New Bookcases

I moved this year. I have set up several bookcases. There are 6 tall, 4 short, and two media cases. I also have two small tables.

The tall bookcases have five shelves and the short cases have three shelves. I have the shelves setup to take comic book boxes. Currently sitting mostly empty. I have comic book boxes on the bottom shelf. 2 boxes sit on the shelf sitting perpendicular.

The fourth short case holds my media and the two media cases has my non comic books and holds up the TV.

Video game stuff  like the Halo vehicle and WarCraft goes with the TV area.  

3rd bookcase is facing out of the space. I may put non toy and non comic stuff on that one. 

One of those tables is holding my fairy chess set and board. 

A short for miscellaneous like Godzilla and Lego.

A short bookcase for DC. 

Doctor Who is going to be on those shelves. 

I am reserving a tall bookcase for Marvel. 

A tall case for Star Wars. 

That Star Wars case may end up holding my ECCC and SDCC books too. 

That leaves 4 tall bookcases for GI Joe. That is not going to be enough space for my collection. I am not sure I have the space to add more cases. Those 7 tortilla boxes are going to fill up that space quickly. 

One Year Ago

This was intended to be a much longer post but I distracted myself because I could not deal with the thoughts necessary to write this post.
This weekend last year, I met a woman who changed my life. I have more to say on this woman and my life but I still can not bring myself to write.
I am going to go get drunk.
Put some random words into the tags associated with this post and you can figure out the rest.

Road Trip 2010

I Here I go out on the road. Not sure where the road will take me. Or where I want to go. I want to keep my schedule loose and just try to relax. Try not to do anything crazy. Find some perspective…take a breath…do some writing…get the repetitive conversations out of my head

Destination	Probability	WHY	WHEN
DC	60%	woman	July 31
Utah	10%	woman	week before July 31
Louisiana	40%	Mom	Week after July 31
Florida	30%	Aunt and Uncle	Week after July 31
San Diego, CA	80%	Comic-Con	July 24-25
Santa Cruz, CA	50%	Sister	July 26
Seaside, CA	50%	Grandparents	July 26
Hawaii	40%	some place different	July 31
Caribbean	40%	some place different	July 31
Tahiti	25%	Original Plan	July 31
Las Vegas	20%	why not?	never

At some point I may park at an airport and look for a cheap flight out to some random destination. That would be interesting.
This trip was meant to be on a plane. I was going to San Diego Comic-Con this week. Next week was going to be Tahiti. A deserted island somewhere in the South Pacific was where I wanted to spend my birthday. I took a drive up to the Northgate Mall last Friday. I realized that I need to take a road trip. So this is where this plan just fell into place. As the money came into existence, I had enough money for Comic-Con. But not enough money for Tahiti. I thought by saying no to Comic-Con I would be able to afford to go to Tahiti. And I can if I had saved my money and left on July 30th. That date was not going to work for me. I do not want to spend my birthday traveling. I want to be where I want to be when I wake up on the 31st.
Where that place I want to be is…Let the road decide!

Questions and Decisions Time

I am on a 23 day vacation from The Seattle Public Library. One goal I had before this vacation started was to get my apartment empty. I was going to put everything into storage. As the time approached to start moving things into storage, that idea just did not seem right. I no longer want any of these things in my life. I should not own more stuff than what will fit in the back of my truck. And I do not mean a full load either. One tote of clothes, one tote of equipment, and one tote of personal items. That should be more than enough stuff in my life.

Tote of Clothes	Tote of Personal Items	Tote of Equipment	Backpack
Suit jacket/pants	Sword	Scanner/printer	computer
white dress shirt, undershirt	Snake-Eyes action figure(s)	Tool case	camera
blue dress shirt, undershirt	Snake-Eyes skateboard	surge protector	computer power cord
polo shirt	Chess Board	extension cord	camera power cord
pair of black pants		PS3	passport
pair of jeans		speakers	cell phone power cord
2 pairs of cargo shorts		phone modem	cell phone
pair of sport shorts		alarm clock	extra camera batteries (AA)
5 pairs of underwear and socks		camera printer dock/recharge station	sunglasses
blanket, pillow			MP3 player and cord
grooming items			extra AAA batteries
			journal
			pens

