Even in Kyoto

I was originally thinking that today I would try and build a wall in the boathouse, but ultimately I chickened out on that project, because it will involve hauling 5 sheets of half-inch plywood from the lumber shop to the boatyard, and it was still rainy this morning, and I'm still mostly riding Princess TinyBike around because Frodo is still in the shop. I'm just not sure about hooking Princess TinyBike up to the Big Mama. I could have hooked up Froinlavin, but I also know from prior experience that Froinlavin definitely isn't built to haul heavy loads. And I could have hooked up S's GT, but it lacks fenders, has too much reach for me, and can only take front panniers right now. I suppose in theory I also could have hooked up Old Faithful, but that also would have been a disaster of a different sort.

So anyway, I didn't do any of that.

But another next big project at the boatyard, is getting tools and supplies all organized, so that some of them can go back on the workbench in the back of the boathouse. We call it "Yuri's workbench," because he is the main workbench user, and is the person responsible for its general state of organization/disorganization.

He uses an organization system based on "security by obscurity," where he has squirreled away a whole bunch of useful boat parts and tools in places where he can find them quickly, but almost nobody else can, because they're stuffed in-between bins and boxes full of kipple. This is partly motivated by the fact that the workbench is very much an open space, where anyone using the boathouse could walk up and just grab things off the workbench. In any case, Y isn't around at the moment, and the rest of us DO need to be able to find things relatively quickly, so it's time to undo his organization system.

I wasn't around for the initial stages of moving everything off of the workbench and out of the boathouse; I was only around for the later stages, after about 50% of the stuff had been cleared off. So I didn't have a chance to develop much of a mental map of what came off the workbench, or where it went.

Instead, this morning, I first cleared all of the remaining bits and pieces off of the workbench, and vacuumed the whole thing, and then worked on the shipping container.

This is the cleanest this workbench has been in a very long time.



I have a teammate who really wants to paint the top of the workbench. For some reason this doesn't seem like the greatest idea to me, but I can't articulate why not.

After all that, I spent a whole bunch of time going through every single box that's currently in the shipping container. That then made it possible to finally consolidate a bunch of stuff, according to type. Now, all of the new oarlocks and oarlock bushings are in a bin together, and those are grouped near the enormous collection of brand new oar sleeves and the bazillion clams (Composite Load Adjustment Mechanisms). All of the footstretchers and shoes are also together, as are all of the coxbox speaker wires, all of the skegs, all of the hatch covers, et cetera, et cetera. It's also now clear that we DO need to order more new boat shoes. Also, the bins with items that are rarely needed are stacked together in the way-back corner. And all of the various solvents and paints and other chemicals are also grouped together. And the epoxy and all kinds of gloves (all kinds, I tell you!) are in that general area, too.

Most of the tools are also now in or near the tool chest. The most commonly used wrenches are grouped in a box, and almost all of the half-disintegrated cardboard boxes full of randomness are now completely out of the shipper.

Here's how it looked right before I closed up for the day, noting that I did not touch anything in the tool chest to the left, because that is our first aid cart:



It helped that our youth rowers are at the state championships this weekend, so all of the supplies they needed for the regatta are currently out of the shipping container, freeing up more space for me to fling the remaining things around.

Some of the things in the shipping container also needed to be moved elsewhere. For example, the safety logbook is now back in a place where it's more accessible to people who don't have access to the shipping container:



I eventually put a handful of things back on the storage shelf under the workbench, and also set up a temporary walkie-talkie charging station back there, while I was at it:



The most fun thing back there is now the giant blue bin, which I have labeled, ?? Mystery Items ??.

Regarding the walkie-talkies, I want to feel vindicated for a little bit. I advocated for purchasing them a couple of years ago, first and foremost for our annual regatta, because we really need them for it. (phone calls or texts are WAY too slow!) More recently, it seemed to me that we should test out using them during our on-water practices, because sometimes our boats get spread out pretty far apart, to the extent where a coaching megaphone isn't going to help at all.

