Happy Year of the Monkey!

Sent the e-mail cards out early, posted late. Go figure.

Unusual comments heard frequently at my house:

“You! Get out of the dishwasher!”

What I want to know, is how do you convice people that yes, you really do want books for Christmas? Perhaps a movie thrown in for variety, but mostly you just want books. Any kind of books: Mysteries, Fantasies, Novels, Histories, Comparative Theology, Science Books, Cookbooks–just books. No more Stuff.

This comes up because I am cleaning the house, which desperately needed done, and I am also going through looking for stuff to donate to Christian Help, or barring that, throw away, and I began to wonder how I ended up with so much Stuff.

You know, Stuff. It’s not useful per se, it’s just something someone thought was neat and thought that you would like.

Not that I don’t like my Stuff, mind you. Much of my Stuff is very nice, and I like looking at it. But it’s just Stuff. It takes up space. In fact is often takes up valuable space where books could go. This is not a good thing, because in the battle between books and Stuff, Stuff loses every time. (Unless I don’t like the book, or it’s extra-special stuff, like the collection of elephants given my over the years by the Christmas Elephant and Birthday Elephant.)

Why does Stuff lose? Becuase we have a Very Small House. You know, the typical 40s and 50s house with small closets (if there are closets at all), tiny bedrooms, small living room, small kitchen, and damp basement. With books in every single room, that doesn’t leave a lot of room for Stuff, yet it seems like every time I turn around, we have more Stuff.

So what do you do with the Stuff? If it has a use, I give it to Christian Help, but so much of it is just plain Stuff, cluttering up shelves, cluttering up the floor, taking up space. No use, just pretty. Or neat. Too nice to throw away, but too much trouble to have a yard sale.

Maybe I’ll give all my Stuff to my sister-in-law and she can sell it on E-Bay, after all, it is Nice Stuff.

In a search for the name of the feather in a Cavalier hat, I discovered the Hat DIctionary.

Much to my surprise, I discover that I have worn a chaplet.

I need more hats!

(No, I didn’t find the answer to my question, but as it wasn’t my question originally, I’m not certain there is an answer.)

Regarding WV being up for sale on E-Bay, I invite you to read this post from Hillbilly Sophisticate.

If you search Google for “They’re happy because they eat lard” my website is the first to come up.

At least I get to be first in something.

Oh, here’s the picture.

My favorite thing about that picture is the memory of attempting to explain it to my Chinese friends… This is why the only Chinese word I know is “pig fat”.

I really like language hat. And this post is no exception.

For those of you who missed the news, someone attempted to sell the WV on e-bay.

I heard the news yesterday morning as we were leaving for work, which worked out very well, as I used it in my Internet Explorer class as an example of “Yes, you can find just about anything for sale on E-Bay.”

Even better, the bidding was just short of the projected state defecit…perhaps they’re on to something?

(This news was also covered by S. at Hillbilly Sophisticate.)

The Braxtonian has also weighed in on the sale of the state.

There is a collection of photographs of Russia, taken in the early 1900s. They are colorized through a technique developed by the photographer.

This is absolutely fascinating, as there are many photographs of people, as well as architecture and landscape.

The website describes the process of how the photographs were taken, and how they were viewed in color at the time.