There is a difference between English Chestnut and Golden Oak. Evidently I'd been using two different stains in the house and didn't notice it until I put two separately stained pieces next to each other. This was a vast sky of disappointment that opened up above me when I put the two together. There was no going back. With all the projects I've got backing up, I'm not going to go and rebuild everything just because the color is a little off.

And by "backing up" I mean in the manner of life's incessant constipation, and I'm not referring to my hard drives (though that remains a matter of some concern.) Part of everything that is going on right now is the tax accounting of 2007 amidst the organizing and paying of old bills. I'm better at the organizing part, which is why I went ahead and stained the office organizer. (The wrong color. See? Do you really want me paying the bills?) I found a pile of bills and could not make heads nor tails of them -so I asked Mrs. Ditchman. She said the pile was so big it defied organization. While not encouraging, I was up to the task!

Or, whatever. I actually put the first check of 2008 in the bank today -which covers nothing, I know. It's gonna take another ten or twenty of these, really. Times like this you want to get outside and run for it, but really I just need to get outside and work for it. I actually chickened out on my long run the other day because of impending work. I put it off, and will have to add a couple of miles in the end to feel good about it.

But I'm glad I'm not the only one! I still have October to do, myself, but then again I jump around a lot, depending on what my attention fancies. I failed to do a quadruple backup of everything in my recent Great Memory Migration, and paid the price. Some of Hawaii 2005 is gone forever, unfortunately. Let my lessons be lessons for us all. The Digital Age has its drawbacks.

So I will burn everything to discs from now on. Or just burn everything. I've been slowly sifting through old boxes of pics and such, trying to cull a few memories back into their rightful places on the new computer, and it is a near impossible task. A lot of the files, it turns out, were corrupt to begin with, and it only takes a couple of computers to really set things afoul. Then again, maybe I got a bad MacPro. Could be, as the new ones came out just the other day! "A Tower of 8-core power!" Grrr... Well, I know, I know... I just couldn't wait! But no one can -which is the Digital Age's most defining trait.

So back to the grind, back to the organizing of Life. I persist, I really do, because when the pile is neat, I am more comfortable. And when I am more comfortable, I am more tolerable. I do it for all of you.

Oh thank you! Thank you! Just what is it that makes you so tolerable today, Sean?

Why, I just organized my bathroom toiletries into a clever arrangement of "Soaps and Cleansers", "Lotions and Ointments", and "Vitamins and Medicinals" and it's all put me in a rather sunny demeanor!

God bless us, everyone!

~