intriguing mementoes

Woohoo, slept in until 6:30 this morning!


Update on my Lord of the Rings attempt: Hey, I've actually finished The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers! And I'm really enjoying it. I've also started a comic strip called Waiting For Frodo about a guy waiting in line for the Lord of the Rings movie in December. The comic strip will only run until December, obviously. :-)


The entire strip will take place in line, but I think it'll be fun figuring out stuff that can happen to him. If any of you have suggestions (even non-Tolkien people can contribute, though no killing off of the main character allowed! :-)), feel free to post them on the message board or e-mail me privately. Anyone who contributes will be listed in the credits.


Continuing to purge, and am coming across something interesting stuff (Jeff would call it junk, but I think I'd rather call it "intriguing mementoes of the past" :-)). The photo at the top of the page is an example. I used this template in one of my early summer jobs during school. "CIF 4649" was the project code, I believe, and I was teaching myself Fortran during slack hours as a computer operator at the Ministry of Labour about 20 years ago. That was my first office job, where I printed out elevator certificates (the ones saying that the elevator has passed certain guidelines).









The picture above is of my office as it is now. Wow, empty shelves!! The neatness is deceptive, however, since most of my office stuff is still lying all over the living room. I like the extra space, and being able to look out my office window. Too bad I can't just leave my junk out in the living room. >:-) I'll take another photo in a few days for comparison, once I've managed to get everything back in. The photo below is of my junk piled on our piano. There is also junk on and beneath the dining room table, just outside my office on the floor, on the coffee table, piled up in front of our television stand. Jeff has been very patient throughout.









I actually have managed to throw out a lot of stuff during this process. Papers, books (whimper of pain), old cassette tapes. Managed to compress three full boxes of tapes to less than one. Came across some gems which I refuse to throw out, like the first tape Allison ever gave me (she was Allison Drury back then) with recordings of the early filk songs she had written. Recordings of stuff we did when we were a foursome instead of a trio, and called "Northern Retreat" instead of "Urban Tapestry". I have resisted the urge to listen to these so far...I'll save them until after I've finished purging my office. I also came across a bunch of old filk tapes that I will likely donate to Interfilk.


You would be amused to compare Jeff's home office to mine. Jeff's is always clean, spare, with everything at right angles. The books are all lined up with straight spines. Most of the furniture is black.


My office is chaos in comparison, books and papers piled crookedly, a Patrick Stewart literacy poster taped on my door. Most of my furniture is white. I don't like bare walls, however, and I've done my best (too successfully, I think :)) in leaving as little bare wall space showing as possible, squeezing in as much colour as I can.


Jeff's office is a fair bit bigger than mine. He once offered to trade, but I said no. With the glass doors separating the office from the living room, I would have to keep my office tidy and organized since it would be in public view all the time. Ugh, no way. I've always preferred an office where I have the option of closing the door and shutting out the rest of the world if I want to. Decor and window view aren't nearly as important as the ability to have my own quiet space.


It's one of the requirements I asked for (but naively didn't insist on getting written into the deal docs) when I agreed to work in an office in Philly. It was a major culture shock to find myself plunked in the middle of a cubicle environment instead.









Every so often, I do miss the office I had on Mowat Avenue (Doug still uses it for his own business). But I'm enjoying the luxury of being able to work in my grubbies again, and being able to play my harp whenever I want. :-)


Today's Blatherpics:


- Data processing flowchart template (how many of you have ever used one of these?).


- My office right now.


- The piano right now.


- My cubicle at Xlibris.

Feel free to suggest a daily poll question.


Today's Poll: (Courtesy Amanda Snyder)

Are you a neat freak?