked at the same time) turned me onto freecycle - an amazing organization that quite simply puts folks together on the net (as if they aren't there already anyway) and follows the basic 'your junk is their treasure' philosophy as well as the more fundamental underlying principle of keeping said "junk" from the landfills by putting them to use where they are needed within the local community. It's amazing to see what people put out there to be taken away for free - and it is equally amazing what people ask for (and often seem to get). Weed wackers, old school laptops (but working), et cetera et cetera.

2) Picard action figure from the Nemesis movie which I refuse to acknowledge as a legit part of canon ST - which was posted up and gone the next day. amazing!

3) Foodsaver rolls - posted up and asked for many times over within a matter of hours. Apparently them rolls are quite useful for a lot of folks.

4) Not only have a created myself a nicely evolving system - but it works! And is sustainable from what I can tell so far. Woo hoo. :)

5) I CAN and will and _have_ thrown stuff away! Wow - how freeing indeed. Seriously though - just applied the Stare at it, Decide if it has current relevance, Consider any possible future relevance within certain parameters and Toss or Store accordingly. Or smth like that. :)

Music

Jack Johnson is my latest discovery, Sia, Amal Hijazi (beware tho - hers is a very Flash-intensive website - and no - no double entendre intended)

Rediscovered Me'shell Ndegeocello - but decided that I'm not really in the mood for her edgyharshinyoface lyrics right now...i guess that was a college thing for me. She has a beautiful voice - very husky and distinctive - but ... well lyrics have begun to mean something to me now like they never really did before. Sure I'd read a CD liner and learn some lyrics here and there but not as a matter of course...and as an adult, I have immense trouble even putting names to tunes, let alone recalling lyrics or faking my way through mimicking a song. Can't be done man. LOL S'all good tho - I can enjoy that which I can't put a name to. Can't i? :)

Recently Finished Reading 070505

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi - a comic book in the style of Maus where an Iranian woman tells of her life growing up during the Iranian Cultural Revolution and beyond.

Violation by Darian North - overall a pretty simple tale of a woman whose past involves a brutal rape which led to her becoming pregnant and comatose for an extended period of time. In the present time her son, the product of that past horror, is oblivious to the real story and yet is trying to find out more. Fueled by external forces, the boy takes off from their home in the woods of Northern Cali - to Long Island and straight into the heart of his mother's past. An ex-cop (yes yes, of course it is cliched but it still works...) gets into the mix and a nice little web of intrigue and deception and horrifying revelations is spun by North in such a way as to have kept me quite page-bound for the week or so that it took me to finish the book (mind you this is reading about an hr a day or so).

Actively reading...070505

A Philosophical Investigation by Philip Kerr lent by my sister :)

Criminal Seduction by Darian North (her first, after becoming enchanted - odd word choice there given the subject matter - by her novel Violation. It is sad to see that she only has four books - I wonder what she is doing now).

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg

(reading)...between the lines. :-)