Too. Much. STUFF!

Working on cleaning my room tonight (still trying to whip it back into shape after Tuesday's round with the exterminator) I realized something - I have a LOT of stuff. Now, granted, when you try to cram all my possessions into half of a small room, yes, you're going to have a lot of stuff, but even I must admit this feels a bit extreme. I'm always willing to slim down my possessions, but I've begun to reach the point where I'm not sure I can slim down any further. What goes next?!

It's interesting to me, as a sign of the materialistic American mindset. I don't think I'm very materialistic. To be honest, there are times when I think I would be perfectly fine if all I had was a couple pairs of jeans, a few shirts, my laptop, a hairbrush, and a towel (as Douglas Adams said, always know where your towel is). But then I start thinking - what about my books? The rest of my clothes? My almost-complete series of "Stargate: Atlantis" (BTW, if anyone wants to make a poor college student's summer and buy season 5 for me...)?

At home, I don't have many possessions left. My Kentucky Derby mint julep glass collection is there, and a lot of various things that were important to me at some point, but nothing major. I've pretty much got all my major things at school.

But it's made me think about a subject that's bugged me a lot lately - consumer America. We are such slovenly pigs! Americans tend to have a LOT of stuff. And you want a surefire business to go into? Open a self storage facility. Have you noticed the rampant proliferation of the self-storage facility? Almost no maintenance, and people will use it, because Americans have the nasty habit of getting as much stuff as their houses can hold, then they rent places to hold more stuff. Or they build sheds. Or they just keep piling it up. We have TV shows devoted to finding these places and people, and they not only have a disgusting amount of stuff, they don't want to give it up!

So. Here's my personal challenge, and one I encourage anyone who actually bothers to read this to attempt: slim down. Find those things you really don't need and get rid of them. I'll admit, I'm in a slightly unique spot - much of what I have, I do need, or I will shortly (after all, I'm going to be out of college soon, at least as an undergrad). But even looking around my cramped room, I notice things I can do - do I really need the basket I keep socks in? Can't I cram them into my drawer?

I've already got a bunch of things that either need to go home to the rest of my family, or down to the free box. I bet if you looked around, you could probably say the same thing. Well...not the exact same thing. But I bet you have things you could get rid of.

Right. Now that I've stepped on my social commentary soap box for the week, I'm done. I want to finish the first season of "NCIS" and there's some juice in my fridge that's calling my name.

Ahh...Saturday

I've been back at school for a week, working to earn my room and board in Stained Glass. It's...different. NOBODY TALKS. At this point in the mill, we'd know the major facts on everyone, and given another week, we'd know everyone's life stories. Whether you wanted to let people know or not - who needs interrogators when you have a dozen people sitting around weaving?

Stained Glass is the opposite. No real conversations, no debates. They're really kind of cliqueish. So I'm already going insane. I like to talk while I work. And other than when you're grinding, this is the perfect job for conversation.

Thank goodness for all of my friends here. Our little band o' geeks meets for lunch every day - generally it's me, Stephen, Amanda, Kurtis, Tony, and sometimes Ethan. Conversations are great; we were discussing whether Star Wars or Star Trek is more likely to be real, and the conclusion was (obviously) that Star Trek is more likely, but we think the technology they actually have by the 23rd and 24th centuries will be much better. We also concluded that Stargate beats all, because for all we know, there could be a secret government program exploring other planets. It's my opinion that Doctor Who is probably somewhere in the middle - a time traveling alien with a London fixation saving the world from invading aliens seems do-able, although why said aliens ALWAYS want to invade London (no offense to London, it's an amazing city and I can't wait to go back) doesn't make sense. Why not New York? Washington? Paris? Tokyo? Sydney?

Full details on "how you make stained glass" later. I'm still burning myself too often to try to juggle a camera too. Hot lead on fingertip with only your rubber glove in between? It kind of hurts. Besides, I'm going to watch an episode of NCIS, then start my laundry and go to lunch.