Melilyn.com

I told you that I’m cleaning out my desk to swap it out with a new one, right? Well, please bear in mind that my current desk has eight drawers, and they’re all unusable. Why? Because they all got gradually turned into junk drawers that I pretty much left alone for… oh, four, five years?

Eight junk drawers over the span of four years can breed some pretty interesting stuff…

1. Cassette tapes. No, seriously! Rebecca St. James and Five Iron Frenzy. I’ve had those since about third grade and I probably wore holes through both of them over the years. I don’t even think I have a tape player in the house anymore. Maybe I’ll go buy the CD’s… for old times sake.
2. Signed postcards from a Jake concert. Well, two of the three anyway. According to Google, I don’t know if these three guys even exist anymore. They probably do, but with a group name as commonplace as “Jake” they’re probably buried somewhere in the internet. They’re kind of cool, though. Maybe I’ll frame them.
3. My script from B’nai Shalom’s production of Star Wars Purim. Remember Darth Haman? Mordecai Skywalker? Jewbacca??
4. My school journal from first grade. Now, I think I found this a couple of years back, thought it was cute, and threw it in there. Looking back, I think it’s pretty darn creative. Most first grade journals say things like “We had brokly for dinerr” or “I lik to coler with craons”… mine’s full of stories about lions, dinosaurs in outer space, and a flying sled. Go figure.
5. An envelope with about nine Israeli stamps on it, another envelope covered in two cent stamps (enough to equal a normal stamp!), and a bunch of letters from Becky that never made it into my letter box. Oh, and I’m tickled that one of the stamps on the Israeli envelope has the name of a Lost episode on it. Can you guess which one?
6. A business card from some obscure Missouri mechanic. We had car trouble when moving here in ‘04, and pulled off the beaten path. Thank goodness we found this guy!
7. A dream journal from 2002. What was I on? Okay, it’s kind of embarrassing. It’s going in the trash.
8. There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom by Louis Sachar. Very much loved, very much dog-eared, and very much written back before he wrote Holes.
9. The third Jake postcard. Hooray!
10. Seven dollars and eighty three cents, two Sacajawea dollars, and a Canadian dollar minted the year I was born.

This is what makes spring cleaning worth it. What’s some odd stuff you’ve found while cleaning?

Tomorrow’s Tegan’s birthday (so if you’re in contact with her, tell her happy birthday!), and we’re not really doing too much this year, so I took her and her best friend Leigh roller-skating.

It’s been a while since I’ve been skating (and it’s something I love to do and could probably do it in my sleep). When I was younger, going out to the local rink was, like, the coolest thing you could do… whether you were a kid, a teenager, or a college kid. The music rocked. Everyone had fun. Now, don’t get me wrong… I had a great time. But I noticed that the only people there were… oh, about three feet high. A couple of parents. A couple of teenagers that work there. The one freaky loner that’s actually a pretty good skater, but you don’t really want to get closed to him because he just kind of radiates weirdness. It surprised me how the skating rink just isn’t as “cool” as it used to me.

Bahh. When have I ever been one for cool? We had a great time. And I’ll try and update more often. New theme is almost ready for release!

Where I work, there’s a posse of old men that come in every day (I mean, they’re like clockwork… every day) and sit in the front corner by the windows. Not a big deal in and of itself… pretty harmless. Just a bunch of old friends having breakfast together every day. Not so.

This is an open letter to any and all guys that stumble across this. When you (inadvertently) get old and find yourself with nothing really interesting to occupy your time, do not go into your local eating establishment just to sit there for three hours every day and ogle every girl that comes in the front door. Seriously. I’m sure you’ll be able to find better and more productive things to do besides hitting on random girls that are young enough to be your great-grandchildren. Find a hobby to occupy you in your old age. The girls of tomorrow will thank you.