Unjustified

I purchased this from an online overstock bookstore the first week of February 2008.  It was $9.95 (shipping for this plus two other books was $4.70).  So, it's been sitting around for about four and a half years.  As I have a landscape now, it seemed like a good time to see if it would be useful.  Well, no, not really.  There's nothing wrong with it, it just doesn't have much that isn't available to me from other sources like the internet in general,  gardenweb in particular, a Guide to Vegetable, Fruits, and Herbs to which I refer often, and my mother's and grandmother's copies of the Western Garden Book, which are also likely to offer some useful region-specific advice.
So this gets added to the two boxes of books that will be going out of here in the next couple of weeks.  Nothing to justify holding on to it.

N.B.  When looking in Quicken to see when I bought this, I noticed a purchase the same week from Circuit City.  It was for an sd card, which of course now I could probably buy at a gas station.

Kindling

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion is available on Amazon.  Just saw the mention today in Slate, so haven't read it yet, but it looks like it covers some ground on the overconsumption/disposable goods/where-does-it-all-end-up discussion.

Also, The reviews at Goodreads.

It's a Gift

Getting rid of gifts, one of everyone's least favorite categories, I'm sure.  The Kidlet gave this to me for Christmas 2007.  It was a thoughtful gift, as she was aware that I am extremely fond of popcorn.  I have in fact been using it for its intended purpose going on four and a half years now.  But you know what? I can just as easily eat popcorn out of one of my many, many mixing bowls, just like I always did before.  Attempting to justify keeping this bowl, I tried to use it to actually pop the corn in the microwave (which I won't be trying with my other bowls - metal and/or pre-microwave era), but apparently it isn't made for that (it *is* labeled dishwasher safe, and is *not* labeled microwave-safe), and for my troubles I got some strange sounds and burned food. 
It also doesn't hold very much.  I would consider this a plus if I was worried about portion control, but I don't consider that an issue with popcorn. 
Off to the donation box.

A Fine-Feathered Mess

Just wanted to note that I fed another feather pillow (case and all, this time) to my compost pile. The trick is 1) don't try this maneuver while it's windy 2) dampen it down right away 3) get another layer of something heavier on top as soon as possible. Since I now own a lawnmower, I used grass clippings. I'm hoping that the clippings + some crumbled dry oak leaves will serve as insulation to keep the pile warm and help it "cook." The feathers themselves are nitrogen-rich and ought to generate some heat.

I think I'm going to need to build another bin. I'd like to leave this one alone to do its thing, but of course I will always be generating more compostable material, so I need another place to put it.

Silver Lining

This is a two-fer - really, a three-fer.  I was getting rid of something, which led to repair of a second thing, which in turn resulted in finding a third thing that I happened to really need.

Lemme esplain.

I have WAY too much silverware.  I have remnants of my first silverplate set, which, for whatever reason, I still have bits of even though I did technically get rid of that set years ago.  I have the "current" silverplate set (fleur de luce), which for about a year has lived side-by-side with a stainless steel set I bought a Pier 1 (to see if I liked that type of large-handled ware).  There's a box of my parents' stainless, which I will not let go of due to sentimental reasons.  There's also Mom's "good" silverplate (Queen Bess) in its own wooden box.  I've got several odd bits in other patterns leftover from when I fancied myself a silver/silverplate flatware collector - sugar spoons, pastry forks, gravy ladles, twisted butter knives, that sort of thing. And a small handful of silverplate flatware of my Dad's, which he loved because it was used on the Santa Fe railroad.

So, that newer stainless, I like it, but don't love it, and the knives are poorly made - I've broken two of them cutting butter (because it's not like like I'd use my actual butter knives for that . . .) so they are going (donation).

 Note that I kept the box, because I always knew there was a good chance I wasn't keeping this set.  I'm seriously thinking of dumping most of the fleur de Luce as well, so I took it all out of the wooden silverware caddy in the kitchen drawer, because the caddy was broken and needed to be reglued-renailed.  While I was looking for adhesive, which lives in the kitchen junk drawer, I came across the sliding window lock, which I didn't know I had and do not recall having acquired.

