A Place for My Stuff

I Dream of Billion Dalek Babies. On the Rock.

Know any Doctor Who fans? Alice Cooper fans?

If so, go click on the eBay banner on the left, and give them that link.  I've got stuff for sale that needs to make its way into the right home.

Speaking of eBay, I managed to sell two other things, though outside of eBay.  One of these was a set of stuff from House on the Rock (2 VHS tapes, audio tape, and my DVD/CD copies of both).  eBay initially yanked the item because it included digital copies, which I think is ridiculous if you're going to be selling them with the original items.  Bastards.  Fortunately, I remembered a fellow House on the Rock fan who found me on YouTube, and I asked if she was interested.  She was, but only wanted to handle it off of eBay.  The price she offered was what she had in mind anyway.

  

The other item was "Controlling Your Dreams", an instructional tape on lucid dreaming by Stephen LaBerge.  I bought it 20 years ago from Pyramid Books in Salem.  Over those past 20 years, I've been studying lucid dreaming and recording my dreams here and there.  Lucid dreaming isn't bogus; it is an actual learnable skill, though it has limitations.  So I passed this on, along with a remastered version I made of the recording and burned to CD, to a LD enthusiast I know from a message board.

In other news, I went to half-day class on "Skills Assessments" today, provided for by my local Employment & Training Resources building.  And I've got a Myers-Briggs test at the same place this month too.  I'd like to say more about these sorts of things, but not now.  Maybe later.

Airing Dirty Laundry. Literally.

Quite some time ago, I came to the realization that have more clothes than I have space to put them in.  Or rather, not enough space for all my CLEAN clothes.  If I always have some dirty clothes in my laundry bag, then it works.  Otherwise, as I've found out, cleaning all of my clothes leaves me with not much room.

What's the best solution?  Getting a bigger bureau?  A second bureau?  If you've been following this blog, you can probably guess that the answer is NO.  I'm sure I can make better use of my closet and other space, but a more practical solution is to get rid of some of the stuff I never wear.

This is a task that I'm sure will show up in more detail in the future.  For the moment, let's just focus on whites.  No, not Caucasians. I mean white loads of laundry.

 

Don't get all grossed out by the discolorations.  Those are from socks and dishrags, not underwear.

So my girlfriend visits and announces that she needs to do a load of white laundry.  I told that I have some white laundry, WAY down at the bottom of my laundry bag.  Since I don't wear too many white clothes, I can usually do all of my whites in one load.  As I type this, my whites are in the dryer.  Once they're done, here are some of the things I'm either going to throw away, or give to the local thrift store:

• Dish/dust rag.  Nasty, ratty, and I don't really use them anyway.  As explained a week or two ago, I use disposable dust rags for dusting.  As for dish rags, I use either paper towels or one of my other not-so-ratty rags.  Besides, isn't a "dish rag" the stereotypical item of no value?
• Worn-out white socks.  I'll pretty much only wear white socks during the summer when I'm wearing shorts that aren't black, or sometimes in the winter when I'm wearing long pants and tall boots such that you couldn't see my socks anyway.  And yes, those are the conditions: boots tall enough, pant cuffs coming low enough.  I am NOT one of those schmucks who wears white socks with black pants, where you can see the tops of their socks!  OK, I'll forgive Michael Jackson for wearing that, because that was a trend that he started and he made all of his own, and it had a practical purpose (do draw people's attention to his moon-walking feet).  But the rest of you people who do that: STOP!  Do what I did a long time ago, and buy black socks.
• Briefs.  More on this below.

I'm going to answer that eternal question that people love to ask men: "Boxers, or briefs"?  Before I get straight to the answer, here's a little background on my personal undergarment history.

There comes a time in a teen's life where he or she stops and realizes "I don't like the clothes that mom has always been buying me.  And now that I can buy my own clothes, I'm going to get something different."  Maybe for some people it doesn't happen until well into adulthood, if ever. But this issue for me has manifested itself in underwear.

My father wears briefs.  So when my brother and I were growing up, that's what we wore too.  I found out later in college that they're also known as "tighty whiteys".  Probably the cheapest underwear you can find in the stores.  At some point, my brother discovered that he enjoyed wearing boxer shorts (a.k.a. "boxers") immensely more.  He has long since sworn off briefs.