Some teammates were a little reluctant to start using them, wondering what sort of protocol we might need to put in place. But from day 1, they have immediately demonstrated their worth. They are making it SO MUCH EASIER to coordinate with each other, and I also think they are much better from a safety standpoint! Plus, using them during our practices means everyone will have a much better idea of how to use them at the regatta. The kind we got are water-resistant and will float, and we quickly learned that if they come in contact with water, the included flashlight will start to flash. Great stuff. But another item that needs to be kept charged.

While organizing the shipping container, I also encountered a handful of items that really needed to go in our storage shed instead, where we keep specialty items for the events we host and whatnot. So that then also led to some additional reorganizing of the storage shed.

This is the most organized the storage shed has ever been, in the time I've been with the club. I also moved some things from the shed into the shipping container.



There are so many bins full of t-shirts in there. But there is NOT a giant tent that no one has used for at least a decade!

The new organization isn't perfect, but it's definitely an improvement compared to how things were jumbled in there previously.

The entire 5 hours that I worked on moving stuff and things around, the river looked like this:


No signs of any change with the tides. The water is the color of chocolate milk, full of silt and giant tree trunks. The flow got up over 92,000 cfps, moving fast enough that I was not particularly keen to go out there (and we didn't try to this morning, we just headed to the fitness center for cross-training). But the flow now appears to have crested, and is back down to 86,000 cfps now, so with any luck we'll be able to row again starting Monday.

Anyway, when all that was done (for now), I was very tired. I biked home, showered, and still managed to get in a grocery store run.

Tomorrow I should have at least a little time to finally work on some garden things! And it is even supposed to be sunny! Imagine that.

We have our first (for masters rowers, at least) regatta of the season this Saturday. Getting ready for it is kind of a hilarious contrast to getting ready for a brevet.

Brevets actually aren't especially minimalist except with regards to how much stuff one actually winds up physically carrying on the bicycle (ideally). Unless maybe that's actually a secret or not-so-secret hallmark of minimalism: actual minimalism might actually require a tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes effort and expense, in contrast to the most common global state of existence of having very little and never knowing where one's next meal will come from. Regardless: bike storage space is limited, so it's best to leave the kitchen sink behind. Most of the time.

In any case. This morning I think I may have come up with a solution for one of the other pieces of gear I've been puzzling over for long distance bike rides - something I can now test out on the 600k in two weeks' time. I've been thinking it would be really nice to have some sort of blanket-type item to flop down with for ditch naps, to go along with the space blanket. What would be best? My prior thought had been maybe a scrap of wool army blanket, but this morning while folding up some laundry a different idea came to me: how about just bringing along the larger of my two PakTowels? It could serve so many different purposes, and is totally blanket-like. The only thing it is missing is some sort of festive decoration, but maybe I can stamp some ants onto it using my fabric ink stamp pads to make up for that.

It is so very satisfying to come up with a potential solution that doesn't involve running out to buy yet another thing.

Okay, so then, the regatta, at the other end of the spectrum. I did go ahead and buy that bright orange EZ-Up tent last year (or was that two years ago?), in large part for regattas. We have used it a lot and it is great. I'll be carting that along, plus a folding table and folding chairs, a cooler, and probably a massive excess of food and beverages. This is all on top of the enormous production that is derigging rowing racing shells and carting them along on a rowing shell trailer.

More than anything, it's all just hilarious.

This time I am going to try putting together a changing area at the tent. At this particular regatta, in the past I think we've just gone over to change in the Porta-johns, but they tend to get pretty gross after a point. We have a fairly big collection of thrift store bedsheets at home, so I think I can put something together using them plus some binder clips.

And now the rower chit-chat about food has started up, so I am finding myself committing to bringing along the large stovetop Moka pot and probably a half-dozen other comestibles, heh.

Sooner or later I am going to need to figure out some tent weights to go along with the Ez-Up. Once again back to wondering whether I should pay money for a thing, or figure out some creative DIY alternative. This one might actually be a 'pay money for a thing' decision; the purpose-built sandbags look like they require a minimum of fuss.

We are getting very close to Three Men In a Boat standards, heh. I'd better make a mental note to pack along a can opener.

I have been thinking that I would like to shop for new everyday commuter panniers, but this morning it finally occurred to me that that might not actually be what I want to do after all.

