Have you ever had a small mystery that nagged at you over time.  The event only occurs in one circumstance, but you couldn't quite put the pieces together to get that "Aha!" finality?  It is the kind of recurring puzzle that is of no real consequence to anyone, but it bugs the bejesus out of you that you can't find the answer.  I am relatively certain that I am the only person on earth who would choose to be bothered by this particular mystery, but I did.  In all likelihood it was not "solved" sooner because only a few other people in the world would have cared and they already knew the "answer."  They made the puzzle.  To an obsessive and inquisitive shrink, however, this became a "thing!" 

I host a website with what used to be known as Microsoft's bCentral.  At one point last March I had nothing better to blog about so I simply listed the names of the mail servers then in use for the email accounts on the site.  I assumed that they had to be given some designation so that the rest of the network would recognize them, but the names were seemingly random and were probably assigned by whatever IT person installed and maintained them.  I noted what they were, but gave no real thought to a pattern being there, as the names appeared whimsical and individual.  They were:

freddie
io
monty
nudel
onyx
sparky
squeaky
sylvia

Since Microsoft outsourced its web hosting services to Concentric however, the names changed and became much more numerous.  The more I saw, the harder I tried to find a pattern to their names.  Some sounded like defenders of the realm, some seemed almost loving, some had an attitude, some seemed threatening, and I couldn't even pronounce one.  Different subsets and arrangements were tried until one server name that I had not encountered before appeared.  Click!!  The names are listed below, along with a link to a list of which they are a subset:

adamant
albion
ardent
audacious
brilliant
dauntless
defiance
desperate
diligence
excellent
exertion
fervent
formidable
fortitude
hood
impregnable
indefatigable
indignant
inflexible
insolent
intrepid
invincible
iphigenia
irresistible
isis
nimble
resolution
retribution
safeguard
sentinel
strenuous
superb
tremendous
triumph
unicorn
vigilant
zealous

If you found the "giveaway" name, the derivation of the names won't come as too much of a surprise.  If you didn't, it may.  Give it a moment's thought before you click this link.  I have to pull you into my obsession for at least a few seconds.  There were four discrepancies from the list at that link, all of which I finally verified despite a slight difference in the spelling of one name, the fact that two were simply missing on that link, and that "safeguard" was included as something of a technicality.

*sigh* 

I can find some of the most irrelevant things in  the world to become enthralled with when I'm avoiding moving a huge bookcase.  'Twas a turrible fight, but the dreaded bookcase has now been moved.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2007, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"Procrastination" - Kurtis Karr

There are several partially completed posts in the Live Writer's drafts section.  I don't seem able or willing to concentrate long enough to finish them, however.  Probably fifteen minutes have passed since the last sentence, flipping through uninteresting channels, thinking briefly about things to do, and just ... not thinking.  So, a haiku about this state of mind:

Ricochet

Skull is near empty

Thoughts quietly ricochet

It echoes in here

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2007, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"One has then got to the position in which one cannot think that one cannot think about what one cannot think about because there is a rule against thinking about the X, and a rule against thinking that there is a rule against thinking that one must not think about not thinking about certain things.

If certain things cannot be thought about: and among the certain things that cannot be thought, is that there are certain things that cannot be thought, including the aforementioned thought, then: he who had complied with this calculus of anti-thoughts will not be aware that he is not aware that he is obeying a rule not to think that he is obeying a rule not to think about X. So he is not aware of X and not aware he is not aware of the rule against being not aware of X. By obeying a rule not to realize he is obeying a rule, he will deny that there is any rule he is obeying." - R. D. Laing

Yes, I do that.  Based on the principle that, "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit," I gave checks to the kids rather than the Ferraris I had hoped to give.  They have come to expect a certain amount of strangeness from me, but I think I genuinely confused them, if only briefly, when they dropped by the apartment today.  They know me well and came bearing gifts of food and the collected cynicism of George Carlin in book form. 

As they carefully edged their way around some remaining mounds of boxes and a large bookcase, remarking that it might fall on someone, they found me hastily using the computer as a simple calculator.  I was chided for the condition in which the apartment remains, but I staunchly defended myself by pointing out that over half of the living room had been cleaned fairly well and had a Christmas tree.  They were quick to note that it was the half between the recliner chair and the TV.  Children are difficult at any age but possibly at their most frustrating when they are adults in the prime of their intellectual abilities and the masters of quick repartee.  It is even harder to deal with when they are right.  In my own defense, I must state that amid the chiding and constructive criticism, no offer to assist me in moving the bookcase into another room was made.

