Organizing

I love organizing things. When I was a kid, with my Star Wars trading cards, I would love putting them in order, making neat piles, and just being anal about these things. Sometimes I would mess them up, just so I could reorganize them.

I also collected coins and stamps, which played into the organizational fetish. Nowadays, I like to keep all my CD's in alphabetical order by artist, and then by year of release within artist. I say it's because then I can tell what's missing if I lend something out, but I think it's really because I like to organize things.

MP3's have been a fun thing to organize now. For any live songs, I put the title in this format:

"Sound Chaser - 11 Dec 1976"

I spent part of tonight going through my live CD's that I put on my computer, updating the songs that had accurate dates to them. I am debating about putting just the year for some songs, if the album doesn't have the exact date of recording on it, but I think that might be cheating. However, I don't like the idea of some live songs not having the proper date after them, even if it is just the year...

Sick, I know.

This weekend, my main "work" goal is to get an outline prepared for one of my upcoming ACPA presentations. My inherent lazyness makes me want to procrastinate, but my dislike of doing things at the last minute should keep the inertia in check. I'll report at the end of the weekend how I did. Sue has some committments tomorrow night, perhaps I'll do it then...

No other really big plans for the weekend. Sleeping late is always on the agenda, and I'm reading the 2nd Harry Potter book now. It's fun, light reading. I'm actually looking forward to reading the books in the series that I haven't seen the movies for yet, since they haven't been made.

NP: Yes, Close to the Edge - 29 July 2000

The Office

To give you all a sense of where I work, here are two photos of my office. This first one was taken while I sat in my chair, looking at my computer, a new Dell laptop that I just got (for work, not home) in mid December.

This next one is looking at what's on my wall. Exciting stuff...

I should have taken one from the doorway, so you could see the whole glorious spread, but alas, I didn't think of it. I will take one in the future, for your edification.

Some more about my office: I have no window to the outside world, but I do have a good amount of bookshelves. That's always a good thing.

Today was a good general day, with solid work getting done, and relaxing at home. I've actually been flying solo tonight, as Sue went out with a friend after work, although she did pop in for a bit before going out. I've been cleaning up a bit, doing some genealogy work (sending off some vital record requests to Ireland), listening to music, shooting off some e-mail, and exercising.

I've also weeded out some more CD's to sell on e-bay from my collection. I don't really need the 4 Adam Sandler CD's I have. They're not bad, but I'm never going to listen to them all the way through again. So, off they go. I'll list them, and some other stuff, this weekend. I may even go to some of the used CD places around here to see if there's anything worth buying for the purpose of selling online. It's a nice supplement to my regular income.

Tomorrow's a pretty straightforward work day, and then the weekend. As normal, I'm looking forward to sleeping late. Sue and I may go out to eat or something, who knows, we'll play it by ear.

We were invited to a housewarming party in Boston/Arlington in February, but unfortunately we can't go, as it's Winter Carnival weekend up here, and I have to be around to work and do my Res Life duties at that time. I'll miss the party, but we'll get down there at some point soon again...

NP: John Cale, Caravan (from Hobosapiens)

Writing again!

Here I am, saying that I wanted to not skip days of writing, and I haven't written since the 13th... Okay, so life sometimes gets in the way. Here's exciting stuff that's happened since the last time I wrote...

• One of my co-workers had a birthday yesterday, so some of us went out and spent a few hours at a local restaraunt/bar. Quite good.
• Finished reading "On Human Nature," by E. O. Wilson, a book I needed to read for a presentation I'm doing at the ACPA conference in Indianapolis in March. I got lots of good ideas for the conference, so more to come about that soon...
• I sent off letters to a bunch of cemeteries, looking for burial records of distant relatives. I hope to get some good information from those places over the next few weeks. If I learn anything interesting, I'll let you know.
• I sent a request off to a Civil Records office in Poland, to get the birth record of one of my great-grandmothers and a few of her siblings. That will be sent home to NJ, to my mom's place, assuming they respond.
• Sue got a gift certificate to Molly's, a local restaraunt, so we'll be going there sometime soon.
• Sue and I watched some of the old Muppet Show DVD's I got her for Christmas, they're great shows.
• My cough is almost gone. I still hack up some stuff periodically, but not often.
• I sent off e-cards to two friends, Kim and Tony, for their respective birthdays. I always forget Kim's, because she's relatively soon after the holidays, and it's easy to forget about those birthdays. I think I'll do a better job each year, and then I don't...
• With the extra payments I've made to my student loans over the past three months, I've reduced those payments from $305/month to $260/month. I'm going to continue throwning extra money at them, to pay them off faster.

That's the major stuff over the past few days. I could talk about the weather, but is there anything more boring than that? More to come in the near future. Tomorrow, I should be able to post some more photos, for those of you who are visually inclined...

NP: Harry Shearer, The Last Kuwaiti Woman Held Hostage