Personally, I don't like wearing boxers.  As for why, well let me put it in as simple terms as I can, and let your imagination clarify the rest: when I wear boxers, I feel like a grandfather clock.  (If you still don't get the pun, think "pendulum").  But I really don't like briefs either, because sometimes they feel like they're cutting off the circulation to my legs.  The solution?  Boxer-briefs.  That's what I wear every day.

Unfortunately I have some of those "tighty whiteys" still in the laundry collection.  Some of them I've had since...damn, I don't even want to wonder.  Maybe as an adult I kept getting some as lame Xmas presents from my parents.  Why do I keep them?  Well, like many people, I have that "underwear reserve" pile way in the back of one of my draws, where the stuff I like wearing the least gets shoved back, until I have no more clean underwear left and thus the reserves must be tapped.  But this time, no more.  The briefs have got to go.  Buying more underwear, namely of the kind you like, is worth the budget, even in these tough economic times.  We're talking about the comfort of my genitals, for christ's sake.

And that makes a horrible segue into this next item, the veggie peeler:

So my girlfriend and I are cooking dinner at my place, and eventually she gives up peeling the cucumbers and hands the cucumber and the peeler to me.  After several predictable phallus jokes involving the cucumber, I proceed with the peeling. 

This was probably the same peeler that my mother used when I was a kid.  All of those nutrients I received though childhood, were processed along with this little instrument.  And boy, was this thing old.  It worked, but not so well.  But I get the peel off and it's time to chop.  Much to the shock of my girlfriend, I announce that yes, this bachelor does own a chopping knife.  In the far right draw.  She opens the draw and says "Son of a bitch!  There's a NEWER peeler in here!"  She takes it out, works it over the ill-peeled cucumber, and it runs smooth as anything.  She then throws away the old peeler.

If she didn't throw it out, I would have thrown it out myself, or put it in the pile for the thrift shop.  I'll leave you now with some words from Don Aslett's Clutter's Last Stand:

"Is [a] second-best [item] clutter or 'just-in-case'?  Add up all your second-bests and tell me what you're doing with them now. [...]  Why did you obtain a best?  That's easy: because you were unhappy with the old one -- it was worn, old, getting ugly, not working right any more, or you were simply tired of it.  Why do we keep things we're not happy with? No answer, except that we're clutter collectors. [...]  Sure, there's some glimmer of hope for those old worn watches, stiff work boots, leaky air mattresses, the bike with the bent frame, the too-small briefcase, that battered and shabby purse, that balding dress coat, the nicked butcher knife with the cracked handle, your no-longer-favorite rifle -- [but] just once you have the new in hand those seconds have [like a piece of gum] lost their flavor."

Cassette stuff, part 2

And now, some more ramblings about audio cassettes.

Like VHS, audio cassette tapes are hard to get rid of.  You can't even find used CD stores who will take them these days.  They're scoffed at as being an unwanted medium.

It goes to ridiculous lengths, though.  I remember seeing the debut CD from Badlands on eBay.  For those who don't remember, they were a supergroup formed by former members of Black Sabbath (Ray Gillen, Eric Singer), and Ozzy Osbourne's former guitarist (Jake E. Lee).  Back in the day when this came out, tapes were reigning supreme, so not many bought the CD.  The CD went quickly out of print, so I saw it here in this auction going for over $100.  Meanwhile, the cassette probably wouldn't even sell for five bucks.  Yes, I know that people fear cassette tapes because unlike CDs, cassettes can get worn over the years, or get damage from magnets or the sun or something else.  But if you want the album so badly that you'd pay over $100 for it, can having the cassette be THAT bad of an alternative?

Fortunately, I've managed to get rid of a lot my tapes over the years, which would otherwise just be taking up room and collecting dust in cases on my living room floor.  A few years back I gave a couple dozen to a woman I was dating at the time.  She was divorced and lost most of her music collection to her ex-husband, but had a lounging room in her apartment with a cassette boom box.  So she was happy to accept some of the stuff I gave her.  And just about all of it, that 80s metal she and I unashamedly loved.

I've also sold a number of tapes on eBay by pairing them up with other things that people were more apt to buy.  For example, I sold 7 Anthrax tapes along with an Anthrax t-shirt.  Made more money than I thought I would make.

