Personal Effects

Place: tesg's Townhouse of Solitude
Lunch: Marie Callendar's Pasta Al Dente Chicken Carbonara, garlic cheese toast, Dublin Dr Pepper (in a can)

Over the weekend, I went looking for something I was sure I had a spare of. This led to searching the usual areas and coming up with nothing.

This led to the computer room closet.

It's far more daunting than it sounds.

The computer room closet (aka the 2nd bedroom closet) is a vast wasteland of boxes and items that got moved from the old house, never to be seen again. Boxes of I'll get to sorting this and seeing why I bothered moving it at all later type stuff.

Three of these turned out to be boxes of personal effects Wife #1's company gave me after she passed away. I'd never opened them...life was far too hectic between her passing and getting on with life, let alone a major move.

Three boxes. I guess you can accumulate a lot of stuff over a two-decade career at the same place.

So I finally went through them. It was sort of a revealing experience.

Some of the things I found...

-A mystery glass sealable food container that didn't match any of our sets.
-A box of Hamburger Helper single microwaveable packs of chicken Alfredo (unopened).
-A hand can opener that looked like it had never been used.
-A couple dozen photos of our cats (the current cats and the three previous).
-A framed picture of us at Cannon Beach.
-Several mini cat figurines.
-A Star Kist tuna fish, crackers, and mayonnaise lunch kit (unopened).
-A mini desk clock she'd asked me for for Christmas around ten years ago, looking as if it never left the box (it was indeed still in the box).
-A stuffed bear.
-Vitamins.
-A portable electric fan.
-Several company-branded items, trophies, and tokens.
-A random T-shirt I'd never seen before

But the one that really haunted me was the 2007 365-day cat calendar. One of those calendars where you pull off a page every day.

The day displayed, of course, was the last day she was in the office.

Wow. Just...wow.

Time just stood still at that point, I guess.

Well, the closet has a few less boxes in it now, and my trash can is full.

I never did find that gadget I was looking for.

Friday the 13th

Place: Qdoba
Lunch: Chicken Mexican Gumbo, Dr Pepper

"Paraskevidekatriaphobia: The fear of Friday the 13th. I personally think that there are better phobias out there, but that's just me." - @stephaniemabey, Twitter

Probably true, and I hardly ever even think about it when it happens to be Friday the 13th. But MAN has this felt like a Friday the 13th.

I came to work to a nearly empty Inbox and a new toy...a headset-microphone to use with our phone system. We have a PC interface. Neato.

So I get through my work, trying to finish everything before a phone deposition at 10:30. This isn't easy as people keep contacting me with more stuff to do that's totally an emergency. Worlds may fall if I don't drop everything RIGHT NOW. Lots of that today.

Anyway, the attorneys for the deposition call me early because they're running ahead (which NEVER happens). So we start early, and I'm on my new headset. In the middle of questioning, they ask me something, I answer, and there's silence.

Then somebody says "Are you still there?"

"Yes."

They ask the question again.

The microphone apparently didn't work when I answered.

Then it did this again later in the morning during another call.

Then I went online and searched for this headset (something I didn't do ahead of time...it was kind of an impulse purchase).

This is apparently a very common problem, and I should expect it to totally fail within the next week.

Nice.

And I'm pretty sure I threw out the packaging. And it's garbage day.

Oh well.

So between general mayhem and non-functioning equipment, I'm thinking I should just go home and hide for the rest of the day.