Today it looks like this outside...
which means I didn't have to go to work. Since I'm moving at the end of the month, I decided to try to empty a few boxes from the attic. It takes me forever to do tasks like this, and I'm terrible about saving certain things. I want to go through every box and look at every item. I know, I totally sound like one of the subjects on Hoarders. It's not as bad as that. I'm actually really good about getting rid of clothing and home goods that aren't being used. But other things. Oh man. I can't.
For example, these...
Just a small selection of notebooks I've saved. These are some from college. I'm pretty sure I've got high school notebooks up there too. I'm really bad about saving old school stuff. I'm not sure why I feel compelled to keep these things. I really loved school. Loved taking notes, loved learning, loved writing papers.
Being in a classroom was one of my favorite things. Maybe I feel that in getting rid of these, I'll be losing that part of my life. (OK, that sounded like a hoarder thing to say.) But look at my beautiful notes! Those are from Development of Western Civ.
I spent quite a while going through old college stuff and found...
My favorite ever thesis paper. It's on The Communist Manifesto and Robinson Crusoe.
And evidence that I used to be able to do physics.
even though I clearly didn't care for it. Ironically, I appreciate the beauty of physics much more today than I did back then, but have lost the math skills necessary to do it. I used to be good at calculus.
The stuff from that box is now separated into three groups. Some stuff has been relegated to the trash. I actually threw away hand-outs and notebooks. Yeep!
Then there's a pile I'm still thinking about.
And a keep pile. Two notebooks ended up in the keep pile, not so much for the main content as for the asides. I kept my despised physics notebook. It begins a completely earnest effort to capture the essentials of the lectures. And as the year wears on, it becomes this...
Notes interspersed with doodles, quotes and observations. My professor was stereotypically nutty. So I jotted down a lot of the wacky things he said and did.
A random sampling...
The other notebook that made the cut was from a seminar on Literature and Labor. It was a really great class, and I loved the professor, but the notebook was saved because it is interspersed throughout with notes and quotes about a certain classmate I referred to as Alex, or APK. As in Alex P. Keaton. He was the stereotypical young Republican, hence the nickname. And he said some ridiculous things, many of which are captured for all time.
For example...
Or this one...
The banshee quotes are actually my favorites. Oh yes, there was more than one...
Here he is referring, of course, to the Great Depression.
Poor kid. He just rubbed me the wrong way, I guess. Also, I like that on this page, a discussion of Mr. Tulliver (Mr. T, in my notes) from The Mill on the Floss has devolved into the jingle for the Mr. T action figure. My time at Providence College was worth every cent.
ugh. and...
on this day, he got his own sidebar. The San Francisco of Italy? What does that even mean?
So, obviously, I have to keep that notebook.
And this is why it takes me forever to make progress on projects like this. Not only do I have to go through each and every thing. I need to photograph them and blog about them, too. It's overwhelming. But I threw away four notebooks today, so that's progress, I guess.