So here's my most recent trick.  I'm putting a set of 45 tapes on eBay, with an mp3 disc thrown in as a bonus.  I just took the mp3s that I ripped from the same albums I had on CD, and burned them to a DVD-R disc.  As far as I know, throwing in a bonus digital recording with the original recordings isn't against the rules.  Hopefully this all goes well.  I think I can throw the rest into another set, long with a bunch of cassette tray holders.

Cassette Stuff, part 1

"I don't have techno-fear.  I have techno-JOY!"

- Eddie Izzard

For most people, their love/hate relationship with technology is due to loving how technology makes jobs easier, and hating it when they can't figure out how to get it to do what they want it to do.  I suppose I have a dual personality with technology, but not in the way most people have. 

For one thing, I've always loved technology.  I have had a life-long love of owning and playing with gadgets.  I see setting the time on a car's digital clock as a challenge, not a hassle (and to date, I have never found a car's digital clock I couldn't figure out how to set).  I'm looking forward to the even bigger and better technology we'll have in the future.

I guess if there technology aspects I dislike, it's seeing the cost of things go straight down after I buy them, and also seeing new-comers get stuff the easy way.  It pisses me off that some mp3 player or computer or other device that I spent a good chunk of money for 5 to 10 or more years ago, is now not only something that costs a tiny fraction of what I paid, but has become so obsolete that it's hard to even get rid of it.  And on the second point I mentioned: it pisses me off that these music bootlegs and rarities that I spent a hard time acquiring back in the 80s, can now be had by some 14 year-old schmuck with a connection to Limewire or YouTube.  But back to the first complaint...

Growing up in the 1980s, the vast majority of my music wasn't on CD.  And it wasn't on vinyl, either.  It was on cassette.  With all these stupid "Vinyl vs. CD" complaints these days, people who are too young, too old, or too forgetful of the 80s seem ignorant of the fact that the cassette tape was the most overwhelmingly popular music medium of the time.  I must have ended up with at least a few hundred tapes.

Did CDs exist?  Sure, but that was something only the elite audiophiles listened to.  (I find it ironic that there are audiophiles who detest CDs and worship vinyl, when 25 years ago it was just the opposite.)  It was still a pretty new medium as far as the American public was concerned.  Prices were high and the selection was limited.  I didn't get my first Discman (portable player) until the early 90s, which took 4 AA batteries menacingly, and skipped with the slightest imbalance.  That's what you'd have to mount in your car if you wanted to hear CDs while driving, too.

Was there still vinyl in the stores?  Sure. But you couldn't play a record in a Walkman.  You couldn't play it in a car.  You couldn't keep vinyl in your pocket.  Tapes were easy to trade at school.  You couldn't dub vinyl-to-vinyl at home.  You couldn't use vinyl to record music off the radio, or record your own band's songs in your garage.  You could fit more music on a tape too -- more than CD!  So tape was king.

What first prompted me to switch to buying CDs was 1) the fact that some labels were starting to release albums on CD only, and to a much lesser extent 2) I fell for the marketing gimmick of some CDs having bonus tracks not available on the cassette version.  The first of these I had to deal with was the EP "Miscellaneous Debris" by Primus.  I couldn't find it on tape anywhere, so I broke down and bought the CD before I even had a CD player.  I called up all of my friends to ask if they had not only a CD player but a tape deck hooked up to the player, so that I could dub a copy to listen to.  I called up everybody.  Nobody seemed to have such a set-up.  Finally, a stoner I knew named Danny told me that he could tape off of CD, but sounded kind of reluctant about it.  He later said "Well...it sounds a little bad because I have to hold the boom box up to the speakers to record it."  No thanks, Danny.

Slowly but surely, I ended up replacing most of my tape collection with CD.  In recent years, I've even purchased mp3s of titles I never ended up replacing on CD. 

Are tapes completely gone from the face of the earth?  Not really.  I can still find blank tapes at places like Walgreens.  It's still the cheapest recording medium, easily.  Digital recording is of course getting cheaper and cheaper, but it typically doesn't allow you to simply rewind and record over stuff.  I keep a small tape recorder next to my bed as a dream journal.

But I still have all those other tapes to deal with.  It's a lot of STUFF.  More on that in the next blog entry.

Sex, Queen, Nazis, and VHS Tape

Just when I thought I had the whole VHS collection transferred over, I found this tape on my shelf.

Back in high school I was president of the German Club.  Ethnically, I am not one bit German.  But I did always like the language, so I ended up taking it from middle school all the way through my first year or two of college.

