So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[MisterCairo]

During a move several years back a helpful relative took it upon herself to shelve my books — by size and color.

Tempted as I was to tell her this isn’t House Effing Beautiful magazine, I bit my tongue.

My system is mine alone, but it would make sense to most any literate person who perused the spines for a minute or two.

Aren't all library collections arranged by size and colour??? What in heaven's name was your problem man?

 

[Harp]

During a move several years back a helpful relative took it upon herself to shelve my books — by size and color.

Tempted as I was to tell her this isn’t House Effing Beautiful magazine, I bit my tongue.

My system is mine alone, but it would make sense to most any literate person who perused the spines for a minute or two.

A friend of mine in the Army wrote that his bride had rearranged his combat decorations by color
scheme after he had correctly set the ribbons according to order beneath his Combat Infantryman Badge.
The CIB was moved as were his parachute jump wings and pathfinder torch.

My book system is basic confirmed Irish bachelor strewn. More bookcases have been installed,
a mess of journals, law reviews, and stuff run off office printers-years accumulate have been tidied.
I am chastened and have vowed to improve my slipshod carelessness.

 

[Edward]

Whatever is happening here:

View attachment 303040

I foresee a human doing something very silly, and it not ending well for either party...

My cat, who is now somewhere between 11 and 12 years old, has suddenly learned how to jump on top of bureaus, counters, and other tall furniture. She has never done this before, but now as soon as she walks into a room she starts looking for somewhere to jump where she isn't supposed to. I don't know what I did to promote this, but I wish very much that she would find a new hobby.

View attachment 303046 The chair I don't mind, because, as you can see, she has long since made it her own.

She's a cutie, could be my Greta's American cousin. Is she as obsessed with routine and timing as every tabby I've ever lived with, Greta included?

One of the things she's started jumping on is the random pile of books in the bedroom. That didn't end well.

In my experience, that sort of thing usually ends with a cat sat atop a spread out pile of detritus, before giving the hoomin a look of "you'd better clear this mess up, hadn't you?", then stalking off, tail in the air...

 

[LizzieMaine]

Miss Carol, for that is her name, is an imperious soul. She wants what she wants when she wants it, regardless of my own wishes in the matter, and she tends to view all low human activities with deep, dry disdain. Which, all things considered, is not entirely unwarranted.

She's been the star of a blog-type thing I've been writing for the theatre for most of the past year, and has developed something of a following, although I suspect most of her readers are themselves cats.

 

[tonyb]

...

My book system is basic confirmed Irish bachelor strewn. More bookcases have been installed,
a mess of journals, law reviews, and stuff run off office printers-years accumulate have been tidied.
I am chastened and have vowed to improve my slipshod carelessness.

As an answer to that ****ing Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” comes a tome titled “The Joy of Leaving Your Sh-t All Over the Place.”

 

[LizzieMaine]

Someone gave me a copy of Marie Kondo's book a few years ago. Last week I found it, buried under the big pile of books I keep in the bathroom.

 

[Harp]

As an answer to that ****ing Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” comes a tome titled “The Joy of Leaving Your Sh-t All Over the Place.”

Fecal scatological spreading is not my style though colloquial usage broadly applied bachelorhood, mea culpa.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Ever hear of “Swedish death cleaning”?

 

[tonyb]

Ever hear of “Swedish death cleaning”?

Regretfully, yes.

 

[tonyb]

Aren't all library collections arranged by size and colour??? What in heaven's name was your problem man?

We’ve touched on this here before, but it still has me shaking my head.

Shelving by size and color was succeeded by covering books in colored paper (couldn’t read the spine, nor the cover, if you wanted) which was succeeded by — get this — shelving books spine in!

I’m far from the most well-read person you’re likely to meet this week (I have several books I’ve never read, and I bet y’all do too), but I would sooner run naked through the old folks’ home than shelve my books in a way that tells the world that I don’t read books.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Regretfully, yes.

I think I’m going through a bout of it right now. We are planning to retire and move back to the States next summer. I find myself just wanting to minimalize the h$ll out of the move. Downsize, downsize, downsize. I’m a bit worried (or at least aware) that there might be a bit more to my thinking than just being practical.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^
I just hate moving. Before I met the dewy-eyed bride, 24 years and some months ago, I had lived in the same little house for 20 years. Since then, we’ve moved five times. It seems she is now happy to stay where we’ve been the past five-plus years, is looking forward to actually paying it off, maybe putting solar panels on the roof, etc. So I trust I’ll be spared moving again.

Moving my worldly possessions from greater Seattle to greater Denver involved two trips with a 16-foot rental high-cube, pulling a car trailer on the first of those two trips. On the trailer was a Chevy Astro van stuffed to the gills. The second trip, about a year after the first, involved clearing out our swag from the last of the properties we “owned” out that way, much of which had belonged to a renter who just wanted rid of it, and which we used to furnish the short-term rental unit in the basement here.

Truth is, much of that stuff on the second load was hardly worth what it cost to move. Secondhand furniture, the nondescript stuff of fairly recent manufacture, can be had for next to nothing.

 

[Harp]

I think I’m going through a bout of it right now. We are planning to retire and move back to the States next summer. I find myself just wanting to minimalize the h$ll out of the move. Downsize, downsize, downsize. I’m a bit worried (or at least aware) that there might be a bit more to my thinking than just being practical.