Some things in life wear out, and it becomes time to replace them. Bike shorts, for example. The trouble for me is that I have a hard time throwing out the old bike shorts when their time is up. This isn't because of any sort of sentimental attachment or desire to keep wearing them. It's just the guilty feeling of tossing something so substantive into a landfill, plus all the hassle of whatever packaging the new bike shorts arrive in. I'd be greatly relieved if at least some of the old material could be recycled or downcycled instead, as Smartwool is now doing for old wool socks. Old bike shorts don't even make for good rags.

For other things, like old bike brake pads, I don't really see much other future for them, so they're easier for me to throw into the trash.

But then there are things like my old purse. It really seemed like it was time for a new purse, and yet I still can't quite bring myself to throw away the old one.

But maybe that just means that, now that I have a replacement purse up and running, I should give myself permission to do the more extensive purse surgery that I was reluctant to do when the old purse was my one and only purse. After all, if it fails now, at least I still have one functional purse. And if the purse repair succeeds, I've kept it out of a landfill for at least a little while longer and I'll be pleased to continue using it.

Along similar lines, I still have both of my 25-year-old+ Overland panniers kicking around. The one currently in use has a couple of elements in need of repair: the plastic backing (?) has cracked, the zipper on the front pocket is busted, the velcro for securing the straps is toast, and there are holes in the front pocket. The cover is also no longer exactly waterproof.

But I think what I really need to do is find a zipper repair place so I can leave zipper repair and replacement up to the professionals, then figure out how to go in and do the other repairs myself. The Overland panniers seem worth the extra effort, and since I have two of them plus the Arkel shopper-pannier, I can work on fixing up the one that isn't currently in the rotation. If I can find a good place for the zipper work, I'll have them do my backpack, too, and then I'll have the joy of functional luggage again without the vexations of shopping and trash production.

There are two things I dislike about online shopping:

1. The shipping and the packaging. Inherently wasteful.

2. Deciding where to shop.

I try to avoid teh Amazonia, and Mall-Wart, for ethical reasons. Often, eBay sellers are in fact Amazonia resellers.

I was recently reminded that my mom has a card from Better World Shopper that is a guide to where to purchase combustible fossil fuels. They have a full book guide, so I decided to go ahead and order a copy. Argh, the shipping. It also probably won't answer my current question:

At some point I want to purchase another set of headphones. I know exactly what I want to purchase (Audio-Technica ATH-M30X). But argh, where to buy. Sigh.

I mean, in some ways it's better if I can't figure this all out so I don't buy as much stuff.

Do you ever have one of those holidays where you have ten minutes of quiet time at home after doing a bunch of boring chores at home, and then you open up social media and see the inundation of photos of people doing all sorts of cool, interesting things, and start to wonder what you're doing with your life?

I still don't entirely understand some of these human tendencies. I mean, I share them, too: scrottie and I had a fun mini-adventure on Sunday morning, and I took a whole bunch of photos (okay, 35 total), and I want to blog about the adventure and share my photos with you. I suppose it's just some level of classic FOMO ("Fear of Missing Out"), and the general remedy is to close social media and go outside into the garden.

And I was utterly delighted not too long ago when my father shared a couple of photos on Facebook, which is something he rarely does. [But that was because he created his own version of the Project Worm Bin photos to demonstrate that his freshly constructed worm bin was adequate for the job, and his photo was equally hilarious].

So maybe it also has to do with the balance between one's own personal narrative and listening to the narratives of others.

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So. Sunday morning, scrottie and I got up early so we could try and make it over to Cal Sailing and off the dock in time for a special event, Breakfast on the Shoal. By way of background story: before the Bayside Freeway was constructed (I-580), the whole south sailing basin was much larger, and Berkeley Aquatic Park didn't exist. The substrate in that portion of the Bay is all silty, mucky mud, as one would expect at the end of a river outflow. Mud isn't a very stable foundation for building freeways, so according to the story one of the sailors told us, the freeway construction crew built a large pipeline to cart sand over from Treasure Island and fill in the land for the freeway. Apparently, at some point they discovered that they were putting a lot more sand into the pipe than they were getting out at the other end because there was a big leak in the pipe. And thus the Shoal was born.

