Tag Stuff

Land of Plenty

Michael 7 Comments

I have seen the Land of Plenty and it doubles as my apartment. It’s closing in one three years that I downsized from a 2000+sq.ft. house to a 700sq.ft. apartment and it was time to take stock of that which I decided was worthy of making the change with me. So I did and I discovered that I should have put downsize in quotes.

Clothes are easy. If you haven’t worn it in a year you’re not going to wear in another. Tuxedos excluded. But how do you know when it’s time to let go of those bath towels. I don’t know how I decided which towels to bring with me on the move but however it was it was not well thought out. I ended up with 14 bath towels in my linen closet; there are also 12 hand towels and 14 wash cloths. (No, I don’t have an explanation for the discrepancy. Just go with it.) I can change full towel sets every day and not be concerned with having to do a load of bath linens for half a month.

Bed linen seems to have actually grown since my life reduction. Still I am the proud owner (ok, I am the owner) of seven complete sheets sets each with 4 pillow cases, two comforters, 4 blankets, and two dust ruffles. I know men who can’t even recognize a dust ruffle. Why do I have two? That might have been appropriate for a three bedroom house but for a single bedroom hovel, per sleeping space I probably outpace some major hotel chains.

KitchenToolsThe kitchen hasn’t been spared its own review. There I’ve had the benefit of slowly transferring pieces to my daughter whenever she says things like “I really need a new blender,” and I can come back with “Before you go to Target you can have one of mine.” Even shifting a blender off to her I still have two (one standard, one immersion). I also still have two food processors and two slow cookers even though she has taken possession of one of each of those, and for some reason I have two coffee makers.

Somehow the number and sizes of my pots and pans are appropriate but the kitchen tools are out of control. Do I really need three potato mashers? I rarely even eat potatoes. How many slotted spoons should grace one small kitchen? If the answer is four I have just enough. Spatulas, turners, and spoons fill two utensil crocks on the small counter. One drawer holds three zesters, two peelers, and a garlic press.

Even the glassware hasn’t escaped consideration for further reduction. A man who doesn’t drink does not need a complete set of 4 each red and white wine glasses, champagne flutes, and martini, rocks, and pilsner glasses. And an ice bucket.

Yes I think it’s time for another elimination round. There’s always the tried and true garage sale. I certainly have enough to make for an interesting afternoon of browsing for some people. I could donate them all to the local St. Vincent dePaul Society. If I did I’d not ask for a receipt for taxes or I’d certainly be setting myself up for an audit down the road. I could post them for sale on line but then I’d have to worry about taking pictures and shipping or meeting a complete stranger in a parking lot to hand over a stir fry pan. No I think the easiest thing to do is just leave them all where they are and let my heirs fight over them when I’m gone.

By then they should be museum quality antiques.

———-

WTC

Photo: Jeff Mock via WikiMedia Commons

TRRSB Extra: Say World Trade Center terrorist attack and your first thought probably goes to Sept 11, 2001. But that wasn’t the first terrorist attack on the New York skyscraper. That came 25 years ago today on 26 February 1993 when 15 people conspired and parked a rental van packed with 1200 pounds of explosives in the parking garage beneath the towers. Six people including a pregnant woman were killed and over 1,000 injured in the blast that also caused over $590 million in damage.

The FBI called the van bomb the “largest by weight and by damage of any improvised explosive device that we’ve seen since the inception of forensic explosive identification.” The World Trade Center’s sprinklers, generators, elevators, public address system, emergency command center, and more than half of the incoming electricity lines to the buildings were destroyed in the attack.

Sometime today please take a moment to remember the victims of the forgotten attack on the World Trade Center.

 

Dogs can’t read MRI’s…

Michael 7 Comments

..but catscan!

Ok, that has nothing to do with today’s post but I couldn’t come up with a post where it would have relevance and I really wanted to use it.

But then again maybe it does go with today’s post because today’s post really doesn’t go with anything else. It’s a sort of “things I think I think” bunch of things that I think I thought this week.

  • I was at a book store, a real book store with real books and all, and there was a display of cookbooks. I always like cookbooks so I went over and the first one I picked up was a paleo cookbook and the first thing I thought was the same thing I thought every time I see a paleo cookbook. How do they know?
  • I saw a post come across my Facebook time line (and I wondered who came up with that name, but I always think that) that said dogs and cats can see apparitions. And I thought things not unlike when I think of paleo cookbooks. How do they know?
  • Why do cable companies advertise specials for “new subscribers only” on exclusive subscriber only channels?
  • Why are chilies hot but hotties are far from cold? (Originally I was going to use “Why are chilies hot?” as today’s title.) (In case you were wondering.)
  • How can 17 bad guys empty all of their machine guns and the hero doesn’t even get wounded while he hides behind a telephone pole yet he manages to never miss a shot with his little pistol? And how do they even write that up in the screenplay direction notes? “Bad guys shoot poorly?”
  • Can it still be called “breaking news” if it happened yesterday?
  • What’s the other half of a semiprecious stone?
  • Why is the opposite of “pro” con, anti, and amateur?

Will this never end?

