Clean start and dirty crumbles

Today was a mix of a day.

Went in to work (usually I just work from home), as everyone in my room is being shifted to a different building: I'm now back in the ''bullpen'' (cubicle farm) that I started out in, three years ago.

Maybe 20% of my guff I've moved across to the new place. The rest -- odd bits of office furniture I collected, class notes from courses I taught a year ago and may not be teaching again, books that aren't relevant to my current project -- I'll ferry home. About half of the stuff I took home today; the rest I'll take home later this week.

So: a fresh, new, streamlined start (as per the photo, above).


But then: I have two stashes of "treasures" in the back yard, under blue tarps. For a while, I carefully monitored the condition of these tarps, and if they blew off or developed holes (they're not designed for continual exposure to sunlight), I re-tied or replaced them.

But, I was busy with my dissertation (barely even kept up with mowing the lawn), and also with wrangling kids. A day or so ago, I finally took a look, and saw major holes.

Today, after I got home from work, I took two tarps and some light rope back there, to re-protect my piles. Upon closer inspection, though, I noticed that several items have been damaged by the rain. My blue ''blood-letting chair'' (hospital surplus: recliner, on wheels(!), with a tray that pops up under each armrest(!) had lost much of its structure: the metal frame was fine, but the chipboard(?) that formed the backrest had turned mushy. My unicycle (which I never figured out how to ride) was rusty, with the chrome majorly flaking off. A bookshelf made of MDF had become waterlogged and was falling apart. A small wooden wall cupboard, and a wooden sideboard without a top, that I had rescued from various shed in our back yard (prior to being bulldozed to make way for our house) had been destroyed by termites (even though I had them up on bricks: not high enough, I guess). And one leg of a small wooden table I'd bought at a garage sale was also eaten by termites.

Bummer. And, frustrating: I took the time to salvage or save all this stuff; stored it at our old house (some stuff under a clothesline with a tarp over it; other stuff in a small shed); moved it to our new house; and tried to keep it covered; all for naught. I was going to put a top on the wooden sideboard and use it in our (eventual) potting shed.

Well -- it **is** only ''stuff''. And the truly good stuff I'd kept indoors. But, still bummed about the unicycle -- although some effort with a wire brush will remove the rust. And the "blood-letting chair" I'd had since around 1998. I liked that chair: quirky, and practical.


Wish I had time to rescue the rest of that stuff under the tarps (I hung new tarps - so hopefully the stuff won't deteriorate further). But, need to do other stuff, like continue to sort thru boxes and move them from our house into the shed.


--GG