It's only exposed during very low low tide, so the Breakfast on the Shoal was carefully timed to coincide with a morning low tide. During those same low low tides, the area near the launching docks for Cal Sailing is very shallow and muddy, so there's an added challenge of getting the timing right in order to get the sailboats out without having them get stuck in the mud.

Prior to the Breakfast, scrottie fretted a bit about the boating logistics: we would need to arrive early if we wanted to get out in a sailboat. Otherwise, in theory there are a couple of kayaks at Cal Sailing, but reservations and priorities hadn't been declared.

Fortunately, we managed to get up early enough to get our own dinghy launched in time, and managed to scoot out of the shallow mud with the centerboard up and the rudder barely in the water. From there, it was a bit of a slog out to the shoal because we were up against a headwind, but we managed to be the first to land.

The rest of the story is best told through the photo album.

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In other weekend news, on Saturday slydevil and sytharin acquired two new chickens, Matilda and Bianca. They formerly belonged to a bike shop mechanic who accidentally wound up with too many backyard chickens (~30). From the looks of things, it's going to take a little while for all of the chickens to get adjusted to the new arrangement, but that's to be expected with chickens. Matilda and Carlotta are working on establishing a new pecking order, and meanwhile Bianca is trying to show up Patricia with respect to chicken Houdini skills. Yesterday morning, Bianca managed to get up onto the workshop roof, and then flew over into the neighbor's yard. Fortunately, the neighbor's dogs weren't out. After Bianca pulled a second escape maneuver, I helped L clip her primary flight feathers on one wing. It will be nice to be back to four birds.

I also finished a second bike spat, so now all I need is a rainstorm to test out my handiwork. If I wind up revisiting the design, I think I am going to model the shape more closely after the shape of the 'quarter' on laced shoes. In the meantime, the next sewing projects in the hopper are a new lunchbox, and pants.

In the garden: it's going to be a good year for rhubarb, which makes it even sadder that the rats are eating ALL the strawberries. Jerks. I did finally find strawberries at Monterey Market that are good, thankfully. They aren't cheap but they're worth the price. I appreciate that Monterey Market seeks out some smaller-scale farm operations to bring in really good and fresh produce for the masses.

I think I am now finished, for the time being, with acquiring new plants. The other day, coinneachf blogged about that familiar experience where one gets a Thing (in his case, motorcycle), gets it all fitted out and nice, and then is suddenly back in the realm of looking at more, shiny, newer Thing. It's a familiar sensation: bicyclists call it the "n plus one" problem, and for a little while there I was smugly thinking I'd managed to manage that impulse. Silly me. But yesterday, I found myself back at the twee, expensive plant shop (Flowerland), staring at ferns and plant pots, and realized I'd just transferred over to a different category of Thing. Ha!

But now for ornamentals I have four types of ferns and a spider plant, and a string of pearls succulent to go with the other succulents I've been accumulating in the lab. It's all more than enough to make up for all of the houseplants that froze to death when I moved from Texas to Nebraska. So it is time to say Enough and focus on cultivating what I have.

If you ever go to the Nordic Heritage Museum in Ballard, you'll find that a good portion of the main floor is devoted to helping you understand the Scandinavian immigrant's experience, from leaving Europe to arriving in the US and finding a new livelihood.

I was struck by the size of the small trunk that could be carried on those trans-oceanic voyages. Packing one's valuables for both everyday living and for the sake of remembering one's heritage was probably challenging in many cases, resulting in a lot of cherished things left behind.

On my Mom's side of the family, it was the great-grandparents that emigrated to the U.S. My Grandpa and Grandma, then, grew up as Americans, as part of the generation that experienced the Great Depression during a pivotal part of their lives. I think this deeply affected their relationships with material goods, in a way that has continued to impact subsequent generations.

It isn't just a simple hoarding tendency. Instead, I think my grandparents just didn't really know how to manage the whole process of inputs, care for possessions, and letting go. This was visible in the number of broken implements and tools that accumulated in my grandpa's barn.

My Mom, in contrast, has had much less space to work with, and so she's done a better job of figuring out the whole life-long project of stuff management. When I was a kid, the scheme was fairly simple because she was generally overwhelmed by life: if we didn't want something anymore, we added it to a big pile in the basement. Periodically, the basement pile would be dealt with: things that could be donated were donated, other things were sorted and gradually moved along.