Back to the computer and the checkbook.  I had not gotten the checks written before Firstborn's and Number One Son's arrival.  They did call to let me know they were coming over, but I think they did that from the parking lot.  A check was written to each for exactly the same amount, and it was that amount that puzzled them.  Each was written for exactly $111.36.  Of course they had to know why.  I explained.  I could have bought them a present and sent them a card, but in this way I spent the same and they got more.  The equation was $100 for the gift + $7.00 for sales tax not paid + $3.95 for a piece of paper with a "happy whatever" on it not sent + $0.41 for the stamp not used to send said piece of paper.  They were quick to understand my point, laughed, and then nodded sagely in approval.  As we age together, it is becoming more difficult to ruffle them in any way.  They did agree with me when I referred to myself as being somewhat strange, especially Firstborn who made me repeat it to be certain she had heard the admission correctly.  Or possibly she was yanking my chain a bit.

Hugs and good wishes were exchanged and they were off to make Christmas cookies, arms loaded with boxes and papers to be recycled, and "stuff" to be taken to the dumpster before they drove off into the sunset.  They didn't move the bookcase, after all.  I was justified!

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2007, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"The sky is not blue.  It merely looks that way because blue is the name we have given that color." - George Carlin 

Please appreciate that quote.  I read almost a quarter of Carlin's new book to find something inoffensive enough to use on Spaces.  For the less easily offended among my readers I will add it to my required reading list.  It is pure Carlin.

I believe in recycling.  Therefore, when I post something on another of my blogs that might be applicable here, my readers get leftovers (or vice versa.)  This was written for mental health clinicians, but the information contained in it might apply to anyone who uses a computer.

Clinicians should all be aware of the necessity of keeping secure and private clinical records.  A major problem is where to store them.  I have been engaged in a seemingly endless quest to find places to put my "stuff" following the sale of a large house in a rural-suburban area and the subsequent move into a much smaller apartment.  This compacting process has included such trivial efforts as discarding standard sized Jewel Cases and using either the slim-line type or paper or vinyl sleeves to store CDs and DVDs.  I have purchased a very large capacity but small sized Maxtor outboard hard drive.  Along with efforts in the computer area, I have given away, donated, discarded, or sold items such as a breadmaker, unused cooking equipment, antique furniture, and half my "wardrobe."  The latter was comprised primarily of jeans with holes in the knees and flannel shirts with gaping rents at the elbow, so not much loss there.  I have shredded many records and plan to store client records in .PDF file form soon.  I had tried the free CutePDF Writer and free Converter and found them to be the best for my needs among the various types of .PDF programs.  I liked them so much, really, that I purchased the CutePDF Pro version which included the CutePDF Form Filler for $49.95.  Among the many other features provided in the Pro version are the ability to scan to PDF (scan your session notes directly into a PDF document,) the ability to FTP upload the document (for file sharing or for online storage,) and most important to compliance with HIPAA requirements, the ability to encrypt the document at a 40-bit or 128-bit level.  With the Form Fill portion, one could easily produce a standard intake or interview form, save to PDF, encrypt it, and be compliant in storing it online, burned to disk, or saved on a hard drive.  I'm sure by this point I must seem like I am doing a paid advertisement.  I am not.  Certainly there are other similar programs available, but I have used this one and am thoroughly satisfied with it.

Another aspect to consider when using any computer to produce important documents is the absolute certainty that it will crash or die, taking all your records with it, at the most inconvenient possible time.  The answer to this is backup, backup, backup!  I have had enough computers quit without giving the required two weeks notice that I have learned this lesson several times over.  Again, I have tried and accepted a method to insure against this disaster.  I use a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 750 GB external drive which can be used with either a USB.2  or a FireWire 400 connection to the computer.  A review of this drive by PC Magazine staff rated it very good and states that the bottom line is; "The Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus exists as extra storage, but it's really there to save your butt. The next time your system crashes, this drive will get you on your feet again."  The drive comes in 250, 500, and 750 GB models, with a very recent release of a 1000 GB (1TB) model, made by pairing two 500 GB drives in one case.  One can store the usual documents, pictures, music, and the like on any of them.  This series of drives also backs up everything on your computer, including the Operating System, to restore to a new drive in case of a catastrophe.  Again, I know that there are similar drives and programs that allow the same types of backup, but after obsessively studying the specifications and abilities of everything I could find with these capabilities, this was my choice and it has worked well.

