THE LAST FIVE ...

Closing up shop
- Wednesday, Aug. 02, 2006

It may be time for a change
- Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Entry in the air
- Friday, April 21, 2006

Still here
- Thursday, April 20, 2006

Music of the moment
- Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Or ... BE RANDOM!


GOOD READS

101 in 1001
American Road Trip, 1998


OTHER PEOPLE

Chupatintas
Dancing Brave
Fugging It Up
Kitty Sandwich
Mister Zero
Sideways Rain
Ultratart
Velcrometer


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2001-04-16 - 1:04 a.m.

Pack rat

Oh, I am tired.

I've been cleaning. I came up to bed about 10:30 tonight -- after The Sopranos -- and intended to watch a little more TV and perhaps some computer/Internet stuff. Instead, I spent it cleaning.

I'm a pack rat. I keep anything and everything for at least a few days before throwing it away. Unless it's yet another unsolicited credit card in the mail or those offers to sign up for one to earn miles or any other number of perks with a card I have to pay $65 a year just to have in my wallet. Eventually I will get an airline card, but not until it's worthwhile to do so.

I have newspapers that are 10 years old. I hold onto them because they are momentos of various occassions, but I hold onto them as if I'm going to sit down and go through them some day. Like I do with my photographs, just to look at them. I never do. The only time I go through any of the newspapers is if I'm doing some other task and come across them. Or if I'm cleaning and decide to weed them out.

I also save a lot of newspapers these days because I write for one, and I need to save my articles. But that's different. What's not different is that I don't really have a very organized filing system for all of them. I should work on that.

And I have commemorative and collective cereal boxes with baseball players on them; scores of plastic souvenir cups from sports arenas of all kinds; a state quarter for every state released so far, including North Carolina, which I got last night; various photographs and baseball cards and autographs; a few Matchbox cars for no reason; tons of books and magazines. A lot of shit.

And what did I clean up tonight? My Hotmail account. I had 1700K worth of messages in my account, which would bring the wrath of Hotmail down upon me every few weeks when I'd surpass my account limit and they'd send me beligerent messages telling me to fix the situation or else they'd bump off some messages of their own choosing.

So I went through and transfered some 40 messages to my hard drive. Letters from friends made up the bulk of those. Nobody writes old-fasioned letters anymore, which is fine. But that also means there are no old-fashioned letters left to hold onto. Imagine if Thomas Jefferson had e-mail, but didn't save any of his incoming or outgoing messages -- all else being equal, we'd hardly know anything about him. So I hold onto electronic correspondence.

And I moved some forwards along, holding onto those that were more touching than some, those that inspired a warm reaction as I read them. I took out all those disclaimers about sending the messages on to 4 friends and seeing what good fortune would await me in 4 days.

I managed to cut down my account size by 1000K. That's a lot of cleaning.

So that's how I capped off my Easter Sunday. It began with me reluctantly getting out of bed after only getting into it at 3:30 a.m.

I joined the folks and Mom's brother Johnny from Maine (down here for a wedding yesterday) for a ride down to south Jersey to visit a cousin of Mom's. It was his (the cousin, Richard) daughter who got married Saturday. So we made the 100-minute drive for a three-hour visit. After lunch when we got there, Dad, Johnny and I walked around the yard with Richard, who showed us all his cars and spare parts for his home-based auto repair (mostly VWs) business. Lots of old beetles, several old buses, a few newer vans -- a car lover's dream. It made me want to buy an old car and have Richard restore it, just so I could have one to ride around in on weekends.

And last night, with the night off after covering a baseball game in the afternoon, I went out in Sea Bright with Dave and some friends of his. I was tired, and at times my mind wandered, as did my vision. I'd sometimes look off at something at the club, then, without realizing it, my eyes would settle on a subject, and I'd catch myself staring at someone. It's one of the reasons I wish I were tall. Because at one point, I was standing next to this friend of Dave's, a tall, beautiful, long-haird, leggy blonde in high shoes. As my gaze wandered, scoped the room, I found myself staring at her breasts, which stood just below eye level with the shoes she wore. She's tall, really.

I also wish I was tall so that I could see my friends on the Tradewinds dance floor after I come back from the bar. I stood on my toes while the cover band played "Babylon" and all I got was two sore ankles. I never found Dave and the others again, though just before making the half-mile walk back to my car at another bar, I came across two other friends of his who had come seperately from the rest of us -- Jen and Jen, who were on a girls night out. They offered to drive me back to my car, but we took a detour to the Marina Diner first before calling it a night.

And that's why I got home at 3 a.m. and am now blurry-eyed tired and heading to bed.

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