I think about these things a lot during the holiday season. I want to be a conscientious gift-giver and not add to other peoples' stuff-management chores.

Last year, scrottie and I shipped out a whole bunch of packages very shortly before Christmas, only a couple of weeks after I'd moved to Berkeley. It was a real scramble to pull together enough boxes and packing material for the project, and I remember receiving packages and then turning right back around and repacking the boxes to send things out. I also found that there's also one thing that's worse than dealing with a whole bunch of packaging, and that's reaching a stage where one has to go out and actually PAY MONEY for packing material.

This year, thankfully, we managed to stockpile enough supplies (but not too much!) to make the whole box-packing stage more straightforward and less overwhelming. I had also accumulated just about the right amount of tissue paper, and it was satisfying to send it back out into the world again. I'm a big proponent of reusable gift-wrap.

I still wound up paying money for some small boxes, at one stage, because I just don't have the time to make my own. Ah well.

A couple of nights ago, I reached a chapter in Thinking, Fast and Slow where Kahneman talks a bit about his involvement in the beginnings of the field of behavioral economics, which involved some work with Richard Thaler in addition to his ongoing collaboration with Amos Tversky. As Kahneman put it, Thaler had been collecting examples of instances where people's economic behavior was irrational, as a study of where neo-classical economic ideas failed.

The example listed in the book was about an economics professor in Thaler's department who collected nice bottles of wine. This professor would never pay more than $35 for a bottle, and then at the same time he would be extremely reluctant to part with a bottle for anything less than $100. What could explain this huge gap between his buying and selling prices? Long story short, after a series of experiments to try and puzzle out what's going on, this phenomenon got labeled the endowment effect. In short, humans tend to assign more value to objects when they own them.

So then, yesterday, I squandered spent a bunch of time reading articles from a special issue of the journal Nature about The Circular Economy. This is something that I tend to think about often, in an abstract sense, in relation to how I exist as a human being on this planet, because I find it more aesthetically pleasing to perceive myself as a participant in a series of cycles rather than as a consumption machine.

[I will point out that this is an idealized perspective, however, because there are a number of large-scale biological/biogeochemical/astronomical processes that we humans can't experience as cycles. The one that sticks out for me is phosphorus, which becomes available through weathering or mining, and gradually travels out to the oceans, where it eventually sinks to levels where it's basically inaccessible to living things. That said, there are many places where there are untapped opportunities to slow the rate of linear processes, and we humans need to keep working on them.]

One of the articles, in the Books and Arts section, talks about the history of the circular economy concept and recent revivals in things like the cradle-to-cradle design movement. Frankly, I've always found this notion a little too high-level and abstract. The historical piece also points out some problems with this perspective. Here's the paragraph of interest:

There are problems, too, with the circular model itself. Martin Charter, director of the Centre for Sustainable Design at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, UK, notes a “lack of overall clarity over the concept. Perhaps just 100 companies worldwide have adopted a true circularity mindset as a core strategy.” As for the circular mantra of switching to the digital, data centres waste an average of 90% of the energy that they consume (30 billion watts, equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants) and account for 17% of technology's carbon footprint. Although the circular 'business case' looks remarkable (global management consultants McKinsey and Company estimate that it could add US$2.6 trillion to the European economy by 2030), the fact that business remains central to the vision is a vulnerability. The growth economy impedes sustainability. In 2014, for instance, Chevron and a number of other big oil companies retreated from investments in renewables because of poor returns. Business competitiveness and 'disruption' can hinder the collaboration that is central to eco-design. UK design engineer Chris Wise has noted that the practice of using 'least materials' is at odds with the construction industry's prime aim of selling more materials (C. Wise et al. Nature 494, 172–175; 2013). The 'rebound effect', in which designed efficiency leads to greater use or consumption, is a related conundrum.