Backing up only files of whatever type can be accomplished by burning them, in encrypted form, to CD or DVD.  There are many programs that will do this efficiently and effectively.  I use Roxio's Easy Media Creator 8 (it has advanced to Easy Media Creator Suite 10 recently) and find it more than adequate to do what I want it to do.

Finally, there is online storage for files.  I trust it enough for blogs, songs, pictures, and relatively unimportant documents.  However, having had my EIN and SS numbers with all other personal and business information "lost" by a government agency, I am less than enthusiastic about the security of information stored anywhere not directly under my control.  If you have a Google account and use the Firefox browser, there is an add-on available called G-Drive that allows one to store up to about 5 GB of information online free.  A number of other companies offer free and paid storage with varying sizes, charges, and layers of security.  I will simply mention MediaMax which offers 25 GB of free storage and increasingly larger amounts for increasing fees.

Until I write next, I'll be trying to force myself to part with my dissertation data (collected over 30 years ago) and deciding what to do with the toy airplanes with 16 foot wingspans.  Even the cats seem a bit anxious.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2007, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

The "Oops" was the previous post.  I did not indicate the context in which I believed the third wish would be understood.  Please read my comment about that post if you are interested.  That stated, I will simply go on to a psychologist's holiday greeting.  Those of you who may have seen it before, Shush.  Don't tell.

ABCDE

FGHIJ

KMNOP

QRSTU

VWXYZ

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2005-2007, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"Are his wits safe?  Is he not light of brain?" - Wm. Shakespeare

Dear Santa (or Whomever else I may be addressing in this missive),

I've been a relatively good old coot for the past year, and I want to make sure you are aware of that before I place my Christmas requests.  Go on, check your books twice. ...

All righty, then.  You will note that the last time I wrote was in 1962 when I was 16.  Thanks for the engine parts, but the girlfriend thing didn't work out so well.  Oh well, it has been 45 years and I've pretty much gotten over it except for the recurrent Sara dreams.  I still have one of the J&E 13.5 to 1 forged aluminum stuffer pistons, though.  I digress.

I'm not exactly certain how to go about phrasing my requests.  The only material thing I want is computerish and I can take care of that myself.  The things I want are impossible without the aid of time travel or some other deus ex machina. 

I want to know my mother.  She died to bear me and we never knew each other.  I have incorporated others' memories of her but really have none of my own.  I have the many idealized stories about her that the Nolans told me as I grew up in their care.  (Even the one of how she learned to drive the Packard by being turned loose on R.P.'s farm and told to just do it.)  I have real life memories of avoiding a particular elderly woman who, like a heat seeking missile, would track me down every time I visited one of the Nolans at the nursing home, to tell me how darkened her breasts were from the cancer before she died.  I have my birth certificate in the envelope addressed to her that would have arrived days before she died.  I have pictures of her.  I am learning more about the branches of the Tree of Lives since pursuing an interest in genealogy.  Thank you for that.  But I never knew the source of my own life and I want to.

I want to have known my genetic family better.  I am regrettably late in that request, also.  It is eerie to have grown up in the same tiny town of less than 1000 souls and never really to have known them well.  I believe I understand how my presence would have served to remind each of them of who wasn't there.  I knew them, somewhat, but the Nolan siblings were my "real" family, who took me in as an infant when the youngest of them was 50.  I know the two families were close.  The Nolans were cousins on my paternal grandmother's side and two of the Nolans were my Godparents.  My names indicate that, also.  I am named Tom after Tom Nolan and Alden after my biological father.  It is so frustrating to want such intimate knowledge after time has passed the point of possible retrieval.

I want to be young again.  Most specifically, to relive the 1960's.  Despite the Sturm und Drang of one's teen and early adult years, it was beyond doubt the best period of my life, especially because I never did any actual jail time.  Perhaps you could pass this one on to the Prime Mover (assuming I am not already addressing It.)  If there is a Higher Power that takes these Wolfman Jack type requests, I would prefer to have the Chronosynclastic Infundibulum's reset button pressed to begin at 12:01 a.m. of January 1, 1960 and end exactly 10 years later by quickly and painlessly wrapping the Camaro and me around a tree.