As this year came into existence, I knew I wanted to spend this time answering some big questions in my life.
1. Do I stay in Seattle?
2. Do I stay at the Library?
3. Where do I go?
4. Why?
5. What am I doing with my life?
One thing I learned in the last year is that my siblings consider me stable. Even my mother agrees with that statement. And I find myself not arguing with  the thought of me being stable. My soul yearns for that label to be wrong. This stability that others see is the act that I put on to hide. I am so worried about going crazy that I do nothing with my life.
As the past year unfolded, a wrinkle entered my life. A ‘wrinkle’ is not an adequate term. Something I had not counted on, entered my life. I fell in love, fell in lust, fell into an old pattern of obsession. Whatever the proper term or expression, this period of time that I requested off last year for reflection on my life has different priorities. Those things that I thought I would take this time off to think about, no longer has the same meaning that it did last year.
One major thing that I did not realize would change is the collection of toys. I am no longer interested in adding to or keeping my GI Joe collection. So I have been trying to sell them on the www.forums.yojoe.com I have been taking a lot of pictures of the collection. I have not opened the old boxes yet. I have been concentrating on the loose items I have bought since moving to Seattle.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jlbowen/GIJoe
Someone put the idea in my head of getting rid of books. Before I could change my mind, I took the books to Half-Price with this person. And I am thinking about getting rid of the rest of my books. I did not make any money on the books but at least the books are gone. The counter person pointed me towards the books that the store could not take. I went towards the box of books, reached towards them to see what was rejected, and said out loud, “No, Jason, RUN!”



  I have been trying to sell off my comic book collection. A couple issues here and there over the last couple of years but no major sales. I have been looking for a big dealer and I thought I had one lined up but that did not work out as hoped. Mostly, I messed up the automatic process of selling the collection. Trying to enter 4,000 comic books from one online program into another online program was not easy. I got maybe 100 books entered before I gave up.
This is where I am right now. I need to find some perspective on my life or something. I have been vaguely planning this vacation for years. Now the time is upon me.

Possible 35th Birthday Tahiti Trip Part II

Summer 2009
July 1 to September 27, 2009
Things were lining up for next years trip. I seemed to be on the path to being out of debt by December.
On July 1st, I went crazy for G.I. Joe toys. There was a spending spree for the The Rise of Cobra movie toys. Hasbro released new products to coincide with the movie release in August. Over July and August I spent a lot of money and time shopping for the toys. I spent over $2,000 on related merchandise. Including a Playstation 3 because of the G.I. Joe video game. This was before the price drop on the PS3. I think the last G.I. Joe thing I bought was some wristbands at Hot Topic. That was on September 27, 2009. Some time soon after that purchase, I realized that I was done with buying G.I. Joe merchandise. The appeal of filling my life with these toys was gone. I no longer want to buy anything. In fact, I started feeling the want to sell everything.

View Full Album

This craziness put a small hiccup on the plans for July 2010. I thought this was nothing too major though.
FALL 2009
Then in October/November I bought some electronics. The screen on my laptop died. My digital camera stopped working at the same time. I bought a new camera ($175) and a netbook ($325) in late November. October, I broke down and bought a Pre-Paid Cell phone. New stereo ($200) for my truck. Which meant a new passenger window ($200) when someone tried to steal it. Finally broke down and paid Toyota ($200) to change the dashboard lights that had been out for a long time.
In September I started wearing pants on a regular basis. This led to all sorts of wardrobe changes. Which meant spending money. I have bought pants, jeans, dress shirts, ties, and a suit.
Started drinking on a daily basis in October. At 23:00 almost every night I would go to Cafe Metropolitan and have 3 beers and a cocktail. I would do some writing. Then go home.
Started walking up the hill towards home after work. Losing weight made me have to replace those pants and jeans I had just bought. Regular walking everyday helped me work on the food side of my life. Fruits and vegetables became a staple of my diet.
END OF 2009 FINANCIAL PICTURE

Spending spree in July and August. Electronics in November. Trip to see family in December. Drinking. All these things put me further behind on getting out of debt.
But all the money problems do not address the main reason I am not going to Tahiti this year.
How to talk about that….See Part III

Apartment on July 6th, 2010

Photos from around the apartment on July 6, 2010. I just want to see what progress I have made in my apartment in the month of June. I thought today would be a good day to show the current state of the apartment.
 
I missed the July 1st deadline for having my apartment empty. Now I have 12 days to the start of my 3 week vacation. I would like to get everything out by July 18. Of course that is my last day of work. So I should have 13 days until my birthday to get the place clean.
I have to go back out walking.  I have been spending so much time on the projects that I have not been getting any exercise.

The closet today. I took this picture right before leaving the house today.

I guess this is when I sealed the closet. Because in May/June 2010 when I opened the doors, this is how it looked. Shit, to have doors not open for two years is a long time. Considering how long it has been since some of those boxes were sealed, two years is not that long after all.

Possible 35th Birthday Tahiti Trip Part I

Over the last few months, people have been asking me about my plans for Tahiti. I have been ignoring the questions because I did not know how to answer. I have given some line about money being a problem. That is an incomplete answer.

