My office has literally been a disaster since my stuff was moved to Georgia. I kept meaning to take care of that room, but meh. Talk about no fun at all. It's continued to get worse and worse because it's just too easy to dump more crap in there when it's already a mess. And then there comes the day where you absolutely have to tackle it.
Today was that day. (I'm writing this on a Saturday.) At least it was day one of what will be a multi-day project.
I was right--it wasn't fun. One of the things I had to do that I didn't like was get rid of my Smithsonian Magazines. I love Smithsonian Magazine! I literally read it cover to cover...when I had time to read it. That was part of the problem. Because I did read everything in it, it took me forever to get through an issue and then they started backing up. I moved at least two years worth of the magazine from Minnesota to Georgia. And never read them. It seemed sad to get rid of them, but what were the odds I was going to read magazines that were more than five years old? Exactly.
The other thing that cropped up was power cords for electronics. Which electronics? Well, that was the million dollar question. (And it still is a question.) Why the heck don't these companies put the name of the product on the damn power cord? I honestly have a ton of power cords that I don't dare get rid of, but have no idea what item they're for. Gah!
There were many little things I didn't want to get rid of: pins for winning writing contests, pins for my milestone company anniversaries; and ear buds. I kept buying ear buds because I thought I needed them, but no, I didn't. I have a million pairs of the things. Sigh.
And I didn't get rid of nearly enough stuff. I know this, but it's hard. The worst part is that there's still so much left to do in there. I was hoping to get it done in one day, but just couldn't. I guess this project rolls to tomorrow.
Thursday, June 01, 2017
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Super Duper Target
***I received no compensation of any kind from anyone for this post.***
More thoughts from my Minnesota trip.
Growing up--and living most of my life--in Minnesota, I took a few things for granted. Like Target. From where I lived, I had three Target stores nearby. I could go to any of the three of them without having to drive very far. One of these three is not just a Super Target, but like a Super Duper Colossal Target. :-) The kind with a nearly full grocery store in addition to an enormous rest of the store.
It was like walking into heaven. (FYI, I love Target!)
There's only one Target near me in Georgia and it's not that close. It also doesn't have the space or the amount of merchandise that I saw in the Minnesota Target.
At the Minnesota store, I saw these awesome welcome mats. The welcome mat I have now (also purchased at MN Target when I moved into my MN house) is faded and starting to wear. I thought about replacing it with one of the cute mats I spotted on this trip, but my dad had misled me about the amount of stuff we had to haul down from MN to GA, and I knew the car was going to be tight. I decided I'd check out my GA Target for the mats.
I should have bought the welcome mat I liked while I was in Minnesota. They did not have them at my local store. It was also sad to walk into my local store and see how much smaller it was than my old Minnesota favorite.
There are so many things I miss about Minnesota, but one of the big ones is having my choice of awesome Target stores close at hand.
PS: Ditto for Caribou Coffee. OMG, it was a dream to have so many Caribou stores close to me wherever I was in the Twin Cities! I don't even have a Caribou anywhere near me in Georgia and I have to order my coffee online. Sadness.
***I received no compensation of any kind from anyone for this post.***
More thoughts from my Minnesota trip.
Growing up--and living most of my life--in Minnesota, I took a few things for granted. Like Target. From where I lived, I had three Target stores nearby. I could go to any of the three of them without having to drive very far. One of these three is not just a Super Target, but like a Super Duper Colossal Target. :-) The kind with a nearly full grocery store in addition to an enormous rest of the store.
It was like walking into heaven. (FYI, I love Target!)
There's only one Target near me in Georgia and it's not that close. It also doesn't have the space or the amount of merchandise that I saw in the Minnesota Target.
At the Minnesota store, I saw these awesome welcome mats. The welcome mat I have now (also purchased at MN Target when I moved into my MN house) is faded and starting to wear. I thought about replacing it with one of the cute mats I spotted on this trip, but my dad had misled me about the amount of stuff we had to haul down from MN to GA, and I knew the car was going to be tight. I decided I'd check out my GA Target for the mats.
I should have bought the welcome mat I liked while I was in Minnesota. They did not have them at my local store. It was also sad to walk into my local store and see how much smaller it was than my old Minnesota favorite.
There are so many things I miss about Minnesota, but one of the big ones is having my choice of awesome Target stores close at hand.