 

 

 

I Didn’t Know That (Ooops, corrected copy)

Michael 1 Comment

I recall a time when a graduate student would say something and by gosh, that was the way it was. It was sort of like the 1970s (ugh) equivalent of the Internet. You know darn well that 99.9% of what is on it would be disallowed in a court of law as hearsay, unfounded, or speculative, yet there is that part of you that is sure if you read it there, just as we used to be sure if we heard it from them, then it must be true.

There is no end to the things that I am sure are true. Well, that’s probably a bit overstated. I’m sure there is some end but I figure my end is closer than that end so to me it’s all endless. However, there are still some things that I don’t know that I want to add to the things that are true before one of those ends shows up around the bend.

For example, I know exactly where dust comes from. (If you don’t, don’t look it up, it’s disgusting! Ok, I’ll tell you. It’s mostly sloughed off skin. Yuck.) But I have no idea how I get dust inside a closed cabinet. Is that where the kitchen fairies who clean up the messes and put the dishes away hang out and let their skin hang out with them. If so, why are they just hanging out in my drawers and cabinets and not wiping the kitchen experiments gone awry off the counters and walls.

Another thing I can’t figure out is radio. I’m an educated person, a science educated person, who actually understands (and can spell) gluconeogenesis. I understand the theory of radio waves and how transmitters excite the air and receivers replicate the original wave patterns. But I have no idea how they know which is which. They say (“They” being the grad students of the 70s from whom I first heard this and “They” also being the Internet of the new millennium where I confirmed this just yesterday) that radio waves never stop. Whatever has been still is. So if everything ever transmitted – radio, television, cell phones, CB radios, walkie talkies, blue tooth, satellite radio, GPS, and the thousands of other things that I’ve forgotten or never knew about – is still floating around out there, how does my car always know what station to pluck out of the air for me? Personally, I think it’s magic.

They (there go them again) claim that it takes more calories to eat celery than celery contains making it a true negative calorie food. Assuming that you consider celery food. I’ll buy that because I can read how many calories celery contains (6 calories per stalk according to some sources) and how many calories it takes to chew, swallow, digest, and -ummm- eliminate celery (8 calories based on a University of Warwick study when extrapolated per stalk). I even know what a calorie is. That is, the energy needed to raise one gram of water one degree centigrade. And I know that the US FDA wants to require that calorie content of food be included in labeling, menus, even on vending machines. What I have no idea of is how you figure out how many calories a food has. Does burning that one stalk of celery raise one gram of water by six degrees? Or to make it more easily measured would you burn 1,440 stalks of celery to attempt to raise the temperature of one cup of water 240 degrees? And how would you even do that with a Quarter Pounder with Cheese or an Extra Crispy Chicken Little Sandwich, or a pack of Grandma’s Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies (the vending pack)?

So, in an Internet filled with people proclaiming all the things that they know, there you have a few things I am willing to admit that I don’t know. If you do, please feel free to add your comment and add to the things that I know and help me get the end a little further away from that other end. One thing though, even if you do know, I really don’t want to know how to measure how many calories are burned by digesting a bowl of chocolate moose tracks ice cream. Some things are best left a mystery.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad

Michael Leave a comment

What would you do if someone told you that you had to lose two-thirds of all that you have? I told myself that and it’s hard!

Eventually I’m going to be moving. I can’t navigate the different levels of my house nor maintain the building and surrounding yard. Even with the help of family and neighbors, the time to downsize has come. If you haven’t yet, someday you will consider living somewhere smaller and of less maintenance.  I recall an apartment I had that consisted of one smallish room about 15 by 20 feet, a galley kitchen so small you had to stand to the side when you opened the refrigerator door, and a bathroom so small you had to sit to the side when you…when, you…umm, you know. Anyway, that would be a good size for me now.

Instead I now live in about 1900 sq. ft. of house, ten rooms each fully furnished, and every closet and storage area filled to capacity. The plan is to move into a four room, 700 sq. ft. apartment, give or take. And boy is there a lot of giving going on!

Everybody knows the “rules” of keeping a handle on one’s stuff. If you haven’t worn it yet this year, donate it! If you haven’t cooked with it in the past six months, get rid of it! If you haven’t read that paper since your last tax filing, shred it! (Copies of tax returns notwithstanding.)  Those rules work well under most circumstances. But these aren’t most.

What do you do with the roasting pan that you use only one time a year at Thanksgiving but you have plenty of storage space so you let it hang out for the other 364 days? What should become of that big puffy coat that you wear only when it goes below zero and that only happens once every 3 years? What happens to the clock shaped like a football your father gave you for Christmas when you were ten?

More than one person has told me that stuff is stuff. You’ll haven’t had twenty people over for Thanksgiving dinner for 15 years and if you want to roast a turkey it will be a small one and either get a disposable pan or deal with what you have. It has been below zero once in the past 12 years and you didn’t go out that day anyway. And it took you 3 weeks to find that clock in the back of the garage.

Yep, stuff is stuff and there’s still going to be plenty left. So when it comes time to downsize your life, close your eyes, pick two of every three things to shed, and move on. I’m getting rid of the roaster and coat.

Now, that’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?