you tall drink of bitch

another step in the purge completed -- the destruction of years and years worth of files; of bank & credit card statements, bills, and miscellaneous paperwork. saved every year with the intention that i would someday sort thru it, but instead, over the years i just got bigger file crates and kept stuffing more and more in... i finally went thru it all and filled a box with 25 pounds of pages to destroy. i found a company that does secure shredding with a drop off location near my house - hurrah. i tried buying a cheap shredder a few months ago, but it would get jammed with 2 pages at a time. not worth my time. now i just have to trust that the person at the drop off location actually kept my shit secure until the shredders came later today.

these are miniature horses, miniature horse ponies to be exact. my sister raises and sells them on her farm. they are insanely cute. yet i cannot imagine having one as a pet.

put a cork in it

it is Day 100 of BP's spectacular oil spill in the gulf. our brains cannot comprehend the scale of this gift...
interactive map here
yesterday those poor sweethearts at BP announced over $17 billion in losses this quarter, after having set aside $32 billion to pay for the spill. article here. as expected, Tony Hayward, BP's CEO, will step aside in October. but don't worry about that sweet little earthfucker. he'll no doubt get a fat severance and his pension is worth $17 million. the well has been capped for 12 days, but the massive underwater plumes will bring sludge to beaches for years...

images of the catastrophe make me think of waterfronts i love, like the bay bridge above. i like to think that humans are so hypnotized by water because we subconsciously connect with knowing that we are from water, that we are water. at the cell level, all life is aquatic. we yearn to return.

today brought the Veterans' association to pick up bags and boxes of discards from the great purge. just noticed that the stuff is gone! the project is nearly complete.

so funny (in that sad, "oh my god, i have become my hoarding grandma" way) to see some of the crap that i had stored -- mounds of VHS and audio tapes, notebooks and handouts from high school classes, a tub full of stuffed animals, oh my. all gone.

was I too hard on the beaver?

i am recently past the half-way point in summer vacation. poor, poor me, i know. but now the downhill slide back to school has begun. groan. this summer has be wonderful - relaxing, rejuvenating, and filled with giggles. the break has given me ample time to ponder and read, yet i have been very unmotivated to blog. of course, the news has not been without nerdy fun - such as this - scientists found what they believe to be the most massive star ever discovered. they estimate that when it was younger, it was 300 times the size of the sun, and remains 10 million times as bright.

it has been lovely having my californian sweethearts here for 2 months, though i have to fight the ipad for one's attention... saw the fam for a couple of weeks in early july. since returning, i have been taking on the challenge of my overfilled basement. with the possibility of moving next summer beginning to loom in my brain, the great purge has begun. i have been going thru boxes, file crates, gigantic plastic totes, and throwing away (recycling) as much as possible.

i have so many teacher materials that i no longer need. when i was finishing grad school, i really didn't think i would get a job at my school, so i bought ridiculous amounts of resources and photocopied EVERYTHING i *thought* i might "some day" use. i imagined working in some shitty district with no resources. turned out i got my dream job, and after teaching everything from Kindergarten thru middle school, i now know i never want to work with the little ones again, so i can get rid of all of the boxes of elementary school resources i have. a large stack of boxes has been set aside to give away and/or sell this fall at school, and perhaps on craigslist or some shit.

the thought of moving is so overwhelming to me on so many levels -- having to prepare and sell my townhouse, the home search wherever we go, the packing -- it all gives my stomach knots, so the basement project feels like something i can get done now. this way i don't have to focus on the bigger pains yet...