The joy of stuff

I was able to do a bit of a sift on my desk. It took three hours to take about half the boxes off and then put them back in slightly different spots. It only cleared a small spot of table space, but it moved a whole bunch of boxes that I need to go through to the front so that I can access them easier. This should allow me to keep working away at it when I have time.

I do still have a lot of stuff, but so much of it still brings me joy. I am slowly becoming less attached to some older stuff. I have moved a lot in my life, a few times before I started school, and five times since. I am currently in the place that I have lived the longest – at over 16 years.

We still have a few years before the kids move out and we get to reclaim those rooms. Until then, I need to work with the space I have currently. I hope to finally unpack some boxes from 2 moves ago and reclaim my desktop in order to start doing stuff again.

Then I can work at reorganizing the storage locker to make it more of a living storage that I can access and get thing out of instead of an oubliette where things get put in to be forgotten. I will need to get a good shelf for the boxes of books, as well as some of those rolling shelves to allow me to move things to get to the items in the back easier.

desk achieved

With getting things ready downstairs for the holidays, I have been cleaning my desk. Mostly by a process I call sifting. This is where I take the piles of things that get dumped on my desk and sort them into like groups and package them down. My wife also ‘helped’ me with this – but she did it by taking a lot off my desk and strewing it across the room and leaving me to sift and put it back and then she put even more on my desk.

Even with this, I was able to box things down, organize a bit, and clear out a little bit to make the desk look reasonable. It still has a bunch of stuff on it, but at least it looks more cohesive and less hoardish. I will need to move a few things to be able to work on it, but it shouldn’t be too much trouble to do so.

I remain optimistic about being able to start getting things done for next year.

Been Busy - part 5

October has been a very busy month - mostly with chores and renovations though.

We finished painting the outside of the house, including the trim.  The kids were very helpful with painting.  I also managed to paint the exposed platform of the new shed - which  should help it last a bit longer through the weather.

We replaced the fascia on the back of the house - which included painting the boards before putting them up.  Changing the lower fascia involved removing the eavestrough and putting it back.  I was concerned that this would very difficult but it went quite easily.

My brother came over and replaced the outside lights with motion sensor versions.  He also replaced some of the loose switches inside.  Being a electrician, he swaps them out without pulling the breakers which always makes me a bit nervous.

I was able to get to the storage locker and spend about two hours sifting the contents.  I pulled out a bunch of the boxes and restacked the plastic tubs together and put a bunch of the cardboard boxes on a skid.  I was also able to move some of the more needed boxes to more handy locations to make them easier to get as needed.  This should allow even more boxes to be stored.

It stayed warm enough for my dad to come over and help replace some of the trim which had rotted with flashing and new boards.  If the weather holds later this week, I hope to get a layer of paint on it before the snow comes.  While he had his table saw here we also cut the wood to put together a bench for the shed. This should let me stack things better and move more stuff out of the old shed before the squirrel settles in for the winter.
Sifted storage locker.

been busy - part 3 - moved storage

On Saturday morning, we got the kids up and moved everything out of our old 10’ x 10’ storage locker into a new 10’ x 15’ storage locker. With everyone’s help it only took about 3 hours and, in the resifting, we were able to stack a lot better. 

I will still need to spend some time moving around what’s left in there to better stack the rest of it, and the wife wants to move more out of the basement storage and hallway to free up some extra space so that we can move more off of my desk to be able to use it again. 

A day off?

With the continued good weather we finished cleaning the shed and raking the yards. We trimmed more of the tree over the pool and garden and (more importantly) were able to clean up most of the wood from those branches. A lot of the wood from last year has dried out nicely so we’re looking forward to some fires.

Shan was talking about getting a few yards of dirt for the garden and a few yards of gravel for the driveway. But, so far, she hasn’t ordered either.

Which means that I don’t have anything scheduled to do tomorrow on my day off. Maybe I’ll try to sift into my room to find my 40K figures or even try to clean up my stuff around the table again. I should move the compost bin and cut up more of the tree branches – but we see what I actually get done.

at odds

I’m off next week so I probably won’t be able to update as often – my home connection is not so solid. Unless I get presented with a to-do list, I’m basically free-range for the week. Depending on the weather, I may have to move around some snow to help it thaw. I’m thinking I’ll try and paint some figures and try to take some more pictures for boardgamegeek.

I also started making an Indiana Jones satchel for my son so I might try to finish sewing and dye it. My daughter also wants one too.

If I have time, I might do a quick sift of my room. I may even work at the Man O War ships I started years ago. I might do some terrain.
We’ll see what I can actually get done.

clean up

So Shan pushed a bit of a clean-up in preparation for the holidays. She usually does this a couple times a year and it’s always hard for me. Maybe it’s because of all the moving I did as a child, but I’m quite attached to my stuff. I have got several boxes in my room that have had their contents in them for well over a decade. Granted, a lot of these are games or figures that I simply don’t have room to play right now.

Being a gamer doesn’t help. I’ve had to purge many boxes of plastic bottles and Styrofoam bits that would be perfect for scenery, modeling, or costuming but that I won’t have room to use for a few years yet. I’ve got well over 6 boxes of figures, rules, and scenery for Warhammer and 40K alone. Plus with my proclivity to upsize, this just makes for more space needed.

I’m hoping the upgrades on the house will help. Depending on how much we have to downgrade our big plans, I may have to make some hard cuts sooner than later. Ideally, I’ll have enough space to do some serious projects and will be able to make use of many of the boxes. The rest, I should be able to sift into something much more usable.

All that said, after four trips to drop off stuff at Value Village, the basement does look very nice – for now.

Holiday recap

Holidays were nice. I didn’t get a lot actually finished on my list but did move a few chores further along. It was nice and relaxing.

