Happy New Year

Confession's good for the soul... and bad for the reputation. So be it. :-) Anyone do new year resolutions? I haven't for many years, because, well, after leaving youth behind several decades ago, it seemed to me that there was nothing special about a new year as opposed to a new day, new hour or new minute. At any time, any moment in my life, I can make a new decision based on either old or new information, newly viewed, understood, evaluated or re-evaluated, and set a course change. "So why a new year's resolution?" I thought. Nevertheless, I'll go ahead and codify a "resolution" already being implemented and incrementally practiced. You see, I have a schizoid kinda lifestyle. In my kitchen (and although my Wonder Woman is a fine cook, she ceded that ground to me years ago based on a balance of personal preferences, talent and abilities, scheduling flexibility (or lack thereof), etc. And in my kitchen I very much prefer to have a place for everything and everything in its place, just as my Wonder Woman prefers in the rest of her house (she is a librarian, after all). Not that I have achieved such perfection of organization in the kitchen (though woe be to he who places the black-handled whisk on the nearly-antique metal spoon's hook near the stove! :-), nor, of course, is Wonder Woman's home in the perfectly organized and managed state she would prefer. Let me note: that's not her fault-I'll explain that in a sec. But my office and my storage areas are... a disaster. Jerry Pournelle likes to refer to his home office as "Chos Manor". *Pfui!* In the creation and maintenance of chaos, Pournelle is a patzer compared to me. :-) But. (And here's a large part of the explaination for the mess in Wonder Woman's living room, right now.) I've recently boxed and labeled (and have intermediately staged on the way to a reorganized storage space) four boxes of references, archived data (CDR, floppy, packed hard drives, etc.), boxed labeled, inventoried, etc.... in the living room, along with four more large plastice tubs similarly treated. All taken from my office. I have at least twice that much left to go, but it's progress. For the first time since we moved into this home more than ten years ago, there is as much free space in the garage as there is packed-away junk. Of course, in the process of shaking out and sifting, even the kitchen is cluttered, now. *sigh* And then there are the still uncompleted remodeling chores... that are nevertheless progressing. New year's resolutions? I don't need any. All I need to do is make steady progress, day by day, a bit at a time, making my office and storage areas over into my image of my kitchen, as it were. Yeh, when I finish the bookcase/storage/entertainment center wall in the living room, that'll help. Probably seven or eight boxes of books (freeing up storage spaces)-properly re-catalogued (not just in my head) with discarded library management software and card catalogs. :-) That'll help. But I really need to weed my parts farm. Haven't even inventoried my "printer parts" (discarded printers I intermittently raid for repair parts) in a year. And I know there are a couple collections of old 286 and even 8088/6 computer parts/cases/power supplies I probably should have dismantled for smaller parts years ago, discarding all the large, completely unusable junk. It's on the schedule. So, while I'm making a temporary mess (Yeh, kids, I know: it's an awefully looooong "temporary" - heh) of much of the rest of the house, things are thinning down in my office, storage is getting better, etc. But it's gonna be a bumpy ride for a while. Thankfully, Wonder Woman is joining in the fun and purging her home office space, too. So, even when we are working on these things in different rooms, we have semi-compatible projects going, and that's an encouragement to me to continue. Even if it's at a 10-pounds to 1-ounce ratio of my stuff to hers. Of course, even when all this is finished, including some of the remodeling, I'll have the storage shed to deal with... heh We have waaaaay too much stuff. (And, according to that ineffable law of the universe that creates extra coat hangers out of lost paperclips and inexplicably appearing computer parts from missing coat hangers, the more stuff we discard... the more we have! heh. Really. It's true... ;-) Baring my soul at The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns.