"Things you own end up owning you."
--spoken by Tyler Durden, but he was probably quoting some other great historical figure.

Guess how Bitscape spent the holiday? Well, obviously I slept in. (The words "sleep in" and "holiday" are almost synonymous, hence mentioning both is nearly a Score: 0, Redundant, no?)

Before returning Dagobah and Argo to the Lair after the fest (which I'll rewind to in a minute), I decided to do some much needed re-staightening of the area to make it slightly more habitable. Just as many similar past efforts have often wigged out in bouts of distraction and failure of persistance, today's somehow managed to do the exact opposite: A simple job of straightening the floor and visible flat surfaces morphed into an all-day project involving a complete inventory overhaul.

I went through all the closet shelves, dresser drawers, boxes, clothes, and that hideous pile of old crap that's been piling for ages on the closet floor.

I realized that part of the reason I've been having such trouble keeping it clean around here lately is because I simply had NO place to put incoming items. So I got rid of many things, and compressed others into cardboard containers (.box.gz) to be exported into the hideous crawl space storage area beneath the house. I also managed to export a piece of furniture to the garage, which I've found has recently been increasingly getting in the way. Now I feel like I can actually live in here again!

There was also another motive: If I am actually going to honor my Nth Resolution (I forget which ordinal), it would be a very good idea to take stock of my current inventory in anticipation of such an event. With each item, I thought, "If I were moving out today, what would I do with this? Would it be worth transporting, or should it really go to the garbage?" Then I acted accordingly. A lot of things which probably would have been piled back in the corner otherwise got their ticket out forever. Quite refreshing, really.

As always seems to happen during these cleaning sprees, I also encountered many sentimental items from the past. It's wierd, seeing photos of myself. Parents. Grandparents. Brother. Other people from the past. Snowball. Taken over a decade and a half ago. How much everything has changed since then.

In an effort to keep myself from getting too bored or burned out, I kept my tv running for many hours playing mythology archives of the digitally stored variety. Although there were times when I would stop cleaning to sit and watch for a few minutes, I think overall, it actually improved my productivity. It's always so easy to get distracted with this item or that when digging through the closet. But this time, I had something to keep me distracted from the potential distractions. :)

Well, that's how my Monday went. This rambling is now being terminated prematurely due to other activities which beckon. I shall return to give a belated festing report (not that being belated matters when none of it is going to be uploaded until who-knows-when anyway). Maybe babble about other matters as well. Onward.