Anyway, back in 1992, Primetime Live had aired a special on the neo-Nazi movement in Germany.  Third Reich memorabilia is essentially illegal to have in Germany.  You can't print the swastika on anything either.  But, as this report showed, some German neo-Nazis were still getting items like this (along with other white supremacy propaganda stuff like books, computer games, etc.) from some American neo-Nazis who were exporting them.  It was a hot topic for Germany, so I taped the special, and arranged to watch it as part of a German Club event.  Anybody was welcome to come down at the precise after-school time and room I got to borrow with the TV and VCR, and watch the hour-long special.

As with all other German Club events, I made fliers to put on a couple of the school bulletin boards. And that's where I caused a bit of a stir, because I included a swastika on the posters.  Why did I do it?  Simple.  Because besides being relevant to the event, I knew people would actually stop and read a flier if it had a swastika.  Just as I titled this blog something other than "A VHS Tape I found".  Unfortunately, my German teacher told me that the flier "had been defaced" and was taken down as a result.  He wouldn't tell me the details.  I'm amused at the irony: somebody thought the poster itself was too close to promoting the very same idea that it was actually helping to expose and speak out against.  Go figure.

(By the way, Nazis still suck.  Did they have pretty dashing aesthetics?  Sure.  Are there a lot of irrational, knee-jerk reactionary idiots who think Hitler was literally the Antichrist, and can't have an objective conversation about the Third Reich?  Absolutely.  But blind devotion to an unfounded ideology used by some early 20th century Austrian dictator, is still fucking stupid.  And no, I'm not saying this to defend myself and/or quality my use of a swastika on a school poster 18 years ago.  I'm saying it because I'm sick of the racists I keep running into on-line.  It's a long story.  But there, glad to get that off my chest.)

Well I popped the VHS tape into my player, and found out quickly that I had a lot more on the tape than I realized.  This was one of those cases where I didn't label my tapes better.  Here's what else was on there:

• Primus on Headbangers' Ball.  Just a few short interview clips which I taped over some of the special.  I think a lot of the compulsive 80s metal haters would be shocked to realize that there was a time when bands like Primus, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and the like were being covered by the metal shows and metal magazines.  Fun interview.
• Real Sex.  No, not footage of actual sexual intercourse.  Real Sex was the name of a series on HBO.  It was a documentary where they covered a few different sex-related topics in each show.  I had 20 minutes of one episode on this tape.  They looked into the phone sex industry, interviewed a married stripper couple, and as usual had their street opinion polling.  My cousin got asked a question on the street like that, and he's in one of the episodes, though I don't know which one.
• Freddy Mercury "Concert for Life".  Now this was a hidden gem.  FOUR HOUR documentary of this show from Mtv!  I remember how pissed off my mom was that I set up the TV and VCR to tape it.  I put a note on the TV saying that I'd be taping, so touching the TV that night.  It takes a lot to make my mother say "Bullshit!", but that did it.  Granted, they eventually released the show on DVD, but judging from the low-star reviews on Amazon.com, the DVD leaves out a lot.

Clutter And...Your Ass?!?

Just found this book & article's title to be amusing enough to give it its own blog entry.

Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?

"Is there a connection between the amount of clutter in your home and size of your butt? Peter says in many cases there is. "There is this weird connection between clutter in all areas of our homes and clutter we carry in our bodies and on our bodies," he says. The clutter and weight connection is the focus of Peter's latest book Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? An Easy Plan for Losing Weight and Living More."

Not surprisingly, there's a chapter on this phenomenon in that book I love to quote here oh so much, Don Aslett's Clutter's Last Stand. It's called "Clutter Al a Carte".

Is there really a connection?  Well in some ways, yes.  If you're not keeping up on maintaining possessions at home, then I imagine not watching one's diet couldn't be too far off.  I can see how the pack rat attitude of "I'll just let this stuff pile up here" can also manifest itself as "I'll just eat out tonight."