PS: Ditto for Caribou Coffee. OMG, it was a dream to have so many Caribou stores close to me wherever I was in the Twin Cities! I don't even have a Caribou anywhere near me in Georgia and I have to order my coffee online. Sadness.
***I received no compensation of any kind from anyone for this post.***
Thursday, May 25, 2017
Travel Stress Tips
This isn't directly a Minnesota trip post, but it kind of ties into it and I thought I'd share.
I was listening to a podcast the other week and one of the tips given on the episode was to take bookend days around your travel. Basically, that means take the day off before you leave and the day off after you come back to reduce your stress level when you travel.
This is something I heartily endorse. When it's been possible, I've always taken an extra day off from work so that I have a day or two home after my trip. This gives me time to unpack, do laundry, and unwind from the hassle of either driving or flying. I learned this years ago and have done it ever since. It's the difference between going back to work exhausted (a lot of my vacations were to writing conferences, and as an introvert, those things left me drained) and going back to work relaxed. Or at least mostly relaxed. :-)
What I hadn't done in the past was take the day off before I traveled. Until this trip to Minnesota and that was an accident. I'd taken the Friday off before we left because my dad had a doctor's appointment. I didn't know then when, exactly, we'd be headed to Minnesota, but when everything fell into place, it turned out we were leaving that Saturday.
OMG! It was fabulous! I wasn't up until 2am packing for the first time in like forever. (I hate packing and tend to put it off until the last minute.) So we went to the doctor, stopped at the grocery store to get drinks and snacks for the trip, and had time to pack, and load the car and do the million other things a person needs to do before a car trip.
From now on, I am definitely (if I have the vacation time) taking off the day before. It was the best thing I'd done to ease travel stress in a long time.
It was after I came home that I heard the podcast and I had to laugh. Why couldn't I have heard that travel tip years ago? I'd been doing half of the bookending for years, but taking the day before had never dawned on me. Lesson learned.
I was listening to a podcast the other week and one of the tips given on the episode was to take bookend days around your travel. Basically, that means take the day off before you leave and the day off after you come back to reduce your stress level when you travel.
This is something I heartily endorse. When it's been possible, I've always taken an extra day off from work so that I have a day or two home after my trip. This gives me time to unpack, do laundry, and unwind from the hassle of either driving or flying. I learned this years ago and have done it ever since. It's the difference between going back to work exhausted (a lot of my vacations were to writing conferences, and as an introvert, those things left me drained) and going back to work relaxed. Or at least mostly relaxed. :-)
What I hadn't done in the past was take the day off before I traveled. Until this trip to Minnesota and that was an accident. I'd taken the Friday off before we left because my dad had a doctor's appointment. I didn't know then when, exactly, we'd be headed to Minnesota, but when everything fell into place, it turned out we were leaving that Saturday.
OMG! It was fabulous! I wasn't up until 2am packing for the first time in like forever. (I hate packing and tend to put it off until the last minute.) So we went to the doctor, stopped at the grocery store to get drinks and snacks for the trip, and had time to pack, and load the car and do the million other things a person needs to do before a car trip.
From now on, I am definitely (if I have the vacation time) taking off the day before. It was the best thing I'd done to ease travel stress in a long time.
It was after I came home that I heard the podcast and I had to laugh. Why couldn't I have heard that travel tip years ago? I'd been doing half of the bookending for years, but taking the day before had never dawned on me. Lesson learned.
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
A Job Not Completed
This is a Minnesota trip post.
After two days of driving, my dad and arrived at the house. We opened the garage door and it wasn't empty. The garage--the entire house--was supposed to be nearly empty. My dad had paid the guy who held the estate sale in December to empty it out and he'd paid him a lot of money for this job to be completed.
There was also stuff in the basement he hadn't gotten rid of either--big things like a console television and a console record player that was probably from the 1950s or 1960s and some cabinets and more stuff. Really, dude? What a way to screw over an elderly person who trusted you.
Before we'd left Georgia, my dad had said there was almost nothing in the house and that there was even less we needed to bring back to my house. He left me with the impression that there was nothing left to do and I'd brought a lot of things along to keep me occupied. The list included two crochet projects, two crochet video classes I'd loaded onto my iPad, four movies I'd put on my iPad, and the computer I use to write with away from home. I had such plans!
Everything went out the window when we saw the house hadn't been emptied out the way it was supposed to me. The estate sale guy, BTW, had not answered my dad's phone calls since at least January, possibly earlier than that, so there was no way to get him to finish the job he'd been paid to do.
