really? that was four years ago and the one closet I did manage to organize (well, it is actually a closet under the eaves on the third floor of our house, so you can really only count it as half a closet because it is only four feet tall- LOL) is now a mess again and I never got to any of the others (not that we even have that many closets because our house has ten times as many steps as it has closets- literally) We live on a city lot 25 feet wide and 100 feet long so our house is very very narrow and tall... basically there are two room per floor except that the first floor is all open and has three "room" areas: kitchen - living - dining... but I digress. I am still four years later on the closet clean out phase having done less than one closet...
another project I started was scanning all my family's old old photos - when I had all my own photos done years back at a hi speed scanning place (more than 15,000 photos) they wouldn't take odd sizes (read that older sizes and they wouldn't take "copyrighted" photos - read that one as professional photos like wedding or studio portraits) - that left me with probably another 1500 photos to scan on my own... they fill up a post office size plastic bin- and are a "winter" project that has now moved south...LOL Oh and I wanted to get my recipes scanned (about half done) and get my six large lateral file drawers full of files cleaned out- zero % done...
You might think - WTF does she do with all her time? Because 9/30/11 I finished part time and went fully retired (except for consulting work) and then 12/31/13 I gave up consulting too (it was getting in the way of life- LOL!) - and if you read the blog regularly you will know what I do with my time- the important stuff... travel travel travel, take lots of photographs, blog about the things I do, go to the theater, explore new restaurants and old favorite ones, go to museums, go to concerts..... for a year I decorated a new winter home (and built at least thirteen pieces of furniture - LOL)
but still there are those unfinished business items nagging away at me- the scanning, the closets and THE BOOKS (LOL) I have always been a reader and e-books and Kindle are a real boon to those of us who accumulate books. However- I have lots of unread books (the "I'll get to it later" books) around the house and those too were targeted for when I had time... When we moved into this house (two bedrooms-six closets) from our old place (five bedrooms-thirteen closets) we donated literally hundreds of books to libraries (a guy in my office was on a local library board in exurbia and was thrilled to take them) but still... many things remain yet to be read- on shelves scattered around the house...
so- of late I have been working on the cellulose fetish (as our son Jeremy call it) style books - and this week I knocked off two of them despite having company and being out of town and blogging about last week's travel - so I do feel like I am making headway... here are the two I have done this past week-
Laura Rider's Masterpiece is really funny - a black comedy of manners that has something for everyone, a hero who sees space aliens, a torrid affair in Indian themed motels in rural Wisconsin LOL, an oblivious aspiring writer and an NPR host whose mid-life crisis creates the laugh out loud funny narrative. An excellent beach read (no doubt you read it on the beach something like ten years ago when it first came out - LOL)
This book was one I bought because I love love loved his A Spot of Bother which was one of the funniest books I have ever read and one I can highly recommend as a "must" read! This one not so much- it is painful to read - the central character and narrator is an autistic boy who wants to find out who killed the neighbor's dog and as a result discovers much about his world and his capability of dealing with life in the process of emulating detectives he knows from books/movies/TV... your heart goes out to the kid who has such a difficult time with every little task due to his condition but it isn't a "light" read. So unless you have a burning desire to get into the mind of a person suffering from autism I would give this one a pass.
and I did finally finish Craig Ferguson's Between the Bridge and the River which was extremely entertaining in specific passages and mostly funny throughout but lacked a truly cohesive narrative (IMHO) so I left that one behind in the hotel room in Portland last week...
not sure what's up next, but I have lots to do before I head to Duluth on Tuesday so maybe nothing until I get back--- these retirement projects can get so overwhelming- LOL.... who has that kind of time? but it can and will wait- because if there is one thing my sister's death taught me it was to focus on today... and what I want to do TODAY... so today I am going to say goodbye to cousin Iddo and send him off with best wishes for a return to the US soon and for him and all his family in Israel to be safe and then I will start thinking about packing for the upcoming DART trip and whatever else shows up - shows up... grateful to be here and to be able to do pretty much what I want when I want to...oh, and have I mentioned lately how much I love being retired? Now four years away from the day to day grind of the office, I barely think about all those decades... and that is the way it should be for retirees like me (and in two weeks my husband will be retired as well!)
looking forward to the Maritime Provinces in August/September and Italy in October and returning to our winter place in November.. life is good!
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