I'm far from being a health expert.  And I don't have any Richard Simmons sob story to tell about losing 100 pounds.  I've never been obese.  Though over the past year, I managed to lose a significant amount of weight.  It was due to pretty basic stuff.  So basic, that I'm almost embarrassed to list it here.  But here it goes anyway.  The Bill M. diet:

• Eat more than 2 meals in a day.  I easily get into periods where I end up eating just two or even just one huge meal every day for a string of days.  This especially happens when I have a messed up sleeping schedule, which is not infrequent.  But once I get back on track, the weight goes down.  Supposedly, breaking it down into 4 or 5 meals a day is supposed to help even more.
• Eat more meals at home.  I have no idea why this works, but I hear it being said in the above article and others, and it honestly has worked for me.  It would seem that I'd be just as hungry at home as I was at a restaurant, and thus eat just as much if not more from the "free" supply of food in my kitchen that I already bought.  Yet strangely, I ended up losing weight when I ate more meals at home.  Not to mention saving money too.
• Drink water.  Was it they say?  4 glasses?  6 glasses?  I honestly don't know.  But if your urine is coming out darker than the color of this blog, then you need to drink at least one glass of water that day.  I end up drinking a lot when I'm singing anyway.  Sometimes we think we're hungry and start eating stuff when in fact we're really just dehydrated.  Just one glass of water in a day can do a lot, or at least for me.  And if it's giving you something to drink when you normally would have grabbed a soda or a beer, so much the better.
• Refrain from desserts.  And that's "refrain", not "abstain".  Damn straight I will have my cake and eat it too!  But I do remember how I ended up gaining a lot of weight in college from having one dessert after another.  I'd eat at the cafeteria, and desserts were abundant and free there, so why not?  Once in a while ain't bad.  But one meal after another, and you'll be wearing your belt in a wider notch.
• Get snacks on the more healthful side.  I am not going to kid myself nor you that apple chips should be a permanent substitution for Chips A'hoy.  Hell no.  You need to have your indulgence now and then.  I'm not suggesting self-delusion.  BUT...if you have a habit for getting a snack from the kitchen, and you fill your kitchen with stuff like fruits, chances are you're going to eat those fruits because there's nothing else in the kitchen.  Instead of reaching for "anything", you can have it be a little less weighty.
• Don't expect results overnight.  Now this is the #1 thing that I swear all would-be dieters refuse to believe, and leads to their failure.  Yes, we ALL like to have quick and over-simplified solutions to complicated problems.  That's why things like home exercise machines, guitar tablature, and Jesus freak creationism are so popular.  But short and over-simplified solutions are often wrong.  The stuff that nobody wants to do because it takes too much effort, is still often the "right" way to do it, but it takes time.
• Other stuff I already had going for me.  I'm not a smoker.  I'm not on any medications.  I don't drink often, and when I do, it's typically only one drink in a given night, and never beer (a beverage which I can't stand).  I lucked out with some pretty good pickings from the gene pool.  Again, I'm no health expert, but I imagine that somebody who had one or more of these factors would have a harder time than me when it comes to losing weight.  Sometimes it is just luck.  

I will mention one substance I tried back in the mid to late 90s: Thermochrome.  It's one of these pills that sold by independent distributors, kind of like Amway.  I took just half of the dosage, and I have to say, they WORK.  Though like other diet pills, there are some notorious drawbacks.  I didn't end up demented like the lady in Requiem for a Dream, though I did experience some teeth-grinding.  I don't think I want to go down that route again, but I thought it was worth mentioning here.

 

Peter Walsh's Tips

As I've said before: I'm not a huge Oprah Winfrey fan.  But considering how long she's been in her business, and how many products she's put out over the years, it's a statistical inevitability that you can find some good stuff among all the new-age soccer mom crap.  And certain decluttering articles from "O" magazine are among them.

Peter Walsh is a host on Oprah Radio (I didn't know there was such a thing, but somehow I'm not surprised).  There are plenty of clutter-related articles from past Oprah magazines that quote him.  He gives the following clips to one family in particular.

• Don't buy anything new for the next six months.
• Take your credit cards out of your wallet and keep them out of sight.
• Spend 10 minutes every day walking around your home with trash bags—fill one with rubbish and one with items for charity.
• Turn every hanger in the closet so it faces toward the back. When you wear something, turn the clothing hanger around. After six months, any clothes on hangers that have not been turned back around should be given to charity.
• Cancel all but two magazine subscriptions and keep no more than three back issues at a time.

I'd like to comment on these one at a time:

"Don't by anything new for the next six months."  Obviously I'm sure the guy isn't including things like food and mortgages in this statement.  Bust still, this is a little ridiculous.  A lot of different things can happen in six months: birthdays, holidays, things breaking, and who knows what else.  I say, before setting out for six months, try a week.  Then try a month.  Or identify out whatever it is you end up buying too much of in a short amount of time (books, DVDs, whatever) and put your restraining powers on just that.

