Dave Lecturing

Dave gave a lecture on bluegrass before a show at Denver University the first week of May. Here's a couple of shots of him in action. He came across well as a professor of bluegrass!

The Clarity Project

I started in on a project about six months ago that I nicknamed 'the clarity project.' Another name might be cleaning up a mess that has accumulated over probably eight years.

I started going through rooms and digging out stuff that was squirreled away in our house--in closets and drawers and boxes. I attacked one room of the house at a time and tried to address any items that could be thrown out, given to charity, or shredded. In this manner I went through the rooms of the house. I still haven't gone through the basement (that's Phase 2).

I saved until last the room that Dave and I have our file cabinets in, (a little spare bedroom with just a desk and dressers and file cabinets). That room holds all of our papers. The reason that I saved it until last is because it was the biggest mess of all. I had given up on filing things and just had papers stacked in big piles on top of both cabinets and on the floor! It was a disaster. I could never have found any bill that I needed if there was an urgent need. It took me a month to go through the cabinet and those papers. I overheated our shredder I used it so much during that time. I even found the vet records from the two cats that I took to Germany with me in 1985.

Once I got rid of all the unneeded papers (probably 90% of the total), then I organized the drawers and even set up a system for current and previous year items like utilities, that I would shred at the end of a certain timeframe. Once I had the file cabinet in order, I went and signed up for paperless billing for the majority of our household bills. Then, I hurried and set up electronic folders in my computer so that everything would be organized.



What a great relief. And my system works. Dave needed a tax form. I went and got the folder from my file cabinet that it SHOULD have been in and voila! It was there. I was pretty proud of myself. I called this the Clarity Project, because my good friend, Catherine, is working on a business plan for a company where she would contract to clean out and organize things for people--kind of like I did.

This has been a very satisfying project for me. I have thought about how I let all this get out of control, and I was easily able to identify when and why. Eight years ago, I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and before it was diagnosed, I went for months with feeling that I didn't have enough energy to move. That's when I really developed some bad habits of putting things off and not finishing projects. I did that because I was always expecting to run out of energy, and at that time, typically I did.

One big aspect of my Clarity project involved magazines. Dave and I used to subscribe to a lot of magazines. We don't anymore, but over ten years or so, I got the magazines, wanted to read them but didn't feel I had time or energy, and so put them in my basement storage room for later. Later never came. As part of the clarity project, I have done some work in that basement room, which I will finish in the fall and winter. I threw out a lot of magazines. I organized and started going through the ones that I wanted to look at before getting rid of. I organized two or three binders with information from the magazines that I wanted to save: Gardening, Home Improvements, etc. I guess there were probably over six hundred magazines in that room when I started in on them. I'm down to 72, which are stacked on the library table, and I go through and dispose of 5 or 6 a week.



Clarity feels great.

Steel Pennies Poster

My parents sent us money for Christmas, and one of the things that Dave suggested we do with it was have a poster framed; the poster was for the Grand Lake Bluegrass Festival and our band, Steel Pennies, was listed on the poster. So that's what we did.

Then, once we had the framed poster back, Dave wanted to take a picture to send to my parents. So, he took the picture of me and then it languished in the camera for two and a half months. It's the story of my life--I never have time.

But last week, I had time. I printed out the picture--a big one on regular paper and a smaller one on photo paper, and I mailed it off to my mom and dad. Then I promptly forgot about it until yesterday when I called home and my mother exclaimed--"We got the picture!" They were puzzled as to what I was sending them and then were delighted when they opened it up. It was pretty fun.

My Sister and I

Here are my sister, Leslie, and I. My mom gave me this picture a few years ago when I was home. I don't know if Leslie knows I have it. I sent it to her in an email today with the subject line: Those Were the Days!

When I showed this picture to Dave, he asked, "Who are those two little knuckleheads?"

Dave and Hudson

David emailed me this picture last night of he and his dad, and I liked it so much, I thought I would post it to my blog. Hudson looks like a true salesman. David looks like a doll!

Here We Go with Gardening Season 2010

Well, we are off. Gardening has officially begun at our house. I pretended that I was going to rototill, so Dave went out and did it. I did work out there clearing the perennial beds the whole time so that I wouldn't feel guilty about him working so hard.

There's a lot to do. I will plant the first of my seeds tomorrow.

Mail Call

So, the Postal Service announced this week that they are trying to eliminate Saturday mail delivery--something that has been rumored for the last year. The article in the newspaper made me think about how our mail has changed over the last years.

When we lived in Germany, the daily mail distribution was a big event. We couldn't wait to get letters from home. Mail call was like opening a lottery ticket. And since we were young and unjaded, we opened the ticket with full expectations of winning the grand prize.

David still checks the mail first thing when he gets home from work. I think this is a leftover habit from being in the Army. I pointed out recently to him (after the sans Saturday delivery announcement) that we never get anything good in the mail. Any money that we might receive like a tax refund or an insurance payout is directly deposited into our bank account. That leaves us with bills and junk mail. I have just eliminated the bills--signed up for paperless bill for all of our utility, insurance, and phone accounts. So, I suppose all of our future mail will be junk mail.

We used to get a lot of magazines, but we discontinued most of the subscriptions because we just don't have time to read them. That's why so many magazines went under--because we stopped subscribing.

Yes, the world has changed.