The Time Has Come

My dining room table has been a Monument to Projects for, lo, many months now. Indeed, I don't really remember the last time that it wasn't the Dining Room Table of Anxiety. I am taking a wee break from excavating it right now. Indeed, today is the day: the DRToA will be no more!

I have just finished shelving about 30-40 books (I know - ridiculous - imagine what it was like when I had library books littering it and the surrounding chairs as well). The next project will be to organize my CDs, which have somehow found their way into total disarray. I've got a couple of crates of paper stuff that will make their way into the study to be dealt with at a later time. It's all necessary paper, but it's not really organized. I just can't make myself organize it today as well as everything else, for filing, I am not a fan of filing. At least the crates are organized by topic.

But so yes, once this project is done, I'm going to make my way into the kitchen, where I sorely need to organize the cabinets. Once that is done, I shall then straighten in the living room. This will put me in decent shape for a top-to-bottom spring cleaning tomorrow, I hope.

But for now, 30 more minutes of break and then back to it!

Edited to add:
Ok, so the whole "reorganizing the kitchen" thing is so not happening. If I'm honest (though why I should be, I'm not sure) I've not even finished with the DRToA. I did, however, get the CDs in order. And then this inspired me to get to work with syncing my new iPod shuffle, which I bought to have for the car, rather than having to cart my big iPod around all the time. This was part of my shopping extravaganza of yesterday, in which I successfully purchased some cropped pants that were a) cheap and b) that actually fit. In a sad bit of news, if one has the Hips of Eastern Europe and should be squatting in a field birthing babies, one has to buy Target pants at 4 sizes larger than one buys her clothing normally. In jeans, in skirts, in pants that cost a hundred dollars, I am all the same size. But in the Cropped Pants of Cambodia, well, I am decidedly not that size. Whatever. They fit as they should, and they were cheap. I shall cut out the size when I get around to it. Or I'll just think about doing so, and then not. Whatever. But so the point here is that I was distracted by the shiny thing that is my new Shuffle, and really, I did need to get on with that project, as I shall be driving 4 hours to Hometown in just over a week's time, and really, I couldn't put this off. (Ha.) At first I just tried the whole "autofill" thing, but it chose stuff I didn't really necessarily want. Also, I do like a whole album, or almost a whole album, every now and again. And also, some music is just not appropriate for the car. And thus, I had to do a fairly control-freaky syncing of the machine. This task is now nearly complete - I'm now just attempting to autofill the remaining moments in the memory (though I keep being irritated and so having to delete and retry. Dude, I don't need weird 20 second Sufjan Stevens interludes, nor do I need Kanye West intros and outros. Or Dr. Dre ones for that matter. Dude, I know I have some 2 minute songs in there. The technology needs to be up to this task.... (time passes) ... Aw yeah! I got it to within 55 seconds! I am the master of musical technology! Huzzah!

So, because I'm a nerd, I just copied the contents of the Shuffle into a playlist so that I could shuffle it without it changing the order of the actual Shuffle (I'm not sure if this was necessary, but I wanted to preserve albums in a row and artists in a row where I've got them). But so, I'm certain you're wondering about what sorts of things are on there! Or if you're not, well, I don't care. I shall tell you the current top 20 in the shuffled version of things, for I am so excited that I am in the world of people who have their digitized music in the car! Huzzah!

1. Feels Like Rain - Buddy Guy
2. Cure for Pain - Morphine
3. Another Travelin' Song - Bright Eyes
4. I Ain't Ever Satisfied - Steve Earle
5. Parting Gift - Fiona Apple
6. Rollerskate Skinny - Old 97s
7. For Emma - Bon Iver
8. Cry Me a River - Justin Timberlake
9. She's Crafty - Beastie Boys
10. All Falls Down - Kanye West
11. Put on a Side - The Breeders
12. Redemption Song - Bob Marley & The Wailers
    
13. Human Thing - Be Good Tanyas
14. Knock 'Em Out - Lily Allen
15. Finest Worksong - REM
16. No Man's Woman - Sinead O'Connor
17. Cheated Hearts - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
18. Hey - The Pixies
19. Hypnotize - The Notorious B.I.G.
20. Head On - The Jesus and Mary Chain

I've got to say, this little list is a pretty fair representation of the range of Crazy's music, when all is said and done. There's a little "clearly Crazy identified as a 'progressive' or 'alternative' music girl in high school and college," with a dash of "hey, some radio-friendly hip-hop/R&B doesn't go amiss," and a smidgen of "Crazy's most serious relationship was with an indie guy music snob who veered toward bluegrass and country" thrown in, and a pinch of "Crazy's dad instilled in her a love of the blues." Sadly, Bob Marley is the only "classic rock" representative in this list, but nevertheless, even that, too, has good representation in the collection as a whole. I am so excited for the four-hour drive through cornfields, even if kitties will be in tow and likely meowing! (Though I know that Bon Iver, Jack Johnson, Lucinda Williams, and Van Morrison will facilitate the stopping of each of them meowing [historically all are true for my Man-Kitty, and from experiments in recent days, the same will be true for Mr. Stripey], and let me tell ya - there's a good sampling of each on the shuffle.)

As an aside, can I just note how much the iPod Shuffle holds? 271 songs. This is so many! I mean, clearly not enough for as much music as I own, for my Big iPod has 2503 songs stored currently, and that's not even everything (for I'm lazy, and some CDs still aren't loaded in), but still! I was imagining I could only fit like 100 songs in there or something! And I'm so excited that this isn't the case!

So yeah. That's the latest with Crazy. She got distracted by the new shiny thing and didn't accomplish nearly as much as she really should have done. What else is new?