The sift on the room is coming along quite nicely. For those who don’t know, it still looks over-packed but it is more organized and I’ve actually cleared about 5 boxes worth of stuff. Not that I’ve gotten rid of 5 boxes of stuff – just condensed and reorganized with a bit actually being removed.

I had gotten the computer working relatively well again. At least up until Sunday, when it refused to achieve startup again. That’s too bad as it looked like we could delay an upgrade for a bit longer.

We popped by Keycon and visited the dealer’s room. We actually ran into most of the people that we would have attended to see anyways. I ran into Brian (not TSR Brian) - who is running the gaming at the ComicCon this fall. He asked me if I wanted to run some games. He wanted to see Circus Imperium and I also suggested I might be able to upsize RoboRally by then – so now I have to bump that up on my list of things to do.

Sifting / movies

I’m back. Didn’t get a lot done on my list last week. I did fix the coffee table – which had been wobbly. The dusting of snow on Sunday prevented yardwork – like turning the garden.
I did start a sift of the boxes in my room. I pulled out most of the boxes and have rearranged them a bit and moved some around and have cleared 4 boxes so far. It may not sound like much but it’s almost a whole stack and will make it easier to get in and continue working away at it.

On the weekend we did catch two comic book movies. We finally saw Ghost Rider on TV. It was a fairly close adaptation of the series. They did use Dan’s costume with Johnny Blaze though. He’s always been a tough on as Johnny didn’t really have any major villains (mostly using his hellfire against thugs) and Dan mostly fought demons using the penance stare. Visually though, it did look quite good. A flaming skull is always a good image.

The other one we saw was Iron Man. This has easily moved to the top of my list of best comic book movie adaptations. Luckily, there’s still a war on, so his origin didn’t need to be tweaked too much. There were a few forgivable changes (electromagnet to keep fragments vs a pacemaker, and making Stane a business partner) but it very much was very true to the books I remember. I do miss Jarvis as a British butler but I can understand him being changed to make him look like less of a Bruce Wayne copy.
All-in-all, a great adaptation. Plus the SHIELD (with upgraded acronym) and Ultimate Fury cameo were very cool. The other neat thing, his big energy device is basically a Tesla coil – I’m into my second Telsa book so it’s apparent.

new to do list - 2008

I have a week off at the end of this month and another the week of the May long weekend. There will be yardwork and housework but I am hopeful that I should be able to move along some projects.

Right now, I still have my alien egg that is partially buried in my room. I would like to be able to finish a few layers to get it ready to paint.

I have to do another good sift of my room – pulling out most of the boxes and getting rid of a bit more stuff.

I have the fiberglass shells that I pulled from the molds when we made the plaster bust of my head. I hope to be able to put them together to be able to build up masks and helmets.

I would like to transfer some of the files on disks and on the computer to CDs or DVDs while I still can access them.

I need to paint my son’s 40K figures from the Battle for Macragge set. I would also like to make him a nice figure case for them as well so they don’t get all banged up after being painted and so I don’t have to keep fixing the ankles on the Genestealers.

I have to finish the model kits for Canvas Eagles and come up with a good storage set for them. If this goes well, I would like to try to scratchbuild a few planes to use for Crimson Skies – either for an upsized Air action or for the Aces game as scenery. http://www.wizkidsgames.com/crimsonskies/documents/CSAcesRules.pdf

I have to paint up more figures for Fairy Meat as well as make some weapons. I also want to post up here about upsizing it - with pictures.

I want to see if I can paint the Aliens Swam figures I picked up to use for upsized Aliens board game. If that goes well, I want to see about upsizing the board itself.

I want to make a 3D board for Horrorclix - either the main graveyard board or maybe some of the AVP boards. The Freddy VS Jason boards look nice too.

Now that I finally picked up some red stretch fabric (for the mask), I can finally start work on my Human Spider costume.

I’m also thinking about starting some card or styrene titans in 40K scale.

We'll see how weather and time conspire to let me achieve these or not. Plus how the to do list from the wife affects my time. The last fortune cookie I got did say "Success will come to your plans." So we will see.

It always rains on composter day

Raining again today. We picked up another Earth Machine. Every year, around this time, the city cuts a deal with the company to sell them for $25 - supposedly they have an otherwise retail value of $85 - not that I've ever seen them on sale any other time. We had bought one about 5 years ago - after we had moved here from our old place. There we had two wooden boxes - one for leaves and one for compost. The one for leaves is holding up well but the other wooden composter is going to be replaced by the new plastic one. We also picked up an aerator and a kitchen pail. I was turning them sporadically before with an old pitchfork but, now that we have two, figured we splurge for the aerator.

Friday I had gotten a Reaper of Souls in the mail. I had bought one before from ebay - but the seller flaked. Now the only unique left from the first set that I am missing is the Avatar of Cthulhu.

I had taken the car in on Thursday to get the muffler fixed. It needed the tailpipe and the exhaust pipe as well. A little over $300 when all done but that's one less problem with it now. I had finished reading the Survivor book by Mark Burnett - we've followed each season since the beginning so it was kind of neat to hear some of the back story. It was a quick read but could have used a few labels on some of the pictures as it has been a while and not all the Survivors were familiar.

I also finished the Planet Simpson book as well. It was interesting but not nearly as quick a read. We took them back to the library. I had to drop them through the slot as our library had moved to summer hours - where they are no longer open on Saturdays as well as being closed on Sundays.

Yesterday I was able to put a good couple of hours work on the room. I didn't get nearly as deep as I had hoped for my break, but was able to sift a few things around and clear up significant portion of the working area. Today, I'm going to try and get into the closet (filled with model kits) and see if I can sort then down a bit better.

David