Spring Cleaning

I've been giving my apartment the ultra clean. Not only am I moving all the furniture and going over every square inch of the floor with a carpet shampooer, I'm also going through every drawer and tossing half my shit. You know, the kind of thing you intend to do when you move but never actually accomplish? Well I'm doing it. Going through everything.


It's interesting what you decide to keep. My Color Day t-shirt from 1996? Hell yes! How else am I going to remember riding around with RCR and the Swedish exchange student in my Jeep, launching eggs at other cars from the giant slingshot we had rigged up across the rollcage? (Color Day was our senior day in highschool) I vaguely recall waking up that morning to JB and some others shooting me in the face with squirt guns.

We had running water balloon battles out the top of convertibles all day. If we hadn't drank so much the night before, we might have made it to the parade in time. But we snuck in the lineup anyway, unfortunately in front of a carload of people armed with supersoakers who drenched us the whole way.

There are a bunch of other ones I kept too, purely for symbolic reasons. They're so old I probably won't use them even to work out. I just want the memories only something tactile can bring you, and t-shirts are easy to keep. I also have two drawers full of my old highschool journals and a few bags of notes I'm afraid to read.

I haven't made it to the closet yet, but I wear the same damn seven shirts every week, so it should be a Salvation Army bonanza. I'm looking forward to unearthing the Starwars Transformers I hid in there a quarter or three ago. I justified the purchase by saying I'd give them to my nephews, but it turns out they don't know or care about Starwars or Transformers. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Not that you need reminding, since I'm so sure you all care as much as I do, but don't forget about the Transformers movie coming out on the 4th of July.


I'm getting rid of almost all of my musical equipment. This is kind of sad, but not really. It's sadder looking at a high end guitar I never learned how to play (an absolutely gorgeous Epiphone acoustic/electric that looks alot like this). It belongs out there in the world bringing joy to someone rather than sitting in a corner collecting dust. I have a backup standard acoustic (Fender Redondo) which is a fitting learner guitar anyway.

I was a little emotional when I handed my original bass over to some nerdy balding guy who didn't know what the fuck he was doing with it. I flashed back to learning the bassline for Blister in the Sun in the hallway 10 minutes before tryouts for my junior high talent show.

Some girl (LS) kept bugging me to teach her how to play something and I kept trying to get her to leave me alone because I was about to perform in front of the judges and the only other song I knew was a simplified Smoke on the Water (wrap your mind around that one). This was my first taste of the mysterious magnetic attraction between musical instruments and females. I would later use this for my nefarious purposes (that means nookie), but at the moment I just wanted to learn the new song, dammit!


Balding nerdy guy snapped me back to reality as he immediately detuned my sweet old bass way way too low and attempted to slap. I cringed. Oh well. You can't blame a beginner. And a hundred bucks for a bashed up bass I got over a decade ago, used, in a ripped up cardboard case ain't bad. I still have my 5 string that almost all of my time was spent on anyway.

By the way, back to 13 land, we made it into the talent show and that was my rock band debut. We sucked, but no one knew any better at that age. I gave bunny ears to LS in a prom picture which she probably still hasn't forgiven me for. I was also the MC for the talent show and I really liked that job because you could stand behind the backdrop and look up the cheerleaders' skirts while they performed (no, we never grow up).

Years later I smoked up with the lead singer's Mom who was also my calculus teacher (while I was currently her highschool student). A good friend (TG) woke up on the floor behind her couch to the sounds of her explaining to her husband that it's ok, these are her calculus students. Good times. These are the sorts of heart warming memories you lose when you get rid of the material object, which is why I kept those ratty old t-shirts that some future lady in my life will toss out without a thought.


I'm giving my drums to my nephews. All I have is a crappy set of bongos and a nice set of congas. I love the congas, but space is at a premium and I rarely play them. I've always really wanted a djembe anyway. I love this because it's always been a joke with me and my siblings, that I would give drums to their kids. I've used it as a bargaining chip, blackmailing them to do something or I'm giving their kids a drumset. It's not as much fun as teaching them to curse or dispensing firearms, but it will do. I still plan on getting an electronic drumkit, but not until I move into a bigger place.



Which brings me to the point of the big clean, other than the general nastiness this place was accumulating. I need a functioning home office and a study area (other than the tv tray in front of the recliner that I have been using) because I'm going back to school. Since I'm moving everything around anyway, I might as well clean and sort through it all. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to study yet, though I have a pretty good idea. I'm not going to talk about it here though. Not until I'm sure.

The "office", if you can call it that (it's really just a nook), will be as wireless as possible. I got a used Brother laser printer that will actually work with my Mac, unlike my now useless Lexmark. I'm contemplating my first legacy phoneline in 5 years due to my constant need to fax stuff. A wireless router is on the way from Amazon. I even got a dry erase board and a filing cabinet.


No, I have no idea what bipolar means, why do you ask? What exactly do you mean by "manic phase"? Ahh!