My more recent endeavors in life are amassing lots of stuff. What happens when you acquire stuff? You need a place to put that stuff. Thank you George Carlin:
But instead of going and finding a place to put more stuff, I’m just getting rid of some old shit so I can reuse that storage space for my new stuff. So into the closet I go, figuring out what’s there…. boxes that haven’t been unpacked since moving into the house many years ago, things you can’t remember the last time you looked at. It’s a trip down nostalgia lane.
It’s always an interesting education for my wife and especially my kids when things like this happen. It gives them a peek into the past. For instance, I got to show the kids what a cassette tape is. Even found a player and was able to play some of them… you know, the mixed tapes you’d make, recording your favorite songs off the radio, or when you were really cool and had one of those dual cassette stereo/boom-boxes that could allow you to dub your friend’s purchased album onto a blank tape? or better, the dub of the dub of the dub of the dub such that the tape hiss was the dominant sound you actually heard? Yeah, good times.
Found a lot of old pictures. It’s a shame my scanner died years ago. I need to collect them all and take them somewhere and spend an afternoon just scanning them all in, sending them to old friends and having a good laugh at the memories. Y’know, I think that broken scanner is actually buried in the closet… well, something else to toss (yes, this would go to Goodwill’s electronics disposal center, not the landfill).
Other things I found:
- tons of 3.5″ floppy disks. It’s been years since I had a computer that could even read one of these.
- tons of CD’s… old CodeWarrior CDs (gazillions of these, from my past life), lots of old Mac software, things that you think for a second might be worth keeping but then you see it requires a 680×0 processor and these new Mac-Intel boxen running Leopard will never grok them
- a set of KISS McFarlane Series 1 action figures, new in box
- tons of old cassette tapes, from my earliest heavy metal years. Man, I need a way to convert them to MP3’s… too many good and rare albums here.
- lots of old computer books
- a lot of old vinyl and some neat things too:
- Sepultura “Arise” picture disc
- Monster Magnet “Superjudge” red vinyl
- White Zombie “La Sexercisto” in glow-in-the-dark vinyl
- tons of old and rare Red Decibel 7″ stuff from The Coup de Grace, Drop Hammer, Walt Mink, Libido Boyz, Last Crack
- The Journey “Raised on Radio” album I won from Power 105 WAVA. I remember waking up, getting ready for my paper route, 5th caller wins, I called in and won not just the album but a key to the “Power Porsche”… a key that could start up a Porsche and if it did it was yours! Sadly, the weekend of the event I had to go on some youth group retreat so I didn’t actually get to try it… I think my Dad and younger sister and cousin went instead. Didn’t win, of course.
- Autographed copies of albums from Treponem Pal and Malevolent Creation
- Lots of other stuff
- Stuff from my old radio days
- Promotional materials
- band promo pictures
- air checks from all the various stations I worked at
- carts with my show bumpers on them
- posters (many autographed)
- My 8th grade English class journal
- All my homework and papers from Drivers Ed class
- An old model kit of an SR-71 Blackbird, and lots of Testors model paint jars
- some old t-shirts
- a couple cool pencil boxes from Korea, which my kids quickly usurped
- A bunch of old birthday cards and letters, a couple of which included hand-written letters from my paternal grandmother… cards I tossed, the letters I kept.
- A ton of my old Boy Scouts stuff… from the little advancement/achievement cards for merit badges and rank; certificates of youth leadership training, Patrol Leader, and Senior Patrol Leader; Patrol Leader Handbook; a cool leather “50 mile canoe trip” patch; a bunch of useful handouts and other reading material, good for camping or other outings today (Scouts or otherwise)
- 8 to 10 (lost count) glasses cases.
- One pair of old glasses… plastic frames, huge lenses (to go with the onion on my belt). Put them on, the wife and kids had a good laugh.
- Yearbooks from middle school and high school, and a couple from undergrad
- band trip pictures
- autographed picture of me meeting President Ronald Reagan in The Oval Office
- More things that I can remember
It’s quite a trip down memory lane. A lot of stuff was junk that was no problem to throw away, but there’s no question some stuff your heart just won’t let you toss. And I know if I really had the gumption there’s a fair lot of stuff I could put on eBay and could make some money with.
So, blogging will be light until this is done.
Updated: added more stuff that I’m uncovering.
Updated 2: Been working at it all day. Donated a LOT of stuff to Goodwill. Threw out a lot of stuff… had to get over the nostalgia of things because if I haven’t looked at it in this many years, do I really need to care and keep it? Many things cleared out. And while I moved a bunch of new things into the closet, in the end there’s a lot more room in there now. So sum total of it all puts me in the negative which is good! Got rid of far more stuff… things are better organized and located now. Big win for all the work done in the last 24 hours. Got some tax deductions from all the donations. Uncluttered. Things are good.
Of course now…. I guess Carlin would say it’s time for me to buy more stuff. 😉
Stuff From Hsoi 
Pingback: Sunday Metal - Monster Magnet « Stuff From Hsoi