Tag Archives: boxes

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Customer service chats. I like the customer service chat functions available through most major businesses. They save me from calling an 800 number and sitting on hold for half an hour. They save me from sending an email that “will be answered in 2 business days.” It’s instant enough gratification that I can call up a chat from my desk at work and get on with my day while resolving whatever issue I happen to have. I’m always surprised when I’m doing business with a large commercial entity that doesn’t offer this convenience… and it always makes me want to deal with them a little bit less.

2. Boxes. I forgot how incredibly awful living eyeball deep in cardboard boxes really is. Now that we’ve reached the stage of the process when just about everything that’s not tied down is living in a box, running into a moment of “oh, I can’t do that because X is packed already” is becoming situation normal. Although the situation will theoretically resolve itself in short order, I’ll be a far more content human being when there’s more stuff coming out of boxes than there is going into them.

3. Staff work. Some weeks there’s more work than three people could do washing across my desk. Other weeks it’s a challenge to keep the cobwebs from taking over. This week has been a case of the latter. The nature of the work doesn’t exactly lend itself to a nice constant flow, but damn it would be nice if it did.

Stuff…

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I’m not a horder. I’m a neat freak (thanks for passing on that family trait, mom). Knowing that I have a place for everything and everything is generally in its place begs the question, where did the boxes and boxes of stuff now filling every room in the house come from? Seriously. If there’s a flat surface in the house, it’s got boxes stacked on top of it. And the worst is yet to come. I still haven’t attached the kitchen in anything like a meaningful way. My closet and bathroom and still pretty solidly intact. And I haven’t even contemplated bringing down the vast grid that networks my TV to my computer to my phone. The cabling alone will probably needs its own box… with everything zip-tied and neatly labeled, of course, so I can reconstitute the network right out of the box as soon as I actually find a place to live. So yeah, food, bathroom, and network, those are the things I have deemed essential to life and those that will be the last to find their way into the growing mountain of boxes and crates (remember the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Arc?).

The last time I moved, I had enough “stuff” to nominally fill a one bedroom apartment. I think it’s safe to say that I could probably make life livable in several of those now. I know that at some point I’ve had to hand carry all of this stuff into the house, but I can’t for the life of me remember where most of it came from. I suppose knowing where it’s going is really the important part.

Boxes, boxes everywhere…

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Back in January, I was operating under the assumption that a move was just around the corner. In an effort to save time later, I set about boxing up those things that were “non-essential” and that I could live without for a few weeks during the transition period. What I anticipated being a few weeks, has drug out over two months now and is well on its way to shattering the three month mark before anything resembling a move takes place.

It seems I may have jumped the gun a bit on being prepared. The spare bedroom? Sure, that’s not a problem. I never spent any time in there anyway. The DVDs? OK, but I’m starting to feel the pain on that one. The biggest problem in this premature packing extravaganza is that every tool and general household item I own is boxed up and stacked neatly in the corner of the garage.

Need a light bulb? It’s in a box. Screwdriver? In a box. I’ve learned an important lesson here. Many of the things I have laying around the house are definitely non-essential… for a few weeks. Anything more than that and it gets to be a downright inconvenient proposition. So far, I’m resisting the temptation to crack open the boxes and making due with a Swiss army knife and Leatherman as household fix it tools. I’m reading a lot more to make up for the DVD’s now stacked up behind the couch. Unpacking these boxes even just to alleviate some bit of inconvenience would be like admitting defeat on some level… but I shall never surrender.