(no subject)

Last night after the gym I meant to putter and tidy things up (you do NOT want to know what was lurking in my kitchen green bin yesterday morning) but was enervated by the heat and also somewhat sucked in by Wings to the Kingdom. Jen and I ended up watching three episodes of Doctor Who. Oops. (Would have been only two, but the second was the first of a two-parter. But they were good!)

Did manage to putter a little this morning -- I emptied my dishwasher and cleaned the green bin (which is actually a silver bucket, but never mind that) and wiped the counter and useful things like that.

Also this morning I came face to face with a raccoon who'd climbed up to the third floor. It was outside and I was inside, but it did look like it was thinking about coming in. (I've been leaving the door open at night because it's so hot.) I said "Hey!" and it wandered behind the neighbours' deck and vanished.

Then I came to work and stopped at one of the stands in Nathan Phillips Square and bought peaches. Yum.

Yard sale

It turns out that cousin Jen, life_on_queen, and I are having a yard sale this weekend so's we can reclaim that end of our basement and life_on_queen can divest herself of Stuff before heading to the Old Country. (It was going to be next weekend, but Jen got antsy.)

Locals, want to come? Email me for details! electricland at livejournal dot com.

Free stuff! Two essays on why we're having a yard sale

(which I keep wanting to call a garage sale, despite the fact that we manifestly do not own a garage)

Net synchronicity's funny that way.

Mark Morford:

In fact, it is no stretch at all to say that "free" is a human cultural obsession, something that defines us and holds us in eternal thrall. And I'm sure there's been some sort of deep scientific study on just exactly how many segments of our brain light up when we hear that omnipotent word, even (and this is where it gets really fascinating) when we know the free item in question is actually bad for us, pointless and unhealthy and even a little sad.

Paul Graham (via Making Light):

It wasn't always this way. Stuff used to be rare and valuable. You can still see evidence of that if you look for it. For example, in my house in Cambridge, which was built in 1876, the bedrooms don't have closets. In those days people's stuff fit in a chest of drawers. Even as recently as a few decades ago there was a lot less stuff. When I look back at photos from the 1970s, I'm surprised how empty houses look. As a kid I had what I thought was a huge fleet of toy cars, but they'd be dwarfed by the number of toys my nephews have. All together my Matchboxes and Corgis took up about a third of the surface of my bed. In my nephews' rooms the bed is the only clear space.