July 30, 2007
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Monday Miscellany
~ Gambling is stealing from yourself.
I’ve never thought of it this way, but a few stanzas in The Inferno caught my attention.
Man can raise violent hands against himself
and his own goods; so in the second round,
paying the debt that never can be paid,are suicides, self-robbers of your world,
or those who gamble all their wealth away
and weep up there when they should have rejoiced.While throwing away money isn’t a sin I struggle with, throwing away time is a form of stealing which I participate in.
~ Pish! Drivel! Waffle! Balderdash!Quote of the weekend from the series To Serve Them All My Days. These words were one master’s description of student exams as he returned them, graded, to his students.
~ A fun resource
There are several books in this genre, but of the ones I own, this is my favorite. Friday night DH and I were reviewing the next day’s duties shortly before we slipped into sleep. One of us said, “You can count on me.” My husband wondered aloud how counting came to mean depending. That was it! No sleep for me until I looked it up. He teased me that I wouldn’t be able to sleep without telling him what I discovered; which was just enough of a dare that I clammed up in fits of giggling. Then he squirreled the word “count” into every other sentence for the next two days.My first foray into phrase origins came from a fellow word bird who explained the phrase “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Kelly told me that cat was short for catfish, which is a prickly, difficult to handle fish.
~ Why is *finishing* such a challenge to people like me?The kitchen project is 90% completed. It is the matter of one evening or one afternoon to finish it. Yet, I hold back. Part of it is perfectionism: this isn’t done to the highest standard, it never can be, so I am very hesitant to say with authority, “It’s done!” But mostly it is a character flaw. It is fairly easy to begin a new project with enthusiasm and oomph; it’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax to put it to bed.
~ Any ideas on managing email?
I manage my email the same way I grew up managing my bedroom: let things pile up and then deal with Mt. McKinley in one long cleaning frenzy. Certain friends respond immediately to each email. I bet they wake up at 5:00 a.m. every day too. Others may never respond. I fall in the middle. I try to respond to each email but it could be weeks later. And then I might send four or five emails replying to four or five former messages. It must frustrate them and clog up their system.
My son taught me to use folders and I have a folder for each sender/recipient. These are where store emails I want to keep. I don’t move a message from the Inbox to personal folder until I’ve responded and there is no further action to take. I’ve recently been working through my Sent folder which had over 1,000 items. I’m deleting ephemeral messages and distributing more substantive emails to personal folders so correspondence back and forth is in one place.
Neil Postman is right: we’re drowning in information. How dost thou deal with such things, dear reader? Is there anyone out there who just deletes them ALL? Yikes!
Comments (5)
Mind you! by NO means have I mastered clutter, but I do get a great sense of satisfaction by dealing every day … promptly…. with the US mail. I relish the idea of dumping as much as possible in the trashcan in the garage BEFORE I walk back into the house and sort it into *mailboxes* on the kitchen counter.
Too many topics today, my friend.
Blessings fm GA,
Dana
Carol that was so sweet of you to check on me. I am fine – it just seems as though other things have taken priority lately over blogging. I have read yours and others, though I have missed some days altogether. I do appreciate the Xanga habit of letting us know when friends have posted. And I have mentally composed quite a few entries which never made it to the page. Only in my mind!
Your post about email resonates with me. A rather hefty number of posts in my Inbox are just chitchat from some friends and to some extent from some of my daughters. For the most part not stuff to keep over the long haul. When the box starts looking too stuffed I “sort” everything according to sender and just delete in bunches. Anything I want to keep has already been moved to a folder. So I end up keeping the Inbox fairly well thinned out. But the Sent box! Heaven help us!
Dana, like Neil Postman, is right: we’re drowning in blog information.
I’m sorry! I broke the first rule of writing: be brief.
Carol, first, I want that book! What fun. We are forever saying “Where in the world do you think THAT came from.” Secondly. I am a neatnik married to a messy.(he has gotten infinetly better over the years and is passionately neat about his library) My email box is easier to manipulate than anything else because it is in MY realm. I do the folder thing and try to process and reply (even if it is a very short note) every day. I love to trash things enmass that comes in bulk mail, so I have to really watch carefully that I don’t throw something away that isn’t junk. I love to hit “delete all”. I take the weekends off from email and the computer so Monday mornings are a challenge! blessings and love, M in SC
Just recently I wondered why the saying had come about “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” Thanks for helping me out on that one! It was good to visit with you on Saturday. Sherry