Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Battling Entropy One Room at a Time

Please pray for and give what you can to the people of Haiti. A 7.0 earthquake striking the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with the epicenter ten miles from the capital cannot be a good thing. All of the reports are sketchy right now mainly because the entire communication infrastructure is down. It is going to be a long night for the people in that country and my heart goes out to them.

Switching gears I have done one of those things that I always seem to do at the start of the year and that is get organized. This year has been more severe than in past years. My apartment just became a complete mess over the holidays as all of the boxes from gifts that I bought online continued to pile up and dishes sat in the sink and clothes were left on the nearest flat surface. It was making me depressed to just look at it.

So over the weekend I went into complete cleaning mode. Went room by room picking up and throwing out and placing items in equal piles. It is one of those moments where my OCD actually comes in handy. When I get focused on organization I really can’t stop and at least with this obsession at the end of the day I am left with a clean apartment albeit one in which the cereal boxes are now in alphabet order. I even finally donated the bags of clothes that had been stored in my guest bathroom. The fact that they stayed there for months and months gives an indication of just how often I have guests over.

What I find interesting is just how liberating it is to just have everything clean and organized for once. For the past few days I have just felt happier knowing that I am coming home to a clean apartment. Every night the dishes are done and the mail is put away and all of those little things that can pile up are simply not piling up. I know that some people strive on chaos and disorder and I’ve certainly lived in that environment for many years but sometimes it is nice just to know that everything is where you want it to be.

It also probably helps that I am working out again. Like I said last week I have to lose weight for the wedding and reduce the size of my gut. I’ll have to admit though that I am not starting off tough at all. I am on Easy mode on EA Active which basically has me going through exercises like “stand up without falling over” and “see if you can walk towards the television without having to stop and catch your breath.” I know that I could push myself harder but after several months of no activity at all I’ve decided to start slow and expand from there. Hopefully this will reduce my risk of injury while building the routine of working out every night. Add in my cleaned up diet and I am starting the year on the right foot. Let’s see what happens from here

7th Best Album of the Decade: Cat Power “You are Free”: Ok, I’m not even sure if I can describe Cat Power. I believe that I have mentioned that when listening to this album you should not operate heavy machinery or be near sharp objects. This album can get really, really dark but it is beautiful nonetheless. I’m not sure if anyone this decade made music quite the way that Chan did but she is well worth a listen.

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