 I've been wanting/wishing for something like this now that it is warm, I am living on the ground floor with no A/C, and wanting to keep the windows open.  (This was never an issue in my second-story condo, but it is here.)  So, I promptly put the lock on one of the windows.  Here it is in action.  (that's my awesome compost bin in the background)

I know it won't keep out anyone determined to break in; I'm just trying to deter the opportunistic.  I plan on getting a variety of these and installing two or more per window so I can have airflow and some small sense of security during the night.

The Queen Bess has been promoted to everyday usage.  It is missing large spoons, but Dad's Santa Fe lot has three of those, and I'm keeping the fleur de Luce soup spoons, so I should be good.

So, something I don't need is going out, something I already had has been repaired, and something I'd forgotten I had has been put to good use.  Score!
I

The Peace of Augsburg

The Peace of Augsburg is one of the many, many topics on which I took notes in high school senior year history class.  I suppose it must have had some influence on me, as I went on to major in History in college, albeit more or less as an extra since I just kind of inadvertently piled up a lot of credits in it. 

So my notebook, now missing its cover, seems to have carried me through all of my senior year classes: Modern European History, Advanced Latin, Spanish 3, Computer Science, and Senior Seminar in English. I recorded what scores I received on various assignments and tests on each section facing/first page. 

The facing page for M.E.H. also lists every date from 9/6 through 1/22, followed by a minute count (e.g., 22 min) or "absent" or, just once, 10/2, on time.  I have no recollection whether I was tracking myself, my instructor, or some other student.  Anyway, someone was only present for 7 hours and five minutes the first quarter. 

The Latin section starts with conjugations (laudo, laudas, laudat, laudamus, laudatis, laudant) and continues into translations, some of which I translated into Spanish, as well.
Sample: "2 mules were going having been burdened with packs.  One was carrying baskets with (of) money, the other swollen sacks of much barley."
Poor Mr. Leddy.

The Spanish section looks like probably everybody else's high school Spanish notes.  Again with the conjugating - Digo, dices, dice, dicimos, dicis, dicen.
Oh, look,  a definition of quesadillas, an exotic foreign foodstuff. 
Vocabulary: Un destomillador, screwdriver.

For English class, it looks like we started out with The Plague.  "Why don't Rieux & Tarrou turn in Cottard?"  Indeed.  We read Crime and Punishment that year, as well.
    The Three motives of Raskolnikov:
        Manner not matter
        unity of present
        Epilog regeneration.
Well, yeah.

My Computer Science notes begin with "Class Hint: Don't ever trust Miss Bailey."  That wasn't fair; she turned out to be one of my best instructors, even if (ok, *because*) she did scare the daylights out of me. 
The text was "Oh! Pascal!"  which should give some idea of how much use I've gotten out of this class.  Why, I was declaring and referencing some arrays just yesterday.

All this is interspersed with anagrams, random language translations, bits of near-suicidal adolescent angst, and poems and passages I had memorized (from Jabberwocky, Ulysses, The Tell-tale Heart) and written out in my notebook to make it look as if I were being studious.  Some notes I wrote out with my non-dominant hand, for the same reason. There are also lots of bad sketches of bats, not unlike the Batman symbol.  I just liked the word in various languages: Fledermaus, vespertillion, murcielago, chauvenisouris.  This last came in handy when many years later I traveled to France and purchased their version of the Weekly World News.  Feature story: Bat Boy found in cave. (I still have that paper somewhere, and when it turns up, not only am I not getting rid of it, I might just frame it and put it on my wall.)

As for the notebook itself, I'm keeping a few pages I'll hopefully scan sometime, recycling the rest right now.

Last quotation on last page: "Blood is thicker than water.  So is toothpaste."