Given the assumed impossibility of these requests, thank you at least for the phenomenon of recent memory deteriorating before long term memory goes.  I really do prefer memories of first love and of another sort of Christmas tree blinking down to green at U.S. 30 Dragstrip to remembering if or what I may have had for lunch.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2007, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"Rented a tent.  Rented a tent." - Unc, from a short sci-fi story by Kurt Vonnegut

Some of my readers may recall my previous mention of "the mutant toilet bowl brush."  When I moved I couldn't not take it with me.  Yes, I know that was an awkwardly constructed sentence, but it says what I mean.  I didn't have to move it.  I did not even really want to move it, considering all the other things that had to be moved.  It was musty smelling and bedraggled from being stored in a damp part of the basement.  No sane person would have given me a penny for it.  But the fake tree and I have history, and that history is what I really moved.  I believe this is the image that "O Tannenbaum" is meant to bring to mind:

Although I would likely be better off tossing some tinsel on the remaining unpacked boxes, I will decorate the tree.  I tell myself I'm doing it for the cats.  I lie.  They do seem to like it enough to bite it, to chew the cheap plastic "needles," and to knock it off the small table upon which it sits.  I'll put some blinking lights and a few cat-safe ornaments on it and we'll all enjoy it in our own ways.  This is the physical reality of what I moved and the response I hoped for.  A single child-made ornament and Stinky couldn't resist:

The "tree" came to have significance to me as the trigger of a memory, really.  My current situation, in my mind and emotions at least, closely resembles the one I was experiencing over 20 years ago.  I was living alone in a small apartment and seeing my offspring on Wednesdays and alternate weekends.  I was not in a festive, holiday state of mind then, either.  Firstborn and Number One Son were totally aghast, however, that we did not have a Christmas tree.  Rather begrudgingly, I gave in and we all marched across the street to the local K-Mart where I purchased the cheapest object resembling a tree that they had in stock.  Its "limbs" are made of wire, spirally wrapped to hold the cheap plastic "needles" in place.  If you can picture in your mind the older type of toilet bowl brush that resembles this description, you partially understand how it acquired its name.  I was grumbling loudly enough when I described it as a mutant toilet bowl brush that the kids heard me and loved the name.  How could a kid not like a name like that?  For that matter, how could I resist it?  It is a nearly perfect description and I believe it became a family tradition on the spot.

The Grinch is working toward regaining some holiday spirit, even if it is (mostly) to please The Boys.  I'll try to include an "after" picture of this venture, as I know how important it is to all. *snort*

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2007, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"... I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.  The spirits of all Three shall strive within me.  I will not shut out the lessons they teach. ..." - E. Scrooge, Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.

Having awakened several times during the night, I finally ceased resisting and arose early for the morning, remembering some dream fragments.  There were several that might have inspired a haiku (or a limerick.)  These are variations on the themes of past, present, and future which were interlaced into one dream.  Whether you like them or not, the reader may at least be thankful that nothing was written about a portion of another dream concerning the frustration of trying to clean projectile cat poop from carpeting.

Tightly grasp your Now

Far too fast becomes your Past

Future's not yet lived

___

Learn Now's lessons well

Too soon fading into Past

There will be a quiz

___

Old man once told him

Get a good education

They can't take from you

___

Older now himself

He's come to realize that

Aging surely can

___

Unwilling to stay

In the Now, he meanders

The paths of his Past

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2007, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again." - Willa Cather

I am an easy touch for almost all of the non-human population of creatures on the planet.  I develop a feeling of responsibility for the health and welfare of virtually any critter I meet that does not immediately bite, sting, or otherwise try to kill me on sight.  I am the sort that catches a moth and releases it outdoors rather than swatting it or takes a newly caught mouse from the cats and releases it into the bushes.

I suspect it will change with the new owners, but I let mulberry trees grow in the back and side yards, along the fence line, because the deer in the area loved the berries.  I could easily determine this to be true by the deer scat under them.  The neighbors considered them to be junk trees, but the deer did not.  The trees stayed because I liked the deer better.  The fruit that fell from the apple tree was left lying on the ground and it was well received by the local critter population.  One of the most pleasant memories of the house on Deer Run Drive is of the hoof and paw prints in the new snow circling that tree.  The gate to the decrepit fence was always left open for them if there did not happen to be a dog running around the in yard.  One reward for that was seeing a doe and three fawns standing in the front yard, seemingly unafraid, shortly before I sold the property.

