Entries this day: AM PM Shredding_documents Sorting making_paper

AM

7:55am CST Saturday 23 November 2002

Good morning. I woke up at 7:30; part of me is tempted to just piss around all day, but I know I must work past that to allow my western trek to happen.

8:37am

Okay. I've got a pretty good start on things to do today. Get stamps, change oil and spark plugs in Scott, return Stranger In A Strange Land (and pay the late fee), get a CD to cassette adapter so my computer can play tunes while I'm on the road.....

PM

12:27pm CST Saturday 23 November 2002

Now I've gotten my finances up to date. Have paid off the balance on fixing Scott just before I left for SWUUSI way back in July. Have paid my credit card off (mostly gas purchases, but also for my website hosting for the next 13 months) and all is lovely.

Going to put new spark plugs on Scott now.

I got these new crazy spark plugs with four (4) electrode things to spark. Wow.

I got these new crazy spark plugs with four (4) electrode-things to spark. Wow.

Shredding documents

4:12pm CST Saturday 23 November 2002

I found a fresh exciting new way to shred documents that I don't want anyone else to read. In this case, the documents were Wende's bank account information that was sent to me at my dad's house since I'm still on the account.

I know that Wende would appreciate the account information be destroyed. I don't have a shredder here, but I found that putting the paper into a sink full of hot(!) soapy water, then swishing them around with a scrub brush does a pretty good job of rendering them illegible.

Sorting

5:18pm CST Saturday 23 November 2002

How can I do this?

I am going through lots of T-shirts, allocating some to be sewn into a quilt. Mostly rally shirts, and I just came across a KTRU shirt, NIN, The Flaming Idiots... All the shirts that I like are the ones I both want to wear *and* archive into a quilt. Can't do both.

How can I predict which ones I will want to wear later?

This seems like the same questions as a long haired person would go through before cutting his/her hair really short. When should I do it? What if I wish I hadn't? What if blah blah blah??

Sigh.

- - - -

Next shirt I look at is an ultimate shirt. Then my Year Of The Rabbit shirt. Fuck!!

Will I even be able to wear these in Japan on a regular basis? Will I have enough space to keep half of them? Argh.

- - - -

Here are the single size Tonka Toys sheets I've used at SWUUSI the past two years. Should I keep them? If I am able to go back to SWUUSI, I will want to use them next year. Will I be allowed to attend? What about the year after that?

Why am I trying to hold on to material possessions that I know will age and deteriorate and eventually fall to pieces?

- - - -

It's a combination platter of not know what I will experience in the next few months before I go to Japan, not having any idea what stuff will be like once I'm there, wanting to be well prepared for any contingency, having no idea what stuff will help me be prepared.

- - - -

I think I'll mentally check out by reading a chapter of Stranger In A Strange Land.

7:30pm

Make that four chapters.

7:56pm

As I left the room in disgust at the seemingly overwhelming amount of work to be done, my mind touched on the simple solution: "just pack what I need and go on my trip."

This touches the realm of the Infinite, and has been confirmed with my experience of rallies, and further confirmed in a conversation I had some years ago with Cathy Saur, ex-YRUU and now married.

The conversation may have taken place when I drove her to Fort Worth Rally 1997. Just me and her for 5 hours in the car. We talked about the nature of love and hate all the way there. Rallies are so awesome because you don't have to bring anything to the rally. Anything you need you can just borrow.

I don't know what the average bear would think about this. But it solves my problem of sorting stuff, and helped me snap back to the present instead of hanging onto the past and worrying about the future.

I'll just pack the stuff I need and not take the rest.

making paper

8:02pm CST Saturday 23 November 2002

While grokking all that stuff, I had gone to the kitchen and found the sink full of shredded soggy paper.

Short version of the story is that I threw the mess into the blender and rolling pinned it vaguely flat on some towels on the table. Now it's drying on a cookie sheet. Might take a while to dry since there is no heat involved, but oh well.

Since it's Wende's account information that I blended, I'll write a letter to her on it.