It's now August. All that stuff I had to deal with in a short amount of time has finally been dealt with:

• Finding a new apartment
• Setting up everything to do with that apartment
• Moving offices
• Dealing with an expiring car lease (and allllll that goes with it)
• Dealing with an expiring credit card (and allllll that goes with it)
• Quitting my ISP that was going under, moving web sites around before they disappeared
• Finding and signing up for a new ISP, to my liking
• Sending all of my new contact information to everybody
• Fixing my car's rear lights, after getting pulled over again. (The fuses were fine. Who would have thought that both bulbs would blow around the same time? One of them didn't even look blown at first. Fortunately I fixed it all myself.)
• Probably some additional things I can't think of at the moment

One of the strangest things in this whole process has been the packing. I know I already mentioned some of this before, but it's worth mentioning in detail. Regardless of where I've been living over the years, I still always had a significant amount of stuff left at my parents' house. Old toys, old computers, old high school papers, extra phones and alarm clocks, and whatever else I've intentionally saved. Right after grad school, the lease on my apartment ran out and my room mates went their separate ways. So I moved back in with my parents until I could find a professional job. This means every thing I owned had to be crammed into a little bed room. And what pissed me off to no end, was hearing the shit from my mother, every god damn day. "Your room's a shit hole. Clean it up!" "I can't, mom." "You have [and here's where she lists specific things, which piss me off even more] papers from 4th grade..." "Well if I've been saving something since then, then it's probably something I'm not going to throw out any time soon, right?" "Just clean the room!" "I CAN'T! In order to clean a room, you have to move something from one place to another. I don't have that space. It's packed and stacked already. It's the same case with the basement and all those boxes down there. You're asking me to defy the laws of physics." I had to keep some boxes of stuff in the truck of my car and the back seat, because I wouldn't have any place to put it otherwise. I even told the story before about my amp that I sold.

As if things couldn't get more ridiculous, this year has marked an even bigger crusade from my parents to get rid of things. Even if it meant things like, oh, taking almost every book from the living room and every one of my video tapes, and storing them away deep in the basement. Gee, that makes it really convenient when somebody wants to watch a movie. If my dad just waited less than one fucking month before arrogantly rearranging everything in the entire fucking house, I could have already been moved out with my stuff, making it a lot easier for all parties. I have friends who give me shocked looks when I tell them my mother says the house is too small. It's BIG. The problem is, it has three tiny bed rooms that my mother insists on cramming everything into, and immensely huge dining rooms and living rooms that seem to be there just for display purposes.

Anyway, in relation to that and the aforementioned fact that I always left a lot of stuff in that house, a while back my dad declared that this time, when my brother and I each find a new place, he wanted EVERYTHING we own out of the house. And now that I'm finally doing that, my parents are embarrassingly saying "Oh oh oh, you don't need to move everything out, right away..." Well make up your fucking minds, folks! I still have a few boxes left of stuff there, plus a few chairs in storage I can claim (I could only fit one of them in the car last time I was there). But I really don't know what I'd do with things like an Apple //c, a 166 mhz Compaq, and another Compaq with Windows 3.1.1. I guess I can just say I'm officially abonding them, no matter what.

So how's the apartment? It's a mess. But here's why. Although I brought all those boxes of things over, it's been a slow sorting process. I have well over 12 years of not just accumulated stuff, but areas where I'd always stick things to stow them away. Draws, boxes, corners, cabinets, whatever. NOW, though, I finally have a big space (my newest apartment) where I can take all those things and put them in their proper place. Again, it's been a slow SORTING process. I've had all these things shoved together: high school notes, concert tour books, college notes, random momentoes, magazines, occult stuff, old computer stuff, extremely old computer stuff, sheet music, office supplies, other music stuff, fetish mags, random artwork and projects, ex-girlfriend memorabilia, award certificates, and who knows what else. Some of it I'm trashing, some of it I'm storing away in that lockable cabinet I have upstairs in the apartment buidling, maybe some of it's going to Ebay, and some of it has to find its new proper section on a particular shelf or what not.

It's a slow process. But the end results will justify it. Then, and only then, will I consider throwing a house-warming party.