(no subject)

Today is Boomtime, day 21 in the season of Confusion, 3268.

The cough is finally going away, I suspect it's a combination of vast quantities of vitamin C daily plus finally getting more than 6 hours of sleep at night. I managed to make it through Beth Orton's set last night without a coughing fit, woohoo! Beth was wonderful, as always, even if I really wasn't much in the mood to go out last night; we missed the opening act entirely thanks to leaving late and then having an adventure when we got routed around the MCI Center because of something going on there (or actually because something *had* been going on and now there were 4 billion people leaving). It would've been even nicer if every single person surrounding me hadn't felt like they had to smoke throughout the entire show and chatter with their friends at high volume. I really don't get why people pay $30 to stand around and talk at the top of their lungs; they can't hear the performer, and neither can the rest of us unfortunate souls who are crammed in next to them. The new CD has collaborations with both The Chemical Brothers and Emmylou Harris, so I feel compelled to go buy it once it's out.

I have five goals (Three, sir!) ... three goals for today: get the office (and most specifically my desk) cleaned up; pay bills; and walk across the street for a gardenburger. If you haven't seen my office/desk/disaster area, you might not realize that the first goal there could well take me the rest of the day all on its own. I suppose I should get started then; wish me luck.

(no subject)

Some limited measure of success has been achieved. I've emptied two boxes full of random stuff that had been sitting here next to my desk since the last move (yes, more than a year ago; we lost something like 300 square feet of space in this last move and don't have places to put everything anymore), excavated my desk, untangled the cables on my computer, dusted like a fiend, vacuumed and threw out a bunch of stuff. There's still a huge pile of papers to be sorted through and filed, but I can't bring myself to start that right yet. I did at least divide everything into "shred, file, or throw out" piles, and have done the shredding and the throwing out.

Throwing things out is terribly hard for me, I hate to do it. I've gotten over the worst of my "but I might need it someday" packrat tendencies, but I still don't manage to keep things as uncluttered as they ought to be. Some of the things I found and threw out today: the airline tickets from my trip to Boston to Allaire's 1999 developer conference, which was also my first date with Mattison. Lots of papers associated with my trip to NYC to see La Bohème at the Met. Saved some stuff to go into a scrapbook, but most of it went out. Tickets from my trip to San Diego. Course notes from various SEI/CMM classes I had to take when I worked for SAIC. Credit card statements that have outlived their usefulness. Notes from online classes that I'd printed out. Job-search paperwork. Mailing receipts from old eBay transactions which have all safely arrived. There's no reason I should've still had most of this stuff except that I'm really lame about getting rid of it. I've condensed most of the random toys and stuff into a single plastic tub, which is something I can live with.

There's still a lot of stuff to be sorted through here, but just being able to see the floor around my desk again (not to mention the desk itself) is letting me feel like I've gotten something accomplished. I am definitely going to achieve the gardenburger goal since I've been so busy today that I forgot to eat, and unless we decide to go to the movies I will probably manage the paying bills goal too. Go me.