Good morning Kossacks and welcome to Morning Open Thread.
We're here every morning at 6:30 a.m Eastern time. Feel free to volunteer to take a day - permanent or just once in awhile. With the autopublish feature you can set it and forget it. Quite often the diarist de jour shows up much later (like me), that's the beauty of Open Thread...it carries on without you! Just let us know in the comments.
You know how you pile up stuff to do when you get around to it, or the mail piles up, or you've got stacks of unread magazines? Well, that's the kind of day I've been having, because I realized that I just can't get my mind focused on anything really important until I get all those little things taken care of.
Maybe it's because I have most of the week off - just a couple of short kiddie concerts tomorrow and that's it. I could really use the rest.
Perhaps I was inspired to "clean house" on Saturday night when I got home after work. You see, my mom almost threw out my old Barbie dolls a couple years ago, so I brought them back to Nashville with me, where they promptly took up residence on the floor in the corner for about a year and a half. I tried contacting some doll experts, but once I sent pictures and they found out that I hadn't kept these things in the original boxes, but had actually PLAYED with them in the early 60's, they weren't interested. So, just for kicks I placed an ad on Craigslist, pulled a dollar amount out of thin air (to be polite about it), and forgot about it until I got an e-mail from a woman who was going to buy them. I got $500 cash last night for what you see here.
Of course, I'll probably see her on Antiques Roadshow in a few months getting a check for $10K, but that will be fine with me. It got me started on taking care of "stuff."
Other "stuff" that I'm taking care of? Well, I just got my front door lock fixed to the tune of $90. It took the guy all of 10 minutes. Too bad I didn't want to pay cash, because I had some laying around. Then, I've got a stack of magazines I haven't read. If they are cooking magazines, I go online and save all the recipes I want to save, then I recycle the magazines. In the old days before computers, I used to cut the recipes out and save them in a book, and then never make them. Now I can save them online and never make them. Then, I put another ad on Craigslist to get rid of an old massage table that was taking up space in a closet. I want to put some shelving in there and store my office supplies for my new business out of sight. Later this week a friend of mine is going to help me move some furniture that needed to be moved about two years ago. Do I sound like a procrastinator? All I know is that I do not have a talent for keeping things straight. I'm sort of a housekeeping version of Pig Pen. Honest to God, I can have someone clean the house and straighten it up (when I can afford it) and as soon as I walk through a room, everything falls into a pile of dishevel behind me. So, I'm going to try to "shevel" a bit more this week. (And another thing, why is there "Dishevel" but no "shevel"?? No "combobulate"? Whatever...)
I did manage to practice, go for an 8-mile bike ride, and start on my taxes. (Mitt gets to hide his millions off shore, but the IRS wants to know that I got .76 in interest on my savings account last year? REALLY?????? That is so messed up!@!) I digress. I guess sometimes you just have to waste some time to clear your head before you can concentrate again.
So, time to jibber jabber. I might be here, or I might not, but at least the diary will be, and so will y'all.