Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

Why (and How) I’m Thinning Out My Library

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And how you can help.

Yesterday, I decided that I wanted to start downsizing and simplifying my life. I want to spend more of the year traveling, experiencing more of what this whole country has to offer — rather than what’s around me in Wickenburg or Phoenix. I’m hoping that my travels will help me find the place I want to retire to. I know that neither Wickenburg nor Phoenix is that place.

As George Carlin says, “Your house is a pile stuff with a cover on it.”

I’ve been in my Wickenburg home for 12 years and have accumulated at least 12 years worth of “stuff.” Since I’m addicted to books, a lot of that stuff is books. I have a library of about 500 books spread out over three rooms and lots of shelves. I’ve read many — but sadly, not all — of these books. They cover many of the topics that interest me now — and have interested me over the past 20 or more years. Not much of it is fiction — I tend to use libraries for that these days, since I usually don’t read a novel more than once.

A lot of my library consists of reference books: books I consult — or think I need to consult — for my work or hobbies. For example, I have at least 75 books about writing and at least 40 about flying helicopters. I have books about horses and parrots and aquarium fish — the pets I’ve owned over the years. (We don’t need a book about dogs; we’ve learned through experience.) I have books about Web design and software programs and operating systems. I have books about business and philosophy. I have travel books about places all over the U.S., South America, Europe, and even Australia.

And, of course, I have the coffee table books I’ve gotten as gifts, most of which are beautiful but poor matches for my interests.

Thinning out my library seemed a good place to start thinning out my stuff. So I did what I usually do when I want to sell a book — I listed a bunch of them on Amazon.com.

Listing a book for sale on Amazon.com is very easy — as long as you have the ISBN. Just enter the ISBN in a form field and Amazon displays the book. You indicate the book’s condition, set a price, and choose shipping options. Amazon then lists it as another “Buying Choice” in the right column of the page where the book is listed and described.

A long time ago, I bought a used book on Amazon.com through a “marketplace” seller. The book was described as used in “Used – Very Good” condition. But when the book arrived, I found it full of underlining. I wigged out and contacted the seller. They refunded the payment; I returned the book. The whole experience left a sour taste in my mouth that took several years to wear off.

Since then, however, I’ve bought other books through marketplace sellers. The first after that bad experience was Drood, a novel. The book is enormous — 784 pages — and Amazon was selling it for well over $20 at the time. But someone else was selling it for $8 in “Used – Like New” condition. I took a gamble. The book, when it arrived, was indeed like new. I’ve since bought a few other books this way.

The drawback to buying from Amazon.com Marketplace sellers is that the books never qualify for “Free Super Saver Shipping.” You have to pay shipping for each book you buy. But if you’re saving $10 on a book, you’re still ahead if you spend another $3.99 for shipping.

Anyway, I currently have 57 books listed on Amazon.com’s Marketplace for sale. All of the books are in new or excellent condition — I treat my books very kindly. (The idea of writing in a book appalls me, although I know it’s common.) I’ve priced them to sell, meaning they’re usually the lowest price for a new or used book. The main goal is to unload them without cost — not to make a fortune selling books.

I’ve only gone though about 10% of my library, so many more will be listed over the coming weeks. I expect to list at least 400 books between now and March month-end.

Help me reduce my stuff — check out the list of books and if you want one, buy it from Flying M Productions.

The Junk Drawer, Revisited

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Not so junky now.

Junk Drawer ReorganizedIf you saw my office, you’d never believe that I truly like to be organized. I hate clutter, I hate piles of junk lying around, I hate not being able to find things.

So it was with great pleasure that I cleaned out my junk drawer the other day and reorganized it with some dividers. The photo here shows the results.

I don’t have time to blog about this in detail right now. And let’s face it — who really wants to read about it? The picture shows all. We made the dividers with a divider kit I bought at The Container Store in Scottsdale the other day.

Now if only I could reorganize my office!

The Storm

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Frightening at night.

Arizona is known primarily for one thing: its brutally hot summers. To be fair, it’s only 110°F + for a few months and only in the lower elevations of the state. The rest of the state has much milder weather — at least in the summer. In the winter, places like Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon can get the same kinds of winter storms that caused me to flee the New York metro area years ago.

Our house in Wickenburg is at a slightly higher elevation than Phoenix: 2200 feet vs. 1000 feet in the Valley. Because of this, we get just about the same weather as Phoenix, although we tend to run 5°F cooler year-round. (This is one of the reasons I escape to northern Arizona or Washington State every summer.)

The autumn, winter, and spring weather, in general, is a monotony of perfectly clear sunny days. In the height of winter, nighttime temperatures might dip to below freezing, but it general climbs back up to the 60s or even 70s once the sun rises high into the cloudless sky. Rain is a welcome treat. Storms are a rarity.

We had a storm yesterday, however. A low came in from the Pacific coast, dragging along tons of moisture as it moved in from the southwest. We had low clouds all day long — it was one of the 10 or so days each year when it’s impossible to fly VFR. The rain came and went — a good, soaking rain that the desert really needs. The radar showed various shades of green throughout our area, with pink and blue (icy mix and snow) in higher elevations just 10 miles north.

