Watt's Up Musings of an original geek

Matthew left for the Cotton Bowl yesterday with friends, and we dropped Katie off at the airport today. So quiet has again arrived at our dear home. However it’s New Years Day and the TV is going constantly as Kathy, my dear football addict, is getting her due fill. I’m still doing some minor shredding and sorting upstairs. Now I’m about ready to sort through all the books and see which ones should be tossed or sold back to our local unsed bookstore. This single room is slowly getting there, however, it’s amazing how much stuff I had squirreled away in a 12×15 foot space. Now considering the rest of the house, we’ve got our work cut out for ourselves. Yesterday Kathy sorted through one cupboard with our guarentees in it. No need for guarentees or instruction manuals for things we no longer own. This whole cleaning-up business is definitely time consuming and a bigger job than I anticipated.

I continued to sort and shred today. I’m now going through old magazines and business papers which include computer graphics, object-oriented programming, and teaching C++/Java programming. I spent all day doing this and now have about 15 bags of chaff. I’m also preparing to sell some of my old magazines on eBay, but I have little hope that anyone would want them, nevertheless I can at least try.

We’ve collected many papers over the years mostly for tax reasons – much of it receipts. So recently we’ve started to get rid of some of these especially ones that are older than 7 years (some were over 20 years old). Nevertheless today I shredded over 3 hours and got all of it done. We have a industrial strength shredder that has a massive cross cut unit above and bucket beneath. When done I had filled five white kitchen garbage bags full of chaff.

It was kind of a nostalgia trip looking at some of the receipts before grinding them up. Such as a receipt from the hospital for “Baby Girl Watt” for the birth of Katie who will soon be turning 20. I think it’s time to get rid of this stuff, but something in me says that I’m destroying part of my history.

The holiday season is winding down. Justin headed back to NC today. I’m sad.

Breakfast, stockings, presents, lunch, family phone calls, munchies, naps, DVD movies, TV movies, light dinner, chocolate souffle, nice comfortable day.

Justin, Matthew and I went to Creek Camp for a hike today while the women were at work.

Justin arrived yesterday afternoon. So the family is now complete. We chatted and joked around the dinner table while eating lasagna that I made in the afternoon and munched on Christmas cookies for dessert.

When I was growing up I spent many hours down in my basement workshop making things. Among the tools my dad had was a drill press and a jigsaw. At some point when I was older and had my own home I transported the jigsaw to Poughkeepsie, New York. The drill press remained in my father’s home in Orchard Park, NY. Then later I moved the jigsaw to Austin where it’s been in the garage workshop. Since arriving it began to make strange grinding noises. So a few years back I took it apart and found that internally it was severely damaged. Since then it has sat apart and unused. A few weeks ago we were notified of a bulk garbage pickup starting this week. So today I moved the jigsaw and its wooden stand to the street. It makes me sad, because it was something that was my dad’s, it had been a part of my life and I had spent many wonderful hours creating things with it.

Goodbye old friend.

Matthew arrived home for the holidays. So we’ve got two out of three with us now. Although we’re quiet people, it feels good to have both him and his sister at home. Very nice.

Home on vacation and just bummin’