cables and pens

...
Man, this really is the world's most boring blog. I should get an award for tedium.

Before I started on any real work, I addressed a pile of papers that had been hanging out since before Christmas. No surprises in there, just things that needed to be filed or shredded.

And in the ongoing quest for clean workspace, I've made some room on the desk:

before

after, plus bonus dangerous tower of rectangles

Not as much room as I would like (I wonder if I can snag that flat-screen monitor in the living room... Amy? Thoughts?), but at least it's a little better. Now that I have a laptop, I've been contemplating moving all important data off that PC, onto an external drive, wiping the PC's hard drive, and using it as the wireless hub only. I'm not great with wireless network stuff (I dunno why but it is the thing that confounds me, usually), so if you have thoughts and you know what you are talking about, please advise.

Phew. This little exercise reminded me that I've got some office supplies that need organizing. So let's do that.

First, this:

bowl of cables and such

I've got phone cables, ethernet cables, USB cables, iPod cables, headphones, earbuds, and data storage. Similar things are tucked in other places around the room (the curse of this project: rework!) and I'll need to consolidate them all in the future. For now, I will label a drawer "computer cables and accessories" and move on.

Now:

office supplies

We've already dealt with the bottom drawer full of stickers, so today we'll concentrate on the top two drawers.

before top drawer

• Mystery brackets go in the utility drawer.
• Eye of beloved teddy bear, chewed on by beloved dog, gets a special home...with the fortune cookies fortunes, sure.
• Test every single writing implement for usefulness, toss the busted ones, keep the best , donate the rest. (Discovered several historic writing imlements, including a pencil from the Girl Scout Diamond Jubilee in 1987 and a pen with a boob-shaped topper from one of Amy's birthdays. I also tossed anything labeled HDFS or Great Basin Imaging, as a way to purge two different but equally awful periods of my past.)
  
• My favorite Tria Pantone Process Black 3-in-1 graphic design pen finally died.

And next:

before middle drawer

• Eight-year-old Happy Tree Friends Christmas cards go in the "stationary" drawer.
• Pop Rocks (really?) go in the candy dish in the kitchen.
  
• Twenty-five and 33-cent stamps go in the pile of "weird stamps to make current postage with."
  
• A container of teeny tiny safety pins goes in the bathroom with the container of normal-sized safety pins.
  
• Two rubber stoppers for who-knows-what get trashed.
  
• One suction-cup X-wing Fighter doodad gets placed with the "display?" items.
  

And the results:

after top drawer

after middle drawer

I'd feel great except I just pulled my favorite pants from the dryer and discovered they are grease-stained from horsey sauce, so I'm off to pout now instead.