How is it that the three people who have clued in the most are 1000, 2000 and 8000 miles away?

I pulled another box out of the office and in a matter of minutes had it sorted and dealt with. Mere minutes! Visions of 30" monitors danced in my head as I went back to the office to get another box. This is going to be too easy, might as well get three!

Only to discover many, many things I had totally forgotten about (and hundreds of receipts I wish I had forgotten about) in the next box. That, and that the previous box was a total fluke.

I found early year business expense receipts (yay!), a free flight coupon on Southwest (nearly expired), ankle injury recovery instructions, medicine ball exercise sheets (two sets!), three decks of cards, my phone's user manual, and two paper grocery bags full of paper to recycle. To think I actually thought at one point I'd need the information contained on those sheets of paper! Was I daft?

I pondered at one point just moving everything to the garage and calling it done, when Kris replied, "Shifting is not moving, it's cheating."

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. The point is to go through this stuff. I think I'll write that program to cycle through images so that I can tag them and pitch all of the remaining paper after scanning it. Of course, that requires having a large disk, possibly a RAID system, to store it all.

Funny how, to do A, I seem to have to go through B, C, D, E, F and G first.

Well, at least we're all official at work now.

I think Kris thought I was kidding. I don't know why he thought I was kidding. It certainly wasn't the wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean that did it. Maybe it was the batting of the eyelashes? Perhaps it was the throw down, temper tantrums and spitting of fire that first clued him in.

Or maybe it was the first box removed from the office.

I cleaned out the first box. It was a small box. In it, I found four magazines I hadn't read (which will contribute to my one-magazine-a-day obsession until I get through all my old magazines), five catalogs from August that I hadn't seen (and which went into the trash), three tampons (how they got there, I have no idea, but I can now put off buying another box of tampons for four months since I have the next one covered), Chris Messina's business card from CivicSpace (which he gave to me at Cal's Flickr workshop), one pen, and 47 cents.

Everything was sorted, thrown out, scanned, and disposed of as needed. I also threw out the computer box for Kris' computer which he purchased a year and a half ago. I think he'll be keeping that one, so the box can go. You'd think.

Okay, so nominally one and a half boxes done, fifteen hundred forty three to go.

A productive day.

OMG.

So, my Flickr photos are licensed under a Creative Commons license, though if you look at my photos I don't explicitly say so. The license means that so long as you don't change the picture, don't make any money off the picture, and keep my name attached to the photo, you can use it.

No, it's not the loosest license, but the one I'm most comfortable with at this point. Who knows what'll happen in 10 years. Once you release content into the wild, you can't take it back, or put it back in a bottle (or change a google verb into a copy-righted non-verb).

Imagine my pleasant surprise at the discovery that my photo of my index card lists is being used to display how handy index cards are in visual thinking tools.

The page is part of a series of pages, or modules, describing the tools, tips and techniques of using pictures to solve problems.

Because, you know, I'm unable to think without using my hands, so clearly I'd be unable to remember without notecards. Also known as "my brain."

Nifty!

I think I have found the worst chocolate souffle recipe on the Intarweb.

Tyler volunteered to head cook for communal dinner this week. He actually wanted to do it last week, over here at Krikitt Downs, but I was heading out of town, so pushed him back to this week.

Now, Tyler is a great guy. We all love him very much. He's just always late.

And for me, Miss "Adjust your clocks back fifteen minutes, because I'm not going to be on time", to say that, it's saying something.

Doyle suggested I stay at work until I received the call from Tyler, "Hey, I'm in your driveway. Are you home?" before actually heading home. I had learned, however, from Elina that making the tortillas first, and storing them in a warmed oven works very, very well, so I went home early to make tortillas.

6:30, I'm the only one home.

6:35, I'm still the only one there.

6:40, did I go to the wrong place?

6:45, crickets

6:50, yay! Heather shows up! Whoo!

7:00, we're the only ones here. The tortillas are started.

7:10, are we both in the wrong place? At least the tortillas are about a third of the way done.

7:15, oh, thank goodness. Doyle, Chookie, Martha, Warren and Vinny all show up. Wine for all! And times for bets. The over-under on Tyler showing up is 7:23.

He shows up at 7:21, with all the dinner ingredients, just as Paul and Beth show up, too. It's a mad fest to get all the food cooked. We managed to be ready for eating at 8:00. WhoO!

The meal was delicious, with Kris having to bring his own food, as the chicken part of the fajitas were not Kris-friendly. Oddly enough, it was actually Beth who rejected the salmon for chicken.

At the end of the meal, the group played poker with each of the two chips each person had worth $100,000. Each hand five of the six hands would push all in, and the winner crushing the remaining person in the next hand. And the game would start again. Eventually Beth asked what was for dessert, and I bribed her with chocolate souffle to stay for an hour, when it would be done. She agreed and I started the souffle.

The tragic part of my souffle making is that I lost the last recipe I had. It was from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook (10th edition?), and a ridiculously easy recipe. So, I surfed for another recipe (since the one in the Joy of Cooking is actually a fluffly chocolate brick, kid you not), and settled on one that didn't use more eggs than I had when doubled.

Nine people were around when I made the offer, so I doubled the recipe and started cooking. I took my laptop into the kitchen to view the recipe, only to discover than not only was I cooking the worst chocolate souffle recipe ever, but I had set my laptop in a pile of guacamole.

Joy.

Of cooking, of course.

I need to start keeping track of these. Although they often entertain me, there are times like now that they just annoy me.

On the phone today while ordering lunch to pickup (ignoring the health effects of eating at one's desk, blah blah blah), the woman on the other line asked, "What can I get for you, sir?" Yes, using the honoric is great, but using the wrong gender is annoying.

Last Friday, I introduced myself to Henry, a new (but returning after a year's hiatus, as required by the by-laws) board member of the UPA. After saying hello, and shaking my hand and hearing my name, he paused and looked up. "Oh," he continued, "I thought you were a guy."

I can almost understand Henry's bias to assuming I'm a guy (Joe Seidler did the same thing), they're my parents generation and assume tech people are male. But the phone thing, that keeps getting more and more annoying.

I commented to Doyle, "There's a woman's voice. Then there's a low woman's voice, all sexy and all. And then there's a high male voice that isn't attractive to anyone." (Apologies to any guy who fits that description, I'm sure you don't read this site, because I don't personally know any male with a high annoying, unattractive voice.)

Doyle responded, "I think the default is to assume man."

Yeah. That. Because only men can talk, right?