The same care goes for the rabbits that were seen as "pests" when they ate the neighbors’ flowers or other decorative vegetation.  Again the neighbors were irritated when I left a roughly ten foot square patch of grass uncut in an otherwise well mowed lawn.  It grew to a height of about 10 to 12 inches before it was cut because there was a rabbit nest in the middle.  When the occupants were old enough to leave the nest, the miniature jungle was mowed.  On one occasion, nearly 30 years earlier, I was so protective of baby rabbits in our back yard that I sat and held a golf umbrella over the nest during a hailstorm so they would not be harmed.  Even toads were picked up, reassured that the ivy garden was a much more pleasant environment, and deposited there when I mowed.

Bosley, the Schnauzer in the picture of my very large orange toy airplane, developed diabetes at about six years of age.  The house in the background of that photo was selected, in part, for privacy such that I could collect his daily urine sample, following him around with a paper cup, hopefully unobserved by the neighbors.  He lived for another six years following the diagnosis and beginning the insulin injections.

The Things have not yet been explained, have they?  Old peoples’ minds tend to wander.  That shall be remedied.  I bought a Ford Ranger pickup truck in 1986 to be used for transportation, hauling stuff (Oh, how I wished I had it during the move,) and as the chase vehicle for flying in Cross Country RC sailplane competition.  Rangers had a reputation for beginning to self-destruct at around 50,000 miles.  Mine was donated to charity at just short of 250,000 miles.  Keeping a vehicle this long leads to a certain number of idiosyncrasies.  One was that the door seals wore, or were chewed, in a manner that would allow small critters access to the cab of the truck.  Another was the seeds for the bird feeder that I spilled in the bed of the truck and never cleaned out.  This, along with the cold weather that brings field mice and similar little beings into the warmer living space of a garage set the stage.  The glove compartment of the truck became the winter home to several generations of Things.  I never saw one in person, but found ample evidence of their presence including nests made from a cloth handkerchief or tissues, thing poop, seed hulls, and other evidence of occupancy.  Further, I believe that the knowledge of the sucker with the truck was passed on from generation to generation for the 17 years that I kept the Ranger.  It was pleasing to know that I was providing for a multigenerational extended family, so I made it a habit to spill a fair amount of bird seed in the bed of the truck every time I bought a bag.

Now the truck is gone, the Things are gone, the garage is no longer mine, but the fond memories remain.  This has also become one of the series of tiny acts that I can look back on and tell myself that I'm not too bad a person after all.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2007, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil." - Friedrich Nietzsche

I love to dream.  Not daydreams.  The all out, longer, stranger ones that occur late in the sleep cycle.  Traveling in time, changing the past, reliving parts of it, even being changed by the dreamstuff itself seems possible.   I don't really mind if I wake in a panic from a dream if it was interesting.  One type that I like the most combines concepts, people, words, images, or events in ways that would be highly unlikely in a waking state.  I had one of that sort recently that somehow intertwined my confusion about my future with the mnemonic device for remembering the names of the 12 cranial nerves.  Further, I realized that the words of the "standard" version of this memory aid had seventeen syllables.  Ooh, haiku!  Of course I couldn't leave the version I had learned alone.  I had to modify and add meanings to it.  "Meanings" is plural to allow for good or bad outcomes.

The most frequently used mnemonic is, "On Old Olympus' Towering Top, A Finn And German Viewed Some Hops."  There are other versions, one quite lewd, but all help the student to remember the names of the cranial nerves by using the first letter of the nerve as the first letter of the associated word in the mnemonic; Olfactory, Optic, Oculomotor, Trochlear, Trigeminal, Abducens, Facial, Acoustic, Glossopharyngeal, Vagal, Spinal-accessory, & Hypoglossal.

Two Neuropsychu

One Omen Only

To Tear Apart Fantasies

And Give Vent Sour Hate

-or-

One Omen Only

To Tease Apart Fantasies

And Grant View Soul's Hope

Quite likely a bit of each is present or I wouldn't have felt conflicted enough to have written two versions.  I'm working on the latter, though.

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2007, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"BP = f(E & RV)" - Julian Rotter, Ph.D.

Nah, that's not fair.  I should try to teach something rather than just being strange.  That formula, developed within the framework of Rotter's Social Learning Theory states that BP (Behavior Potential) = f(a function of) E (Expectancy) and RV(Reinforcement Value.)  The likelihood of a person behaving in a particular way depends upon how likely the person expects it to be to get the reinforcement that goes with it, and how valuable that reinforcement is to the person.  That's why I don't play the lottery.  My "E" is way low in that formulation.