Another article, however, takes a different angle on things. Entitled "Make recycled goods covetable," it comes back to some key points about ownership and materialism, and the aspects of human psychology that humans have to grapple with if we are to do a better job of managing the rate and nature of flow of material goods. It begins, "Humans are unique in the animal kingdom in their capacity for materialism. We make, use and trade objects for their symbolic value as much as their functionality," and carries on from there. The crux of the argument is that human biases towards valuing exclusivity and authenticity undermine principles of recycling and reuse. I think you can probably see how this whole line of reasoning might also be related to the endowment effect, described at the beginning.

But for me, these lines of thinking caused a big flashback to the Alien She exhibit at the Portland Museum of Contemporary Craft, in particular to the display of handbags from the Counterfeit Crochet Project. The Nature feature also includes a piece on a related phenomenon, the growing popularity of Repair Cafes.

I bring these things up because I have to wonder about how humans value and relate to handmade items compared to designed/manufactured goods. Contemporary life calls for a mixture of the two types, but I have this feeling that general aesthetic satisfaction would be higher and waste production would be lower if peoples' priorities shifted towards the handmade. This is one way of achieving the "exclusivity and authenticity" outlined in the article on making recycled goods covetable.

The other way is hinted at in the Japanese art of Kintsugi, a thing which keeps popping up for me as an "Oh, that's clever!" thing on social media. The act of working to repair an object, whether the repair involves gold dust or otherwise, changes one's relationship with that object.

I have this sense that I might be wired to respond more strongly to these things than many people, just based on my creative impulses (and most definitely my upbringing! Especially my mother's wonderful influence). But I also think these are aesthetic qualities that can be drawn out of other people, too, under the right circumstances. There is great satisfaction to be derived from creation and repair, as well as from ownership of well-made and unique items.

Interestingly, the article on reuse notes that the endowment effect appears to be stronger in individualistic societies where there are more rather than fewer possessions, suggesting that possessiveness may be driven by gaps between those who have and those who have-not. Thus the endowment effect is enhanced when there's hightened awareness of inequality in individualistic societies. The author thus suggests that, for economic harmony, ignorance and/or greater equality are important factors to consider.

While I find some of the extremes of minimalism to be unrealistic and silly (Guy Who Owns Five Things!!), I do find reasons for hope in the movement, as in the DIY movement in the US and the raging popularity of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. They are signs of cultural changes in how people relate to their stuff and what's important in this whole experience of life.

Saturday morning, I got up, had breakfast, and, just as the rain started to lift, rode over to the boathouse to meet up with another rower and go for a row. He showed up just to let me know that he'd come down with a chest cold that week, but didn't have my phone number to cancel. I've been swapping phone numbers with other rowers left and right.

That was fine, though. I just took out the Maas 1x instead and had fun trying to work on the same technique items from Thursday, only this time on my own, in a crosswind. My ability to stay focused in the single is terrible, and so is my form. But I got out there and got in three laps (9 km). I think I will benefit from more strength training, which will be my focus for Monday morning.

I got off the water with enough time to ride home, shower, and then take the BART over to the Berkeley farmer's market to meet up with a couple of friends from Arizona that I haven't seen in 6 years. It was *so good* to see them - our visit brought back many, many fond memories. For instance, L helped me come up with a reason to start visiting Bike Saviours: we refurbished a Jazz Voltage together that she and A kept as a spare bike, back in the days when Bike Saviours was in someone's backyard and it was dark, hot, and full of mosquitoes. We also have a history of making delicious things together, like chocolates:



...or that one time we made a "fungus cake" based off of a leafcutter ant colony (can't find any photos at the moment, arg!). We've hatched a plan to continue with our ridiculous cake-baking soon. *evil cackles*

Then I spent some quality time with the Jolly Roger, trying to figure out why shifting has been dodgy. Replacing the shifter cable helped (note to self: need to get more shifter cables, again), but things still aren't quite right, even after playing around with limit screws. Then I bopped over to Monterey Market for a few groceries just as they were closing up for the evening, and the rest of Saturday evening was pretty quiet.

This morning, I enjoyed a few luxurious moments of just lying in bed, thinking, not in a rush to be up and at 'em. After some breakfast and coffee, though, it was time. Full Helga mode. I did a bunch of reorganizing in the workshop, largely to get my stuff as out of the way as possible, then swept the whole house and back porch. Then I finally finished the project of installing bike hooks in the bike garage*. With that complete, I baked muffins for the week, and then cooked both some peanut-topped greens and an underwhelming pasta dish with leeks and cauliflower.

