Countdown to fall semester: thirteen days
With less than two weeks left before school starts, there's a lot (obviously) left to be done. Some of that stuff is getting done quickly, some slowly.
Today, however, the former girlfriend called me asking if I was on campus, because her cell phone battery was about to die and she needed her charger. She was actually lucky that she'd been able to reach me at all, as I'd left my phone ringer turned off, and had ignored it for so long that I'd let the battery completely die. Luckily, I had just stuck it on the charger when she called.
Anyway, I told her that I wasn't down there, and that I wasn't planning to go in until tomorrow at the earliest. Since she's down in Wichita visiting with her former professor, she's not going to be back up here before Thursday or so (I'm guessing, anyhow). She did, however, tell me that she got the apartment.
That's right, folks -- once she signs the lease in a day or two, the former girlfriend will officially be moving out, possibly starting as soon as this weekend. This means that she should be able to get everything moved and taken care of well before the semester starts. Coincidentally, she should also be moving her stuff out around the same time I'll be moving new furniture/kitchen appliances in to take the place of the old ones.
Today, my lovely friend Andrea ordered me a coffee table and the bakeware set I need, and my buddy back home told me that he couldn't get the air purifier he intended to send me, but he was able to procure me the blender I needed instead. Sounds like a good trade-off to me. My friends' generosity astonishes me more and more by the day. That's the other reason I'm doing a complete clean-sweep of my Man Cave -- I'll have to find somewhere to store all of this stuff once it starts arriving, and be able to keep it out of the way until the former girlfriend gets all of her stuff into the moving truck. Andrea's stuff won't arrive until Friday, but I should be getting Brittany's box in another day or two, and the other stuff people have sent should be coming pretty soon as well.
At my friend Shanna's suggestion, I have joined the Newton Freecycle group and placed a posting looking for the more expensive items on my list, including the futon, chairs/dressers, and a working lawnmower. Hopefully I'll get a bite on one or more of those items if anyone in town has them. For those of you who don't know what "Freecycling" is, it's a large hub of people who have or are in need of certain items (usually household stuff, clothing, etc). Group members post messages on a message board requesting things they need, or things they have to give, and people respond to these messages by, well, giving or taking what's needed. All for free -- hence the "free" in the name -- nobody's allowed to sell any of it. It's all purely giveaway, and it's like recycling, because it prevents things being thrown away that could otherwise be put to use by someone in the community. It's an awesome concept, and the group here in Newton is a pretty active one, with about 50 new posts per week on average. Maybe I'll get lucky. After all, for some reason I've had super-uncharacteristically good luck as of late.
Of course, I did have to add that I can't haul anything away, obviously, because of the car.
Because of all the generosity I've been subject to lately, I've decided to be as generous as I can as well, at least in the ways possible for me to be, anyway. I've already packed two "care packages" of tie-dye shirts for two friends (but neither of you will get me to mention your names in this post, obviously, so hah! It would spoil the surprise) that I will be mailing out over the next few days, with more of these care packages to come -- I just feel that I need to do as much as I can to "give back" to the people who have been so willing to help me. Some of them have tie-dyes, some of them will contain other stuff. Keep in mind that I have a creative spirit, so I'll find ways to cater to and please anyone and everyone.
Anyway, on to the point of this post (you know how I like to get long-winded): last night, as I was cleaning out my room and bookcases, I found my old netbook, Pinky.
Those of you who have been reading for a number of years will recognize that name, but for those of you who haven't, let me summarize: a few years back when we were living in Missouri (and, incidentally, when netbooks were "new") I used the majority of one of my paychecks from the grocery store to purchase a netbook from Target's website. I believe it was around $250 when I bought it, and as I was going through a "pink phase" at the time, I bought the bright-pig-pink Asus Eee 2G Surf netbook. I purchased it with the intention of using it as an mp3 player with speakers as well as a laptop with wireless -- I needed it more than anything else to replace the portable DVD player I'd had up to that point, which would play my data CDs full of podcasts. Yes, I was hopelessly behind the times; I didn't even have an iPod-like device yet at that time. Because of the color, I named it "Pinky," especially because it was small.
Anyway, it was a decent little computer, but was relatively useless to me other than for surfing the net. It only had a 2GB hard drive (yes, two) and 512MB RAM, and the operating system that was installed on it took everything but about 125MB of the HD's space, meaning that the use of flash drives was essential if I wanted to get anything onto or off of the thing, or do any real work on it. So, I used it very little after the first six months or so I had it; it worked well as a laptop when we were visiting the former girlfriend's parents, but aside from that I just had no real use for it. Last summer, when my friend Lacey gave me her old Dell Inspiron 6000 to fix up and repurpose for a school laptop, I packed Pinky away and basically forgot about it until I found it when cleaning last night.
During a conversation with my aforementioned friend Shanna, who is sending me a wall clock and a can opener, amongst other little things more than likely, she told me that her computer is almost ten years old, she's never owned a laptop, and just wanted something to use in the other rooms of the house with the wireless connection. I originally considered offering her Lacey's old laptop, as I need to purchase a new one at some point this fall or coming spring anyway, but decided against it because I have no clue when I'll be able to afford a new one.
So, I booted Pinky up for the first time in well over a year, cleaned all my stuff off it, changed the logins and passwords, and readied it for shipping. Once I can get everything settled down a little more after the former girlfriend's move, I'll be able to send it to her. Obviously, not everyone I send thank-you care packages to is going to get something this nice, but if I can help a friend in need, especially when she's helping me, then I'm certainly happy to do so. Pay it forward and all that.
In other news, I am still cleaning the Man Cave. I'm down to the last 40-50 or so papers to shred, though, so once I'm done with that I can clean off the rest of the floor, vacuum, and I'll be able to call it finished, and I can shower for the day without having to worry about getting all sweaty again from cleaning. After all, I've only been doing it for three fucking days now. I never realized just how much useless shit I've accumulated over the past several years.
Since I'm now single, I'm planning to live more of a "minimalist" sort of lifestyle, and actually throw away or recycle things I don't need anymore. I'd also like to severely pare down my DVD collection, as well as get rid of some of the old Xbox games I never play, as even without all of the former girlfriend's discs, it's still massive and takes up a ton of space.
Anyway, I'm off. Must finish the cleaning, shower, and eat, before attempting to go to bed at a somewhat decent hour tonight. Tomorrow, if it's not storming like crazy, I'm going to try to venture back to my office in Wichita to move that stuff back in. Obviously that would completely suck if it's raining or storming, so let's hope that it's not too bad -- otherwise I'll have to postpone that trip yet another day.
No comments:
Post a Comment