Following my move from a large house on the far fringes of the westernmost suburbs of Chicago to a much smaller apartment in a suburban town, I clearly had to dispose of many possessions.  There was not enough room for everything, even considering the extra space gained by leasing a storage space until I could make some further decisions and dispositions.  I began to ponder how I was making these decisions as I was sorting through the small mountains of "stuff" that I had amassed and carried with me throughout my life.  What factors were involved?   Were the factors equal in importance among items or between two items if I could only keep one?  What could I justify keeping, to myself, to others, or simply what was necessary?  How am I deciding what I'm deciding?

To begin, the amount of time I initially had to pack or dispose of possessions was relatively long; over six months from the first inquiry to the closing of the sale.  The complication was that, although both the buyer and I wanted very much for the sale to occur, I didn't really believe it would happen until about two weeks before the twice postponed closing.  There were problems with it being an "as-is" sale, with the buyer's ability to secure a mortgage loan, and the consequent granting's of delays for the signatures on final papers and of the closing itself.  I further complicated and confused the situation by refusing to use a realtor or agent and stubbornly doing it all myself (with the aid of the best real estate attorney in town.  I'm not completely self-destructive!)  He is celebrating his 50th year in the practice of law and initially told me that this was the strangest sale he had ever done.  By the time he had gotten the building contractor who had initially approached me about selling when estimating an insurance repair in the house, his son (the buyer,) and me (the seller,) all on the same page of the real estate law book, the sale had made it down to the third or fourth strangest.  By the time of the closing, there were only two weeks left until I was supposed to vacate the premises.  I had been disposing of clearly unnecessary possessions during most of this period, but clearly not quickly enough due to my belief that the sale had a poor chance for success.  It was then written into the contract that I could rent the house from the buyer for a further two weeks following the sale.  *sigh*  That gave me more time to pack and panic.

At first, belongings were packed somewhat logically and neatly.  I was only panicking slowly at that point, and I had some guidance from Firstborn.  As time passed much too quickly, it became obvious that I was slightly behind schedule.  A storage space was leased and the apartment on which I had placed a deposit, and then backed out of a few days later, was definitely rented.  I began moving box after bag of stuff to their appropriate destinations.  Not nearly enough boxes and bags, however.  After the local movers I hired had done their job with furniture and large or heavy possessions, I was still left with a house full of stuff which seemed to be rapidly breeding behind my back.  The compact Chevy Cavalier could not be filled and emptied quickly enough, so I leased a cargo van for two days (which turned out to be ten.)  At this point, anything that seemed like it might have any use or value at all was stuffed into containers and moved, often to the wrong place.  The buyers were quite forgiving about allowing me to come back repeatedly with that van as they began to install hardwood flooring and tear out walls and windows.  Finally it came to hiring Number One Son, grabbing anything we could carry, and putting it somewhere other than the house.

That phase is over, now.  I have even begun to relax enough to begin a series of cluster headaches which appear to follow periods of severe stress.  If the reader thinks briefly about what sort of "possession mountains" this scenario would produce, they would quickly realize that all the necessary, useful things are under the massive amounts of indiscriminately commingled belongings that continued to be moved in as rapidly as possible.  A great deal of progress has been made since I adopted the strategy of wandering this maze and bringing some order to the chaos by putting similar items in their own separate piles.  Some smaller piles have been sorted, boxed, labeled, and stored on shelves.  It is here that the decision making process began to develop.

I would conservatively estimate that 75 to 80 percent of the things that have been moved would be seen by others as either useless, or if they are useful, I probably don't need them.  If they are useful or important, they are likely to be under something else and yet undiscovered.  Also, I was missing three major things necessary for a semi-civilized life; a sofa, a bed, and a microwave.  Firstborn came to the rescue on the first two with her 25% manager's discount and free delivery.  I managed to find a microwave at Sears all by myself. 

The sorting and piling process continued until I can now see about half of the living room all the way down to the carpeting.  For this, I rewarded myself by attaching the broadband modem to the computer.  It was also partially due to relief from the fear that something would fall on me.  This may have been a mistake as I now have very little desire to continue sorting or writing about it.  Woot!  I'm going to play with my new toy instead.  I have never had anything faster than dial-up.  With the speed of this connection, however, I can avoid work much faster, so it might turn out even in the end.

- To be continued. -

Peace, Doc

Copyright © 2007, Thomas A. Blood, Ph.D.

"Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment." - Robert Benchley