It got dark and the rain continued into the night. Then the wind started. The weather forecast warned of a Wind Advisory with winds gusting as high as 58 mph throughout the area. It even suggested that vehicles stay off of I-10, which runs from the Los Angeles area through Phoenix and then south to Tucson before turning east again toward New Mexico.

I was alone at home last night with Jack the Dog and Alex the Bird. Jack wanted no part of the outdoors yesterday and it was tough just getting him out there long enough to do his business. We closed up the house around 7 PM, shutting off the lights downstairs so Alex could sleep. I watched a movie on our DVR while the wind started to whip up around the house. By the time I climbed into bed to read, the storm was in full swing.

It was the sound of the wind that prompted me to write this. I want to remember, in the future, how it sounded, so I figured I’d write it down in my journal — after all, that’s what this blog really is.

The wind had an otherworldly sound. It was the low frequency moan of a male voice, almost ghostly, rising and falling in pitch as as the wind’s intensity rose and fell. Rain pelted the flat roof and big windows. All this noise was accompanied by the rattling of the french doors that lead from our bedroom to upstairs patio and the pulsating of the window panes. More than once, I got up to check the doors to make sure they wouldn’t suddenly blow open.

Sometimes I heard a deep rumbling sound off in the distance. I’ve read time and time again that tornadoes sound like freight trains. I wondered whether there was any danger of that. Nothing in the forecast; I told myself not to worry.

Occasionally, the house shook on its foundation. It made me wonder what the wind speed really was. I dialed up the AWOS for Wickenburg Municipal Airport (E25) and listened to the automatically generated recording. Winds from 220 at 26 gusting to 39. I thought about how hurricane force winds would sound and feel against the house. I resolved yet again not to move into an area likely to get hurricanes or tornadoes.

I grew tired of reading and turned out the light. But I lay awake for a long time, listening to the sounds around me, comforted by the steady drone of the heat pump keeping the upstairs warm until its set-back time at 11 PM. Just as I was thinking about how unusual it was that we hadn’t lost power, the power failed. The heat-pump went quiet and the ambient light from my neighbor’s yard went dark. Now the only thing to hear and feel was the wind and the vibrations on the house.

I fell asleep a while later and slept remarkably well until 4 or 5 am. I woke suddenly and looked out the bedroom door toward the big window facing southeast. A bright splash of moonlight illuminated the shelves and floor there. The storm had cleared out. The waning moon, approaching its last quarter, was shining like a beacon over the desert.

Outside, the wind still howled. I fell back to sleep.

I Don’t Care How Many Return Address Labels You Send Me

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I still won’t donate to your religion-based charity.

Christmas LabelsThis year, I received a bumper crop of pre-printed return address labels. I got some with autumn colors and decorations (leaves and pumpkins), some with Thanksgiving themes (turkeys and cornucopias), and plenty with Christmas themes (Christmas trees, snowmen, candy canes, and wreaths). I kept them all. After all, I still do send out the occasional piece of mail, and it’s nice to have a colorful return address label to put on it.

I also got a bunch of religious-themed ones (crosses, Mary, baby Jesus). I threw those away. I’m not a religious person and certainly don’t want anyone to think I am.

Of course, all of these return address labels came with a pre-addressed return envelope and donation form. I threw those away, too.

Religious-themed or not, every single return address label I received as a “gift” was from a religious charity. If I’m not a religious person, why would I donate money to a religious charity? There are so many other non-religious charities that are just as noble — if not more so — than ones waving a religious banner.

I have Covenant House to thank for all of these labels. Last year, at the request of an author who had given me an autographed copy of his book, I made a $20 donation to his pet charity. It wasn’t until after I made the donation that I realized what the charity was all about. Yes, they do help battered women and children, etc. But they do so in their special Christian way. That way obviously includes using a direct mailing campaign to nag the hell out of anyone who has ever donated a dime so they keep sending money. I get at least one mailer a month from them, despite multiple requests to get off their list. That way also includes selling my name and address to all the other religious charities they know so they can pester me as well.

Of course, they do send those useful labels, so it isn’t all bad.

I believe that many people donate when they receive these “gifts” because they feel guilty if they don’t. Like God is going to strike them dead or sick or something. Or they’ll just get bad karma.

But the way I see it, a “gift” is a gift. It doesn’t require anything in return. I didn’t ask them to send me these labels. I don’t really need them. Why should I pay for them?

Think of it this way: If someone were to park a new car on your driveway and then ring your doorbell, hand you the keys and a clean title, and ask you for $25,000, would you pay him? Other than the perceived value, how are the labels any different?

And wouldn’t it be wasteful to throw all those pretty labels away?

The Junk Drawer

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And what I found there.

We keep our stamps and batteries in a drawer in a built-in desk in our kitchen. Sadly, that’s not the only thing kept in that drawer. Over the years, our cleaning person used it as a catch-all for little things she could fit in there. And we apparently added our own things.