"Take your credit cards out of your wallet and keep them out of sight."  This is, again, pretty excessive.  If it's something like a Macy's card that would otherwise give you an excuse to spree, then OK, I could understand that.  But plastic is still handy.  I use it for gas and lots of other purchases.  Then again, I guess I could never relate to that whole "cut up your credit cards!" crowd.  Probably because when it comes to my credit cards, I keep a pretty good lid on things and know now to go too wild with them.

"Spend 10 minutes every day walking around your home with trash bags—fill one with rubbish and one with items for charity."  Now this is actually a good exercise! Though as usual, Don Aslett put it better.  Still, I've done this before, and have come up with a good amount of trash.  Maybe it's about time I do it again.  I'd leave the charity until later though.  Just filling a trash bag is challenging (and rewarding) enough itself.  You'll fill it quicker if you don't factor in time to judge other items for charity or eBay.

"Turn every hanger in the closet so it faces toward the back. When you wear something, turn the clothing hanger around. After six months, any clothes on hangers that have not been turned back around should be given to charity."  Good idea.  Though living in a place with 4 seasons, I don't know if 6 months is a good figure.  If I wear a swimsuit in June, I'm not going to throw it away in January.  Still, if there's something I haven't worn in 5 years, chances are I might not wear it again.

"Cancel all but two magazine subscriptions and keep no more than three back issues at a time."  This is something I've actually already done.  I used to have a subscription to Bass Player magazine for many years.  Eventually though, I faced the fact that I wasn't reading them fast enough, and that I still had a wealth of back issues I could look at for information, so eventually I let the subscription stop.  But admittedly I still have my issues saved.  Maybe I'll throw a bunch of those on eBay.  We'll see.  I also have had a subscription to Mad magazine going now since 1986.  But that would be much harder to give up.  Oh well, at least that's the only thing I've been saving.  It's about time I sort and bag those, though.

Casing and Cataloging

A few brief updates:

• My new set of 4-disc DVD cases arrived.  I moved about 75 discs into them.  Ugh.  Finally done!
• Meanwhile I dubbed a few more hidden VHS tapes I had lying about, over to DVD.  This time, some James Burke.  I can't get enough James Burke.  I got to meet him when he came to my college back in the day.  He autographed photo hangs on my wall.

• I also finished moving more photos into a new album.  Another long, tedious, pain-in-the-ass process.  But finally done.
• I tried looking through my huge box of "Items for Ebay" in my hallway, and writing a list with everything under some type of category.  Man, I have a lot of crap to sell.  It's not always as simple as just putting the auctions up.  I have to think of the best way to pair what item with what other items, what to use for a price on that, etc.  This could be a while.

"I hate a dirty joke...unless it's told by someone who knows how to tell it."

Man, I fucking love the Marx Brothers.  

Granted there are still lots of incredibly great comedians out there today, but you just don't see too many truly multi-talented icons like this.  It wasn't just the comedy, but the music and personalities too.  Groucho is arguably history's fastest-thinking comedian.  His wit was still sharp all the way up through his old age.  Not a bad guitar player either.  Chico's Italian accent might have been a bad one-trick-pony schtick, but it worked.  Plus, he was amazing to watch on piano.  And Harpo was, well, Harpo: great pantomime comedian, and also a great musician.  Zeppo had his role as the straight man in the early movies too, so he was still a necessary part of that whole formula at times.

Although Duck Soup gets all the praise, I'd have to say that my favorite movie of theirs was Animals Crackers.  I was pleased to find my high school was putting on a play adaptation of it.  They did a great job, incorporating some parts from other movies too.

The Kitchen Sink: before and after

Some people might look at this blog and invoke the idiom of the kitchen sink, as in "Geez, he's looking for clutter everywhere but the kitchen sink!"

Well, that's not true.  Dishes are still being continuously washed in the kitchen sink, while the newly fixed garbage disposal does its job in the middle of the sink, and clutter has been removed from the lower kitchen sink.  So the sink deserves its own blog entry.

I stumbled across a photo from an earlier blog about all of the weird things I had underneath the sink.

That was the "before" picture.  Here's the current "after" picture, which helps reassure me that I HAVE been making some visual progress over the past year.