Consolidation.

The past few days have been an attempt to make sense of my life as it relates to my physical possessions - which namely involves tossing a lot of the random things I've accumulated into the trash. I've filled up two whole city garbage cans/recycling bins worth of things that a) have no sentimental meaning anymore (see: I don't even know what this picture is of), b) have no practical use (see: seriously, when was the last time I listened to the radio when I wasn't in a car...and more importantly, when was the last time anyone listened to a broken radio?), and c) things that fall into both columns (the collection of senior pictures of former classmates who I haven't talked to since the day I graduated from high school). Some things went into the "save" pile - family pictures, pictures with some sort of importance or meaning, my culinary school "create a menu" project...but the city of Madison Waste Management team (sounds a little better than "garbagemen," no?) is going to have an awesome time dumping the remains of my life when they arrive tomorrow. I can't believe I've moved...(/counts fingers)...a ridiculous amount of times over the past seven years, and have been carrying around all of this extra baggage for this long of a time. Throughout the entire process, that old Calvin and Hobbes strip has been running through my head, where Calvin's parents are sitting at the table saying "Thoreau said, 'Simplify, simplify...'" - providing a motivation and twice-filtered axiom to guide my project. (Random tangent - with the explosion of mass media, is it possible we're learning more about pop culture from shows like "Family Guy" and "South Park"? I used to be able to sit down with friends and watch "Family Guy" and only caught about half the references...but most of the unknown ones were filled in by the rest of the group for me. So now I know all of the things that I missed before...without actually knowing the originals. Just saying.) So, needless to say, I've got a small weight off of my shoulders, and hopefully a slightly less stressful move for next time.

I've actually been (gasp) making some time for a social life recently, something I've become terrible at doing over the past couple of years. I think I got to a point where I had roommates, and while I loved them, my space felt somewhat infringed upon, so I really valued my alone time. But, I've gotten much better at going out and all of that. Odd coincidence for you - I met my friend Sam at the Old Fashioned last night, and we were just hanging out, talking, and ordering obnoxious drinks to annoy the bartenders (who we're friends with, so I guess it's okay? Anyways, mmmm...sidecars.), and this guy sits down and starts up a conversation with us, and it turns out he just moved here from Colorado. We chat, he buys us a couple drinks, he leave, some other guy sits down (with whom Sam strikes up a conversation - she ain't nicknamed "Megaphone" for nothin'), and he's in town from Denver, on his way through to northern Wisconsin. Crazy, huh?

Okay, I'll stop rambling and get to what's become the point of this blog. Google Maps is starting to get out of control. Not even Cubs manager Lou Piniella is safe. (You have to grab the picture and pull it down a bit.)

Some people think telling everyone how exhausted they are makes them seem important.
But flaunting your fatigue only makes you insufferable.

That's all I've got time to share today. Gotta get to work.