Boxing days

It's pretty much the end of the long weekend, with a blessedly short work week to follow. By many people's standards, the weather has been perfect - in the eighties and sunny. Me? Eh, not so much. The house won't cool down, and most of the things I really want to get done involve being in my house, as opposed to out at the movies cooling off.

A stack of boxes began to grow in the corner of the living room this weekend. Full, packed boxes. In my overwhelming need to be organized (when change is happening all around you, you control the things you can control) I also have inventory sheets for each numbered box. Good thing, too, as I'm using my rather extensive collection of linens - quilts, wall hangings, tablecloths, place mats and cloth napkins - as padding in the boxes containing breakables.

A few fun things came to light while emptying the built-in bookcase. Two folders on the lower shelf, in a stack of what should have been only sheet music, turned out to be memory gold. One contains scripts, playbills and ticket stubs from productions I either performed in or attended while at college. It includes the script for Schubert's Last Serenade, in which I stood behind a potted palm, endlessly playing the first six bars of the title piece. Ah, good times and cheap champagne.

The second folder will get a closer look once I move. Junior year of high school I was able to take the senior level expository writing class; I kept all of the papers I wrote. In addition, it appears we did more writing than I remember in the Science Fiction and Fantasy class, as there are a number of short stories mixed in with the essays. I have a sinking feeling that I was a much better writer back then than now, and will need to work diligently to get back to that standard.

Tomorrow I need to hand in the paperwork that will allow me to work summer hours, essentially working four day weeks from now until the end of September. Or not. I'm still not sure I want to do it. Next weekend, Friday through Monday, for example, will have average temperatures of 87 degrees. Why stay in my hot house trying to pack when I can be in the cool office working? There really isn't a good solution, is there?

Now that the holiday is past, I can start calling agents and make appointments to see some of the places I've looked at on the on-line listings. I somehow feel as if the pictures on line should have a warning: "Objects are smaller than they appear in picture". We'll see how the reality matches up with the claimed square footage.