Interesting that you and your wife will return Stateside after so long abroad. Most expatriates I have met
are permanent change-of-station non DEROS folk. Good luck with relocation.

As for mortality, I made my first will out at eighteen-later pronounced dead; received Extreme Unction at forty,
the last rites of the Catholic Church; and lived long enough to see the Chicago Cubs win a World Series.
I contracted Covid-19 and survived the virus.
Ironically, I once loved a Russian lady whom had served as a Soviet Army intelligence officer.
Her Christian name is Elizabeth no less. A secret to evading Death or mortal concern/worry of him
I believe is acceptance of mortal nature, not necessarily an overly casual approach to the reaper, but
tacit acknowledgement said fact. I am also devoutly Catholic; despite breaking the Decalogue and
shedding adolescent Cartesian agnosticism. A prodigal lost soul whom found his way back to the fold.

 

[Trenchfriend]

The marketing boys still like to sell Urea in bodycream products, in Europe.

Has anyone ever experienced a benefit of the 5 or 10% Urea-part in bodycream? I know several "standard" hand- or bodycreams, here. And they always did the job same good.

 

[Turnip]

Wait 40 years, then re-try.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Wait 40 years, then re-try.

With the 10% Urea creams?

 

[Turnip]

Yes, my over 80 years old in-law highly praised that stuff. Maybe you get a difference once you developed a more granny-like paper skin.

 

[Edward]

Miss Carol, for that is her name, is an imperious soul. She wants what she wants when she wants it, regardless of my own wishes in the matter, and she tends to view all low human activities with deep, dry disdain. Which, all things considered, is not entirely unwarranted.

She's been the star of a blog-type thing I've been writing for the theatre for most of the past year, and has developed something of a following, although I suspect most of her readers are themselves cats.

Tremendous fun , I'll read that at length later. Miss Carol sounds a lot like Greta Cat, though Greta Cat (unlike her late litter-sister, Marlene) is often indifferent to most human food; never more so than when she's begged share of something that does catch her interest, only to immediately reject it once acquired. Oddly enough, I swear there's now some stuff she only eats so the dog doesn't get it. The dog - who was found about eighteen months ago, wandering the streets in Romania in a terrible state, bless her - will eat just about anything she can get hold of, including on one occasion a jam doughnut I'd foolishly left on the table, and often the cat's biscuit treats. Which has caused something of a stand off because I've started putting them on a higher level of the cat tower, out of Mimi Dog's reach. Greta Cat objects to them being put in the Wrong Place almost s much as when she takes a swipe at Mimi Dog for pinching them, but when she realised I wasn't giving in, she at least started - following a perfunctory protest - to climb up one level further and actually eat them, rather than sitting on the first and wailing that they were on the wrong floor. The little madam. As I type this in my home office, Mimi Dog is asleep under the desk, while Greta Cat is asleep *on* the desk - and stretching herself out to claim as much of it as possible. She does like to claim my attention during the day - but normally only when I'm on with students or in a meeting. I suspect my current undergraduate charges have seen more of her bumhole than they have my face. She does rather like to display her rear to the camera. Fortunately she's never thought to scent-mark it...

As an answer to that ****ing Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” comes a tome titled “The Joy of Leaving Your Sh-t All Over the Place.”

The wife is a fan of hers. I don't mind the philosophy. The problem is that rather too much fills me with joy for the wife's liking....

We’ve touched on this here before, but it still has me shaking my head.

Shelving by size and color was succeeded by covering books in colored paper (couldn’t read the spine, nor the cover, if you wanted) which was succeeded by — get this — shelving books spine in!

I’m far from the most well-read person you’re likely to meet this week (I have several books I’ve never read, and I bet y’all do too), but I would sooner run naked through the old folks’ home than shelve my books in a way that tells the world that I don’t read books.

I remember about thirty odd years ago visiting a National Trust property in which there was an outstanding Victorian library of original, hardbound books in beautiful condition. The guide then explained they had never been read; in the days when they were the equivalent of the supermarket paperbacks shelf, the owners of the house had wholesale bought a huge number of books purely because they looked nice on the shelves. There is nothing new under the sun....

I think I’m going through a bout of it right now. We are planning to retire and move back to the States next summer. I find myself just wanting to minimalize the h$ll out of the move. Downsize, downsize, downsize. I’m a bit worried (or at least aware) that there might be a bit more to my thinking than just being practical.

My parents are going through this now. Dad is fairly minimalist, while my mother is a bit of a hoarder. Comedy ensues....

 

[LizzieMaine]

I remember going to a Christmas Gathering -- not a party, a Gathering, yet -- at a boss's house one year and being appalled to discover that among the books on his shelf were fine editions of the classics -- with the pages uncut. I wasn't surprised, but I was disappointed -- it was the kind of Gathering where I wouldn't have minded going off in the corner to leaf thru a book.

Occasionally I'll pick up a copy of a book from the Era with dust jacket intact and the binding all crisp and the pages spotlessly clean and I'll wonder why the original owner never bothered to read it.

Shelving books spine-in is asinine. You want to keep the page edges shielded from sunlight as much as possible to prevent browning of the paper. Otherwise the book will start flaking a lot sooner than it should.

 

[Harp]

Weather forecast spells SNOW throughout the Midwest.
Cannot complain since other parts of the country are routinely clobbered, year-in-out.