Today, sick of dealing with a drawer I could often not close, I emptied it as a prelude to cleaning it out. Here’s what it looked like neatly arranged on my kitchen’s center island:

My Junk

Here’s what I found:

  • A set of 6 precision screwdrivers with 3 of them missing.
  • A screwdriver that does not belong to the above set.
  • 3 small padlocks: 1 with keys, 1 with combination known, 1 with combination unknown.
  • A “Jet Fuel Only” sticker, which is kind of odd because none of our vehicles takes JetA.
  • A small plastic ruler.
  • 3 promotional pens, all working. Why they aren’t in the pencil cup on the desk is a mystery.
  • 4 black wooden pencils with erasers, only one of which is sharpened.
  • A pencil sharpener.
  • Numerous sheets of return address labels with various holiday themes, all received in the mail by charities that thought I’d pay for them when I never asked for them. (Wrong.)
  • 2 broken sterling silver bracelets, badly tarnished.
  • An empty Tylenol purse size bottle.
  • Part of a AA battery charger, but not the part that actually plugs into the wall.
  • An exposed roll of 35mm film.
  • A small red square plastic filter.
  • A single-hole punch.
  • A wooden clothespin
  • A small black plastic protractor (think elementary school).
  • An iPod belt clip.
  • An embroidered Ducati patch.
  • 2 round adhesive-back pieces of Velcro, both soft side.
  • 2 pennies
  • 2 rolls of quarters
  • 1 roll of dimes
  • A Garden State Parkway toll token
  • A bottle of Plexus 2 plastic polish
  • A bottle of stamp pad ink
  • A First Class Mail self-inking stamp
  • A telephone jack splitter
  • A tiny of green tea flavored “mints”
  • 2 black binder clips: 1 small, 1 large
  • Several dozen paper clips, 5 of which are preconfigured as Macintosh floppy disk removal tools. (Long-time Mac users know exactly what I mean.)
  • A handful of rubber bands, half of which are dried, cracked, and unusable
  • The “start” pin for a light timer.
  • A tube of dark red lipstick.
  • A tube of Blistex.
  • 2 rings for hanging bird toys in a cage.
  • 8 key rings, empty
  • A key ring flashlight with AAA battery still working
  • 3 partial rows of staples
  • A contact lens case
  • A small round sponge
  • An envelope slitter
  • Multiple screws, including two screw-in hooks
  • A rubber foot for some kind of stand
  • A wooden peg for our futon
  • A wooden peg that looks like it came from a game
  • A lapel mic clip
  • 3 black beads, 2 of which are almost identical
  • 3 promotional pins: 2 Feedburner logos and 1 QuickBooks heart Mac
  • 2 WINGS program pins
  • A tiny safety pin
  • 5 various sized wire ties
  • A sprayer nozzle
  • Magnet-backed promotional 2002 calendar from an out-of-business local mechanic
  • A rock with bits of green color
  • A SanDisk neoprene zippered media card holder
  • A bookmark with Mount Rushmore pictured on it
  • The manual for a Sony cassette recorder
  • A pocket calculator, not solar-powered, with installed battery still functioning
  • A piece of masking tape marked “Do Not Open” with the adhesive dried up. I have no idea what this was affixed to, but recognize my handwriting. (I hope I didn’t open it.)
  • A Bed Bath & Beyond Gift Card, likely never used
  • A package of drapery pins
  • My “captain” pilot stripes from the summer of 2004, when I flew at the Grand Canyon
  • A Newton rechargeable Battery Pack
  • 7 D cell batteries, 2 of which are in an unopened package
  • 2 loose C cell batteries
  • 43 loose AA cell batteries: 6 lithium, 17 alkaline, and 20 rechargeable (4 nickel-cadmium, 15 nickel-metal hydride, and 1 unknown)
  • 8 AAA cell batteries in an unopened package
  • 2 9-volt batteries, both rechargeable nickel-metal hydride
  • Numerous postage stamps in the following denominations: 1¢, 2¢, 3¢, 4¢, 20¢, 27¢, 41¢, 42¢, 72¢, $1, $3, $3.85, $4.80, $4.95, “forever” (current First Class rate)

No, I did not find a partridge in a pear tree, despite the season.

The batteries pose a problem. The rechargeables are likely all dead for good, but there’s no place to recycle them in Wickenburg. The other loose batteries are probably at least half spent, which is why we don’t use them. The lithiums likely came out of my SPOT Messenger, which requires lithium batteries. When they’re too used to rely on them in SPOT — which I need to have fresh batteries — they work great in my handheld GPS and most other devices. The fact that we have so many loose batteries amazes me. It’s probably because they kept sliding into the back of the drawer and we kept buying more.

Anyway, the drawer is now empty. My next tasks is to clean it out — with soap and water — and then put back in the things that are supposed to be in there: batteries, stamps, and a few things likely to be in a regular desk drawer.

The rest of this crap? Who knows where it will end up?

And I wonder what’s on that roll of film…