The good news was that when we met with the Realtor the next day who'd be listing the house, she said she had the name of someone who could get rid of the rest of the stuff after we left, including the mattresses we'd be using while we were there. My dad had a mattress on a bed frame, but the mattress in my room was on the floor. Sigh. But the real estate lady saved us so much hassle and that was a big deal. She also arranged for someone to come clean the house after we left.
Score two for real estate lady, and minus one for estate sale guy.
After two days of driving, my dad and arrived at the house. We opened the garage door and it wasn't empty. The garage--the entire house--was supposed to be nearly empty. My dad had paid the guy who held the estate sale in December to empty it out and he'd paid him a lot of money for this job to be completed.
There was also stuff in the basement he hadn't gotten rid of either--big things like a console television and a console record player that was probably from the 1950s or 1960s and some cabinets and more stuff. Really, dude? What a way to screw over an elderly person who trusted you.
Before we'd left Georgia, my dad had said there was almost nothing in the house and that there was even less we needed to bring back to my house. He left me with the impression that there was nothing left to do and I'd brought a lot of things along to keep me occupied. The list included two crochet projects, two crochet video classes I'd loaded onto my iPad, four movies I'd put on my iPad, and the computer I use to write with away from home. I had such plans!
Everything went out the window when we saw the house hadn't been emptied out the way it was supposed to me. The estate sale guy, BTW, had not answered my dad's phone calls since at least January, possibly earlier than that, so there was no way to get him to finish the job he'd been paid to do.
The good news was that when we met with the Realtor the next day who'd be listing the house, she said she had the name of someone who could get rid of the rest of the stuff after we left, including the mattresses we'd be using while we were there. My dad had a mattress on a bed frame, but the mattress in my room was on the floor. Sigh. But the real estate lady saved us so much hassle and that was a big deal. She also arranged for someone to come clean the house after we left.
Score two for real estate lady, and minus one for estate sale guy.
Thursday, May 18, 2017
4:30 = 6:00
I mentioned in my previous post that my dad and I were headed up to Minnesota. He's been living with me since my mom passed away and with the house finally empty except for a few things, we were going to drive up and list it for sale. I'm going to do a bunch of posts about this experience because, well, this is the house I grew up in and writing helps me deal with the mixed emotions I have.
My dad keeps meticulous records whenever we take a car trip. He has detailed information on every trek to Minnesota and back and he brings them along on the next trip and does comparisons. Not the way I'd choose to pass my time stuck in a car, but it works for him. :-)
Every trip I always say, "this time, let's leave at 4:30." Every time. I push us to pack as much as we can in the car the night before so that we don't waste extra time in the morning. And every time leave at 6am. I know because my dad has it written down.
I am notoriously slow-moving in the mornings, but on the car trip side of the equation, I am not the one making us late. It's my dad.
It should just be a matter of packing the coolers and putting them in the car in the morning. Maybe 20 minutes max, and of course, the usual morning things that you have to do to leave the house, like shower. ;-) I really have no idea what he's doing that takes an extra 90 minutes. He doesn't seem to be rushing around, trying to get last minute things done.
With the house listed for sale, we've probably made our last car trip to Minnesota, so how he fills the three hours it takes him to get ready to ride in my car will remain a mystery, but it's oh, so frustrating.
My dad keeps meticulous records whenever we take a car trip. He has detailed information on every trek to Minnesota and back and he brings them along on the next trip and does comparisons. Not the way I'd choose to pass my time stuck in a car, but it works for him. :-)
Every trip I always say, "this time, let's leave at 4:30." Every time. I push us to pack as much as we can in the car the night before so that we don't waste extra time in the morning. And every time leave at 6am. I know because my dad has it written down.
I am notoriously slow-moving in the mornings, but on the car trip side of the equation, I am not the one making us late. It's my dad.
It should just be a matter of packing the coolers and putting them in the car in the morning. Maybe 20 minutes max, and of course, the usual morning things that you have to do to leave the house, like shower. ;-) I really have no idea what he's doing that takes an extra 90 minutes. He doesn't seem to be rushing around, trying to get last minute things done.
With the house listed for sale, we've probably made our last car trip to Minnesota, so how he fills the three hours it takes him to get ready to ride in my car will remain a mystery, but it's oh, so frustrating.
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