That's the fashion in which I continue to live.

I start the day with roaming through the job sites and sending in resumes for those jobs (three today) that sound marginally interesting. I check my email, scan the headlines, swallow several mean remarks about the ghastly mess Bush&Co are making of our country (I am not going to get sucked back into politiblogging*), read my email, surf through the blogs and journals of a few friends, and then I'm usually offline for most of the rest of the day.

I go to the grocery store a couple of times a week (if you're practically living on fresh fruit, you need to make at least two trips a week to keep stocked up) and hit the Farmers' Market on Saturdays (Rocky Ford cantaloupes! The world's most fabulous peaches!).

Other than that, I hoard money. Knowing I have expensive dental work in my immediate future helps me control my urge to cheer myself up with new books and toys (although it didn't stop me from having a little amazon.com "accident" the other day).

I clean sporadically (kitchen and bathroom yesterday), tidy occasionally (that drafting table in the bedroom is out of control again), and do a load or two of laundry once or twice a week.

I watch some DVDs occasionally (just finished S1 and S2 of the new Doctor Who series again and while David Tennant is good, I really loved Christopher Eccleston and I wish he'd been with us longer) and a little television (okay, mostly just Doctor Who and the show I mentioned before, Clean House.) (And sometimes Jeopardy. I love Jeopardy. I mage $30k the other day!)

I watched that show Dail mentioned, the one on BBCAmerica. "How Clean Is your House?" I was expecting a British version of Clean House. I was not expecting to be treated to the sight of a family living in a place they said had not been cleaned in 16 years--or close-up views of a bathroom that proved it. It was the most sincerely disgusting thing I've seen in years (and the primary reason I tore apart my kitchen and bathroom and cleaned them yesterday).

Sporadically, I tidy. On today's schedule is the final sorting of All Those Boxes in the living room. I need to sort out the Things To Be Shipped** (so I know what boxes I need) from the Things To Be Appraised And Sold. The R.C. is pretty firm about all of those coins needing to go into the To Be Sold category, even though I still think they're cool to look at.

I guess she's right. It's not like I'm going to burst forth as a major coin collector or anything, so there's no point in keeping even just a handful of them for that once every year or two moment when I might want to look at them. Technically they were left to her, so if she wants to get rid of them, that's her choice.

Anyhow. We got the name of an appraiser a week or so ago, from a woman working in an antique place. For some reason the R.C. is convinced that we need to be careful not to be robbed by this person. While I agree that having an inventory of the stuff we turn over to them is just sensible, I can't understand why she thinks a bonded and insured firm is going to risk their business and reputation snagging any of our not-very-valuable junk?

If the entire pile o'stuff, aside from the Hummels, is worth $500, I'll be very surprised. (The Hummels are worth about $5k at retail, but we won't be selling them at retail and I figure we'll be lucky beyond lucky to find someone willing to take all of them off our hands for $1-2k).

Still. I made the commitment that I'd handle sorting and disposing of the stuff so, while she's more than willing to help, I think it's time and past time I dealt with these last few boxes.

And then I read and read and read.

Having finished all of the available Tolkien, I picked up Spacehounds of IPC at the used bookstore the other day and that got me started re-reading all of my E. E. "Doc" Smith books again.

Long-time readers know that I have a fondness for Golden Age SF (and detective) stories. I'm regretting that most of my SF&Fantasy is in boxes in storage but I know that in order to bring them out, I'm going to have to choose some hundreds of other volumes to pack away.

I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet.

And yet--I know that storage unit is in my immediate future. I have boxes full o'stuff (of the nonbook variety) that need to be sorted and disposed of. Old financial papers to be shredded, old school yearsbooks & debris to be tossed out, that kind of thing.

As soon as I have the living room floor cleaned of the current load of boxes, I'll get started.

____________________

* I actually started politiblogging during a previous stint of unemployment when I had lots of time, not a lot of money, and a lot of energy to burn off. But that was PM (pre-meds) and now that I have my thyroid balanced and no longer suffer (enjoy?) those manic bouts of frenetic mental energy, it all seems so futile....)

____________________

** I've decided to ship the detritus of Dad's army career to my brother. Of the four of us, I think he's the only one that might be interested in having that kind of thing.

And, Jonathan, a closer examination of the pictures revealed that most of them were taken in the camp "near Kimpo" and "Yong Dung Poe" although his spelling isn't reliable. There are a few from Seoul and a couple vaguely labeled "in Japan" but I think that's about as much 'location' information as we're likely to get.

He drove a truck at a quarry for the 811th Engineer Aviation Battalion, which was apparently a "SCARWAF" (Special Category Army with Air Force) unit that helped build and maintain runways. I found some information -- here (scroll down to "Background on SCARWAF") and there -- online.