History
I first thought of going to Tahiti in 2004 or 2005. I was shelving books at the Central Library of The Seattle Public Library. On the cover of a book I shelved was a picture of what I call a bungalow on the water. This was either before or after I turned 30. I saw this book and thought to myself that is where I want to be on my 35th birthday. That gave me five years to plan the trip. I thought that would be enough time.

Money Situation
In 2000, I spent several months not working. I lived on my credit cards for a while. This was a dark period. I was buying drinks at the bar every night. Most of the time I fell asleep in my car. After 2 or 3 months of this, I got a job at the Post Office in Pebble Beach. I was still drinking every night but at least I could start making payments.
Then I moved to Seattle. I did not find a good job for a few months. Then I got a job at Fed Ex on April 1, 2003. This did not let me make any progress on getting the bills paid down. I made minimum payments but got further behind on other bills. After a year and a half of working just at Fed Ex, I got a night job for the 2003 Christmas season at Fred Meyer on Broadway. In March 2004, I got a third job at The Seattle Public Library. April 1, 2004 I left Fed Ex employment. June 2004 I left Fred Meyer employment. This left me just the job at the library. As time progressed, my money situation got better even working the one job at the library.
At the time I thought of the trip I was in serious debt. I was making some good progress on my bills though. By 2008 I was down to one or two bills. All the other bills I had paid off or did not have any information.
Doing the numbers in my head, Tahiti was looking like a probable event.

Then came Summer 2009...........

First Day of July

One goal I set late last year was to have the apartment empty by July 1st. That did not happen.
Three big projects to get done; Comic Books, Toys, and Paperwork.

COMIC BOOKS
I started on the Comic Books a while ago. There has been little progress towards selling the books. I have sold some of them over the last two years but no dents have been made. I need to get going on a new aspect of the Comic Book Project. That is going to be time consuming. At least that is one project I can work on when I am not at home. An internet connection will help me transfer the data from one program into the other program. I am hoping that a good deal is offered from the company I contacted. A good deal and the company takes all the books.

PAPERWORK
I made some progress at the beginning of June on the Paperwork. I took some vacation days where I just stayed at home. At one point I was taking out several bags of trash every day. The only stuff that was taken out was shredded paperwork. And I still have 4 feet of paperwork to scan and shred. There is a lot of paperwork in 4 feet.

TOYS
Wednesday I took a lot of pictures of the toys but did not make any progress towards emptying the apartment.  I have procrastinated too long. This project should have been done 6 months ago. Yet I waited until June to get started. Batteries for the camera ran low so I reshuffled locations of the toys. I emptied one side of the closet into the kitchen. I moved the stuff on the one side of the closet to the empty side and put the stuff in the kitchen back into the new empty side of the closet. Not quite as well packed as it was but at least I have pictures of the individual items on that side of the closet. Now to do the shelf and start unpacking the Taco Bell boxes. Those boxes have been sealed for 16 years. If the timing is right, I sealed those boxes in 1994. Who knows what the inside of those boxes will be like after all this time.

GO TIME

Thought about the project all this time and did nothing about getting rid of this stuff. Purge time is go and 20 days until my vacation starts.  I am going to be working my ass off for the next 20 days.

Last Day of June 2010

Spending the day taking pictures of my collection. Watching movies. And this is just the loose stuff from the bottom of the closet. I still need to unpack 20 boxes from the other side of the closet and clean off the shelf at the top of the closet.
Plus take pictures of all the stuff I bought last July. I bought a ton of stuff for the Rise of Cobra movie. I did enjoy the movie and I do like the toys. The time came a few months later when I realized that the toys and spending the money was no longer what I wanted in my life.
http://goo.gl/photos/iQmK
I hope to sell all of these things as one big collection. To save some time and effort. Selling the items individually may make me more money but not selling for the money.
The time has come for me to purge my life. I no longer want to own more than one load for the Back of the Truck.

Thrift Store Run

Stuff I loaded up Saturday morning for a run to the thrift store. The stuff is still sitting in the back of the truck on Thursday. Rain has fallen and the folders are not looking good. Nor is the box of electronics. Good thing I put the open tote in the cab of the truck.

Weight Bench

First days of owning a weight bench. Apartment was a lot smaller after buying the weight bench.

And now it is time for it to go. I found a buyer so I took it away.

I never did use it as much as I wanted. I was hoping to get muscular but did not put the time in to work out.

First of Many Loads to Go

Three boxes of books. A tote of books. A tote of clothes. My useless prize that I won (not HD) but working flat panel television. My old VCR/DVD player (not sure if it works) with remote.

Still can't believe I am getting rid of books. I need to do this before I change my mind on them. And I am keeping my Heinleins and some others.