I feel like I still have a ways to go in terms of getting things how I want them in my room. On Friday I ordered a folding bookshelf, which I am hoping will provide the right sort of space so I can finally unbox the boxes of books stacked on the Gorm (they will need either bookends or real bookshelf space). CDs still need to be organized, too. I am concluding that I just don't like the aesthetics of an all-digital music organizing system.


*I think we are all feeling lukewarm about the outcome of this project. Five bikes is just too many bikes for the space, and Syth had said as much from the get-go. She's probably right about hanging one from the ceiling in the workshop, but that's going to take a bit more time and planning.

I am finally facing down the boxes of academic papers. This is going to be an iterative project. The thing is, it's hard to visit those tactile memories and make decisions about them. I'd like to believe I can at least recall all of the journal articles I've read, but honestly, I can't. Far from it. In these early stages, I am simply getting rid of articles where I know I'll have a good chance of tracking them down again if they become relevant again, or where I just don't think they're going to be relevant again. This is taking care of about three-quarters of the papers, which should mean I can go from four boxes to approximately two, because at least two of the boxes consist of papers organized in stacks according to relevant subject matter. I am also keeping almost all papers that aren't easily digitally accessible. Eventually I hope to track down a fast pdf scanner to convert them. Academic libraries often have them. Also, in case you have ever wondered, don't get coroplast file boxes. They might seem better than cardboard, but they're terrible - flimsy and fall apart.

In the non-academic department, I need to think about how I want to handle financial paperwork, too. I still have every pay stub from graduate school, every credit card statement and bank statement and cell phone bill, all filed in file folders. I have a storage box (sweater-size) full of every single receipt for every single thing I've purchased over the last 5-6 years. Who is ever going to look at these things? An anthropologist, someday? I guess they're kind of like the story I heard on This American Life about a book some psychologist wrote that documented every single move made by a ten-year-old boy over the course of a week. A monumental wasted effort. The critical files all fit into one of those plastic file totes, so maybe the rest of the financial paperwork will go into a storage box and eventually get tossed when I tire of schlepping it from place to place.

A dream last night helped me partly understand why my mood has been pretty foul since last Friday. I dreamed I was attempting to walk a brevet. You know, because cycling one isn't a big enough challenge. The dream didn't end well because somehow it transformed into the recurring car-driving dream where the vehicle is really hard to control (usually my parents' old poo-brown Dodge Caravan). I think this means that I need to do a better job of consistently getting exercise. This morning is the last morning that I had to get to work by 7 am, so hopefully I can take advantage of this 5 am wake-up schedule in the name of exercise. This always feels like a "spirit's willing, flesh is weak" situation. I will report back to you tomorrow.

1. Funny how the place I'm moving to has an Office of Postdoctoral Studies. The current institution, not so much.

2. When I moved out of the Villa Maria house, I gave the washer and dryer to the guys overseeing the flood-prevention efforts at the house (I suspect that didn't help in last Thursday's deluge, but it's no longer my immediate problem in any case). I don't know if the cause was wear-and-tear on the bearings, or poor manufacturing quality, but the washer would come unbalanced almost every single time unless a full load was washed, and the load didn't contain any towels. The heating element in the dryer didn't work and I never used it (and apparently my roommate didn't understand the concept of cleaning out the lint trap, so it soon ceased to "work" entirely). But hey, the set only cost me $75 used from a grad student, so it was worth it for the time. Who knows what will happen in the next place where I live, so I'm tempted to get a WonderWash and hook it up to a bicycle somehow (or the rowing machine) and call it good enough.

3. Related to my recent post, I found at least one website with ideas regarding those piles of old photos. It's written by someone selling photo restoration services, but there are some useful points there. As a related point - I use blogging mostly as a tool to organize my thoughts, but I've been at it for over 10 years by now and the project of reading through the entire blog would take someone way longer than is justified. Despite that, there are stories sprinkled throughout that have significance, so I need to make sure those stories in particular are kept curated. I've only done a half-assed job with tags. Two or three generations from now, what will anyone wish to know of my life story?