2005-03-19: Selfish Housecleaning

After a lunch run to EZ Takeout (think independently owned place much like In&Out), Brian and I stopped by Movies2Sell, which was displaying that they were having a clearance sale. Unfortunately they're closing down for good, but they do have a fairly large collection of semi-obscure anime on VHS. They also had a few not too obscure anime titles on DVD, of which I picked up a few; Brian managed to find all but the first tape of Macross Plus. Their demise is too bad; their prices were much like that of the late, lamented Music Trader.

On my way out of there, my friend John called from Arizona, informing me he'd decided to come out to SD. Sure, I said, no objections.

That having been said, I spent several hours applying cinch ties to all of the cables I could find, including the power cords of any power tools which were just lying around. There were quite a few of those. Then I went into the greatest rat's nest of all, the cable box in my room, and cinched all of those cables.

About halfway through the cables in my room, I decided that I was going to actually be selfish today. So far, every cleaning weekend I've spent - and I do mean every single one, has focused on the living room and the kitchen. They're the more visible parts of the house, which company sees and such, so it's important that they manage not to suck. However, my own room has been much the same rat's nest of cables and semi-unpacked boxes as it's been since I first moved in here. Today, that changed.

I managed to coalesce about three boxes down to one box, and in the process I finally found the original screws to my Biomorph desk. The Airsoft pistols scattered throughout the place are now actually all up in one closet, and the cable wrapping alone managed to take care of most of the pile in my room. With a crazed look in my eye, I managed to clear the long coveted path in my room, all the way to the air conditioner. That having been cleared, I went into the living room/kitchen area and cleared off the chest of drawers that's been patiently sitting there for months. I managed to move it from there into my bedroom, and then went about filling its top several drawers with clean towels. Now, the magnitude of this accomplishment is much greater than it seems. Previously to this date, the towels in my room have towered in their stacks atop my dresser at an imposing height. I have lived now for just over half a year, with the full knowledge some day the pile of towels is quite likely to strike when I least expect it, burying me in their fluffiness right as I walk through the door.

That has changed. The stuff piled on top of the dresser no longer includes towels, which renders it feasible for me to move my 27" TV into the room and get a wireless controller for my spare PS2. Or maybe just my printer. At any rate, with the chest of drawers I've acquired a new horizontal surface to pile cruft on, and I have chosen to make it the repository of my gun cleaning and maintenance supplies.

I'd just finished moving the dresser, when John called and we made plans to meet up in Temecula at a Brazilian bbq place up there. It's actually really good; their steaks were exquisite. Pretty much the same as the long lost Samba, which I despair of ever seeing open again. That having been taken care of, we made it back pretty quickly and watched two eps of Atlantis, then some anime John had brought over. Life is good.